Why Blizzard is so Successful

[Pidesco]

Although BE games are sometimes annoying precise against playability. (Bugs aside) Like Diablo II.

 

What?

 

Yeah. I have always thought that the strong point of Blizzard games is their playability.

 

That's what vaxen is saying?

[Zann]

Blizzard is successful because their apparent quality games attract the youngest (most numerous) players.

I'm modding Wc3 since almost two years now, and you'll be amazed how many idiots roam battle.net. The most popular map is an incredibly imbalanced game wich everyones play because it's almost a trend now.

Imo, the only good game blizzard ever made was Starcraft.

[SamuraiGaijin]

Sure, Blizzard's not exactly creative ...

 

They cherry-picked the good and familiar ideas from popular videa games, PnP RPG's, Tabletop Strategy games, literature ...

 

They borrowed elements from popular game genres and did their best to make the interface simple ...

 

But, in order to ensure the best quality game possible upon release ... they test the crap out of it and fix all the bugs they can.

 

And they continue to provide support to their existing games (Patch v1.14 of StarCraft was just released a few days ago).

[Blarghagh]

By the way, for those interest, most of the Blizzard North guys up and left Blizzard to start Flagship Studios who are now making a futuristic fps version of Diablo called Hellgate: London.

[Cantousent]

Not only does Blizzard have money, but the fanbase is still huge. Is it large enough to swamp this board and close it down for a few days? I don't know, but this is not theoretical. It happened some years back when someone took a young designer's comments the wrong way. Let's play nice, everyone.

[Calax]

Blizzard is also known for having more than 2d worlds. what I mean is that the characters all feel like they actually exsist.

 

also Chris Metzen.

[Skynet]

It's more like Blizzard took the whole space marines vs. ugly genobastards-theme from Warhammer 40k. Even the power armors look akin. Not to mention that Eldar are pretty damn similar to Protoss; both have a honor-based warrior culture, both are humanoid telepaths and kinetics and extremely xenophobic.

 

Edit: Durnk tpying

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I've never played Warhammer 40k, but the Zerg and Marines always reminded me of Starship Troopers.

[EUIX]

Blizzard games strong mechanics. They understand what makes a game addictive and worth playing. I can tell you prior to WoW coming out MMORPG was not mainstream, at least not in my community and amongst my friends, after it came out, everyone I knew was playing WoW, and these weren't gamers, they were people that up to then hadn't touched a computer game, or were "I played this funny game where you shoot people, I think its called Quake" kind of people. In otherwards Blizzard took people that largely were not gamers and hooked then onto WoW. They drew new people into the market. That's ultimately what made them successful I think, when they saw Diablo they knew it was something that would appeal to people and ended up buying Condor.

 

Secondly Blizzard games has strong themes and storylines, this Blizzard owns a huge debt to Games Workshop, whom I am surprised never sued them for copyright enfringment. The green skinned orcs, Zergs, and Terrans all have origins in Warhammer Fantasy and 40k. But not only this they take time to develop storylines and populate their games with memorable characters and interesting plot lines.

 

Blizzard pays an enormous amount of attention to detail. You can tell when the last half of almost all Blizzard manuals are just fluff, background setting, item descriptions, and story.

 

And lastly Blizzard games attract a broad spectrum of people. They attract young people as young as 12-13, at the same time the gameplay and content is mature enough to appeal to teenagers and adults alike. Even hardcore gamers like me, feel that Diablo 2 has the occasional hack 'n slash appeal. Compare this to games like the CRPG classics, Baldur's Gate or Torment, as popular as Baldur's Gate 2 was it can't compare to the huge popularity of Diablo, and nothing needs to be said of Torment.

 

Oh yea one more thing. Warhammer 40k is still 1000x cooler then Starcraft. Dawn of War was the first time I started skirmish games against the computers just to listen to to the CSM go "CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSSs"

Edited August 5, 2006 by EUIX

[Krookie]

Blizzard is successful because of the amount of people that play WoW. That game could have been a 2D sidescroller and they still would have the same amount of people playing it.

[Kaftan Barlast]

WoW's hype was very strange. Half my friends had it on pre-order before its american release and none of them were Blizzard or MMO fans. Its like they were the victims of some brainwashing I managed to completely miss.

[kalimeeri]

Copycat? Please.

 

Every game out there has 'incorporated' elements, either thematic (unavoidable, because there are no new plots) or shameless (due to success of the earlier game). I see nothing wrong with using an intriguing 'concept' and making your own interpretation; the end result is usually nothing like the 'original' idea--if there is such a thing.

 

"...successful games can be useful, not for cloning, but for analysis."--Game Design, Theory and Practice

So can less-than-successful games.

 

I believe this is what Blizzard has done--distilled out an essence of what they believe worked and what didn't, in a given genre--and came up with their own model of what gamers are looking for. Combining these elusive elements with solid mechanics (and a dedicated team) seems to work, even in a routine hack-n-slash. Was it luck? Probably, initially. But at least (so far) they have had the sense not to diverge too far from a player-oriented philosophy, for the sake of ego or 'innovation' alone.

[Zann]

Copycat?  Please. 

 

Every game out there has 'incorporated' elements, either thematic (unavoidable, because there are no new plots) or shameless (due to success of the earlier game).  I see nothing wrong with using an intriguing 'concept' and making your own interpretation; the end result is usually nothing like the 'original' idea--if there is such a thing. 

 

Copycat. Yes.

 

Even graphically, there are Warhammer symbols in some wc3 textures, and I've recently read a thread wich pointed out that the orc's townhall has skaven's symbols somewere. Metzen hardly has made an original story in all his life. He just put together some classic fantasy stuff assembled in some vaguely new form.

[Lucius]

Copycat?  Please. 

 

Every game out there has 'incorporated' elements, either thematic (unavoidable, because there are no new plots) or shameless (due to success of the earlier game).  I see nothing wrong with using an intriguing 'concept' and making your own interpretation; the end result is usually nothing like the 'original' idea--if there is such a thing. 

 

Copycat. Yes.

 

Yep, but still enjoyable no doubt!

[Kitch]

Isn't the reason for the starcraft/warhammer 40k similarity because starcraft was originally being developed as a warhammer 40k game, but scrapped later on?

Edited August 5, 2006 by Kitch

[Lucius]

No idea, but haven't heard that before.

[Azarkon]

Talking from a financial standpoint -

 

JE & Kaftan are absolutely correct - Blizzard is a company that can start off with a prototype, playtest it heavily throughout the period of a few years, decide to scrap it completely, and develop a new one until they get it "just right." And if they never get it right (ie Lord of the Clans & Starcraft: Ghost, which wasn't developed by Blizzard but was under the Blizzard "seal of quality"), they simply discard the game in order to preserve their reputation. Try doing that as a developer under publisher pressures.

 

There is also the matter of Blizzard's unstoppable marketing, PR, and global localization teams. They have the money to spend on advertisement, and, along with the "quality" word of mouth associated with Blizzard (due to the above), this is a potent advantage compared to smaller, less well-established companies.

 

Talking from a first-contact point of view -

 

Blizzard's success back in the heydays of the RTS genre and their masterful acquisition of key development teams (ie Condor->Blizzard North) is what gave them the financial resources necessary to accomplish the aforementioned feats. In this manner, they're very similar to Bioware - BG and BG2 built the basis of Bioware's fanbase, namesake, and finance, which in turn allowed them to spend ~4-5 years in the development of NWN 1 which, despite the less-than-stellar OC, guaranteed its success via the sheer abundance of features.

 

Finally, from the POV of a gamer -

 

Blizzard games are must-buys for many because of five reasons:

 

* They're always high-quality, because Blizzard simply does not release games that they do not consider up to par with their reputation. This also tends to mean an absence of bugs, the presence of significant polish even in the smallest of details, etc.

 

* They always have stellar gameplay - Blizzard have a good sense of what constitutes interesting and addictive gameplay, and this is something that they're willing to iterate as long as needed in order to get right.

 

* Excellent production qualities in terms of art and music - despite losing much of their artist team post-WoW, Blizzard seems to make excellent acquisitions in terms of artists in the industry.

 

* They always have mass appeal - the Warcraft world is like a watered down version of the Warhammer world (same with SC and WH40k) that trades the gritty, dark aspects of WH for the much ligher, "epic" atmosphere of an adventure narrative. Their art style, being Disney-esque, is very approacheable to players of all ages.

 

* The above is also in part due to Blizzard's focus on *streamlining*. Blizzard's games are always easy to play and they're always adorned with simple, user-friendly interfaces that require minimal effort on the part of players trying to learn it. Compare this to, say, Bioware's NWN or SoE's EQ 2, both which actually required you to *learn* the user interface and both of which had a generally clunky feeling throughout the game. The same streamlining is present in Blizzard's gameplay - you're never really in doubt as to what a spell/ability/unit does, because the information is presented in a simple, easily accessed way, and the game mechanics themselves are designed in such a way as to not require complicated descriptions (as opposed to, say, D&D). For this aspect of Blizzard's games, I like to use an example:

 

In a Blizzard game, the spell Magic Missile would simply say:

 

Magic Missile

(Rank 1)

Casting time: 1 second

 

Mana Cost: 5 mana

 

Does 1-5 damage to a single target.

 

In a SoE game, on the other hand, the spell Magic Missile would say:

 

Magic Missile

(Apprentice I/Apprentice II/Adept I/Adept II/Master I)

Casting time: 1 second

Recovery time: 0.5 second

Recast time: 0.0 second

Concentration: 0

 

Target: 1

Range: 20 yrds

Power Cost: 5

Mastery: Evocation

 

Inflicts 1-5 damage to target

* +1.5 for each two caster levels past the first

* Interrupts casting

If target is not Epic

* Does 100% more damage against magic vulnerable targets

* In PvP, the spell instead does 1-4 damage, and does not interrupt spells

 

Other companies have, as of late, tried to adopt this aspect of Blizzard games, but in trying to do so they've generally equated streamlining with shallow gameplay, forgetting that Blizzard's games are always "easy to play, hard to master."

 

Anyhow, those are my feelings with regards to Blizzard's success.

Edited August 5, 2006 by Azarkon

[Krookie]

WoW's hype was very strange. Half my friends had it on pre-order before its american release and none of them were Blizzard or MMO fans. Its like they were the victims of some brainwashing I managed to completely miss.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

You're not alone. Although, for a week or two I was really thinking about getting it, but that stupid fee just isn't worth it.

[x1Predator]

Speaking of Blizzard, I just bought the Starcraft battle chest from WM. Never played the game, but looking forward to it :D

[Krookie]

What's WM?

[Darque]

Copycat?  Please. 

 

Every game out there has 'incorporated' elements, either thematic (unavoidable, because there are no new plots) or shameless (due to success of the earlier game).  I see nothing wrong with using an intriguing 'concept' and making your own interpretation; the end result is usually nothing like the 'original' idea--if there is such a thing. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

When I was playing Warcraft 3 I thought I was playing Warlords Battlecry 2 but with prettier graphics.

[Calax]

Warcraft 3 was too hero centric for my tastes...

 

instead of actual armies going at it you've got 15 footies with a troupe of 3 heroes attacking eachother.

[Pidesco]

I'm guessing you are a fan of Command and Conquer, Calax.

[Lucius]

They always have mass appeal - the Warcraft world is like a watered down version of the Warhammer world (same with SC and WH40k) that trades the gritty, dark aspects of WH for the much ligher, "epic" atmosphere of an adventure narrative.  Their art style, being Disney-esque, is very approacheable to players of all ages.

Good description.

[Deraldin]

Warcraft 3 was too hero centric for my tastes...

 

instead of actual armies going at it you've got 15 footies with a troupe of 3 heroes attacking eachother.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I had that exact same feeling when playing through. Sure it was fun till I got about 3/4 of the way through, but after that it quickly came down and I cheated my way through the last campaign just to see the storyline play out. Once I hit the night elf campaign I started to notice all the things that I really didn't like about the game start to jump out at me.

 

 

I'm guessing you are a fan of Command and Conquer, Calax.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Can't speak for Calax, but I personally much prefer C&C to Warcraft and just slightly more than Starcraft.

Edited August 5, 2006 by Deraldin

[Pidesco]

I think it's clear that Blizzard's RTSes were always built for pretty graphics, with larger, more detailed(and hence fewer) sprites, while Westwood's RTSes were all about pure carnage and armies as large as possible.