Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

Reminder that Lawbreakers a shooter like Overwatch or TF 2 that was made to appeal to the hardcore crowd bombed horribly in release.

Partly because in its emphasis on how hardcore it was, it forgot to hype up its own characters to make an impression on the audience.

Edited by slimcoder on Oct 16th 2019 at 2:12:02 AM

Yeah, Overwatch being very close to being a MOBA was even more reason for me to not really be interested in it.

(I think DOTA coming from Warcraft III was a mistake. Lots of Freudian Excuses there)

Blizzard has been visibly sore about that. Despite Dota coming from Warcraft 3, it slipped right under Blizzard's nose and into Valve with all its massive profits it generated upon becoming a standalone thing.

Blizzard has been playing catch-up ever since.

They also haven't forgotten that League basically usurped Starcraft's position as the premier esport in Korea, either.

The fact Blizzard's own MOBA all but failed to reach their expectation and that Blizzard themselves had to basically take their esport ambitions for the game and take it behind the shed is just added salt on the wound and sweet, delicious irony.

I think they knew from the start it wouldn't quite compete with Dota and Lol, given that they had made it very different from the start, but pushing it as an e-sport was definitely weird - mechanically it seemed designed to be the simpler and more accessible version of the MOBA formula that people could dip in and out of.

Taking something popular and making it mechanically simpler and more accessible is how Blizzard made WOW^note Take Everquest, add accessibility and convenience features. That that proved a smidge successful so I'm not exactly surprised Blizzard assumed doing the same to LOL and DOTA 2 would work.

I mean, it's practically their Modus Operandi. That's what Hearthstone and Overwatch were to their respective genres. They're very good at taking existing game genres, taking their defining and most enjoyable mechanics and improving on what's already there, trimming the fat and putting a liberal coat of quality sheen polish over it. So that's what they do.

Isn't LOL already more accessible DOTA?

Activision made Blizz scale back their E-sports to cut budget, the effect it had on Heroes Of The Storm basically killed interest people had in the game.

Killing the E-Sport without any word on content updates or changes... basically implying it was a dead game, and it basically did die because of it despite getting a few new characters.

Having played both Dota 2 and HOTS, the problem of the latter was, ironically, being too accesible in comparison to its competitors.

Now, this might sound oxymoronic given that Overwatch and World of Warcraft are proof that being accesible is a safe bet; however, in the case of the MOBAs complexity is part of the appeal and core of the game.

The best example of that are the items, which allow a greater flexibility of play to the player at the cost of requiring some knowledge of each heroes’s mechanics. Having none, HOTS becomes predictable and thus less appealing to an audience.

Edited by raziel365 on Oct 17th 2019 at 3:04:51 AM

Gears 5 Characters Require 10-Hour Grinds If Not Bought (And Some Are Paid Terminator Adverts)

x4 yes, but not by that much. It still has a steep learning curve and a LOT of depth to learn.

Blizzard Has An Amazingly Bad Week... Ending With US Senators Tearing Into Them

"We can't get politicians to agree on the solution to the burning death of the planet, but they can agree that Activison-Blizzard is shit."

I shouldn't be laughing at that sentence but Jim's corpsing makes it hard not to

I mean, in all honesty, it is kinda nice that Dems and Reps at least agree on this one.

Gamers too.

It concerns two things USA politicians hate: videogames and China.

And communism.

Granted, AOC describes herself as a democratic socialist, but thankfully she's the savvy and non-tankie kind (to my knowledge).

Or it's embracing the thing they love the most: Moral Guardians. Granted, in this case, it's a broken clock being right.

When Marcio "AR-15" Rubio and Alexandria "'Socialism' Bogeyman" Ocasio-Cortez both sign off on statement telling you to get f*cked, you know you've done something wrong.

It's the Legislative branch equivalent to having Donald Trump and Barack Obama collaborate on making a public point of how much they both think you suck.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 19th 2019 at 6:06:47 AM

Looks like there are no brakes on this train after all.

Yeah looks like Activision isn't getting out of this one unscathed. Good.

Been hearing separate rumours that Blizzard is planning to announce both Diablo 4 and a remaster for Diablo 2. Which, while the remaster for the original would make me moderately happy (to be revised depending on how microtransactiony it is), feels more like it'll drag Diablo's name further through the mud instead of taking people's attention away from the mountain of shit Acti/Blizz is currently in.

Then again, it's Acti/Blizz, so who knows, they'll probably bungle the announcement as well, if it is indeed a thing that's happening.