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Blizzard and Activision Merging

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KvP:
TOEE had the best pen and paper combat simulator ever created, but beyond that it was painfully dull.

Narr:
What the news about the merger means to me: Okay?

Blizzard hasn't produced a game in years, guys.  The last game they released was World of Warcraft, which is how old now?  The initial release was in the fall of 2004, wasn't it?  They haven't produced a new game in 3 years.  Starcraft II is finally in development but we're not likely to see a release for another year or two tops.

I have lost my love of Blizzard.  I'm sure the merger means a huge deal to the people involved in both houses, but to the average gamer, this should be a giant "meh."  Activision produces some good games and to my knowledge doens't have a lot of rushed titles out there (or at least, doesn't make companies making large, big name games rush their product), but it's not like Blizzard actually makes video games anymore.  They continue to make their MMO shittier and shittier, more inaccessible to the average gamer, more inaccessible to people who actually want to live a decent, proactive life with every patch, and all the real talent at the studio HAS FLED.

The only last thing I have to say about Blizzard is that their most successful franchise shit all over itself.  Warcraft USED to be cool.  I loved the story.  I thought it was a very cool fantasy setting.  THEN CHRIS METZEN FORGOT WHAT HE'D DONE IN HIS OWN WORLD.  Awesome job there, buddy.  Let's "forget" that one of the most poignant stages in Warcraft 3 never actually happened.  Maeiv Shadowsong, WHO YOU KILL YOURSELF IN THE CAMPAIGN IN WARCRAFT 3, is somehow, miraculously, alive and well in World of Warcraft which is the current Warcraft world.  Retconning a universe is just a slap in the face to all the fans.

Alex C:
If retcons are a slap in the face then Stan Lee must have been pissing in the nation's cheerios for a good couple of decades.

As far as World Of Warcraft goes, people really need to chill out. It's a decent MMORPG and people need to accept that MMORPGs aren't really sustained by retaining the average gamer. NCsoft tried that with City of Heroes and found out that you end up with about a sixth month retention no matter what you do with an MMORPG, and aside from that they didn't have the content at the high end to retain the obsessed raider types either. That works fine if you're NCsoft because they openly go for a portfolio strategy- they want people subscribing to NCsoft games and don't particularly care if people jump ship from COH as long as the next MMORPG they try is Lineage II. But for Blizzard? That'd be kind of stupid; as you said, they don't really have other games for people to jump ship to, and as long as that's true high end content will be where their energy lies.

ackblom12:
Blizzard has always had a ridiculously long development time anyways. I'd still say that the fact that Activision and Blizzard merged is a much bigger deal to gamers who keep up with gaming news than a great big meh. It's something that's pretty likely going to have a fairly big affect on the market and confirms, along with EA's acquisition of Pandemic/Bioware, that none of their favorite developers have a chance in hell of not being bought/merged at some point.

Except Nintendo, cause they eat magic for breakfast.

Storm Rider:
I'm not sure if I said this here or somewhere else, but independent studios are becoming rarer and that trend will only continue, because with the cost of game development being much higher in recent years it's extremely valuable for publishers to snap up talented development teams that are pretty likely to recoup their investment, especially if they can pick up some proven IP in the process. Perhaps some of the really really huge developers have enough cash to avoid that, but those are only the people who made the bulk of their money before consoles became the dominant force in the market, such as Valve, id, and Epic. Valve is sort of a special case because they have Steam, naturally, but still.

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