Blizzard is the worst of the major game developers

I’ve been a fan of Blizzard games since I first discovered Warcraft back in the 90s and quickly determined that building up bases and killing off orcs was pretty fun. Over time, I came to regard Blizzard as one of the most respectable and trustworthy of the world’s major game developers, and given their global sales, I don’t think I was the only one. But somewhere along the line, something went wrong. Today, Blizzard is one of the most boring, least innovative developers out there. Here’s why:

The Warcraft universe and the Starcraft universe are pretty entertaining; I think that’s something most gamers can agree on. The Diablo universe seems to have less mainstream appeal, but personally I think that’s pretty cool too. But all three of those universes were created by the end of the 1990s. Since then, Blizzard hasn’t launched a single game that wasn’t related to one of those three franchises. In fact, the last time Blizzard made a game that wasn’t Diablo-, Starcraft- or Warcraft-related? 1997. It was a Super Nintendo game.

Even Blizzard’s “new” franchises are just copies of its old ones. Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard’s upcoming MOBA contender, features characters from all three franchises, and it’s not too hard to figure out where Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is drawing its inspiration from. I like Azeroth as much as the next guy, but come on, Blizzard! We’ve been playing in these same universes, with a lot of these same characters for almost two decades now. Is this really all you have to offer?

Of course, no one would complain too much about the lack of variety if Blizzard was consistently improving on its previous offerings, but it isn’t. Taste is obviously a personal thing, but comparing the Metascores of the various expansions in the Warcraft, World of Warcraft, and Starcraft series over the past ten years, there is a pretty clear trend:

Granted, these aren’t major drops in quality; anything above an 80 is still a pretty good game when all is said and done. But the fact remains that Blizzard games are, in the aggregated opinion of the world’s game critics, getting worse. And this graph would look a lot harsher if user scores were taken into account. Mists of Pandaria, for example, has a user score of just 4.5 out of 10, and Diablo 3 has an abysmal 3.8. Users scores do tend to be overly harsh, true, but the original World of Warcraft and Diablo 2 both have much higher user scores. Pretty much any way you measure it, Blizzard games are getting worse.

So, Blizzard isn’t innovating, and all three of its big franchises seem to be getting slightly worse with each new release. Is there any hope on the horizon? Not really. In terms of the games we know about, we’ve got Warlords of Draenor (yet another World of Warcraft expansion), Hearthstone (a Warcraft-based TCG), and Heroes of the Storm (a MOBA game that draws on all three of Blizzard’s big franchises), Legacy of the Void (another Starcraft II expansion), and Reaper of Souls (a Diablo 3 expansion). There certainly doesn’t seem to be anything new on offer there in terms of concepts; it’s all the same Warcraft and Starcraft stuff that’s in all of Blizzard’s games.

And while Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm are venturing into new gameplay territory for Blizzard, I’d be lying if I said I was all that optimistic about either of them. To be frank, both seem a bit like cynical cash grabs to me. Hearthstone, for example, just seems unnecessary; Blizzard already has a real-world trading card game based on the Warcraft universe; is a digital version really going to add anything of value? I doubt it.

Heroes of the Storm just seems like Blizzard playing catch-up as it sees the dominance it enjoyed in competitive strategy games slipping away. Players are moving to Dota 2 and League of Legends, which must be especially embarrassing for Blizzard given that the original Dota game was just a Warcraft 3 mod. A whole new genre of game was created by fans right under Blizzard’s nose in its own game, but it was so slow to react that Valve, Riot, and a dozen other developers across the globe were able to get their own versions out before Blizzard did.

Blizzard is playing catch-up with both Hearthstone and Heroes, and hoping our nostalgia for our favorite orcs and zerg will be enough to compel us to abandon any number of excellent and better-established games in favor of the Blizzard version. It’s a strategy that could work if Blizzard’s execution is pitch perfect, but based on Diablo III and Mists of Pandaria, I wouldn’t be holding my breath.

Captain Disappointment

Meanwhile, Blizzard’s most interesting property, codenamed Titan, has been put on the back burner. Titan was supposed to be a totally new property, not based on Diablo, Starcraft, or Warcraft. The thing has been in development since at least 2007, but was “rebooted” this year because of an apparent need for a directional change, and its team members have been shifted to other projects. It’s a disturbing sign that Blizzard might actually be unable to create compelling new IP.

In the title, I said that Blizzard is the worst of the world’s major game developers, and although the company predictably cranks out good games, I stand by that statement. Despite the downward slope, it probably has an overall Metacritic average higher than almost any of the other major game devs, but that is in part because most of the other big players have the guts to take risks on new properties every now and then.

Sure, everybody has their cash cows; I’m not expecting Blizzard to drop Warcraft any more than I’m expecting Rockstar to drop Grand Theft Auto. But Rockstar has taken risks, too: Bully, L.A. Noire, Rockstar Table Tennis. All of those ended up being good games, and I think that indulging in this kind of experimentation also helps to improve the “cash cow” franchises. Again using Rockstar as an example, I feel certain that GTA V was influenced by the lessons learned from Bully and L.A. Noire, among other games. And given that GTA V also features an in-game tennis minigame that’s surprisingly deep, you have to figure that even Rockstar Table Tennis played a role.