Comment by darklajid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by darklajid | Hacker News Reader

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But why? Surely you read about all the neat things the producer added to the game to make it more profitable. To monetize it in a better way?

  - Tournaments only allowed if you ask Blizzard kindly
  - LAN play is gone
  - Integration with 3rd party social network partners

This is a good example for having a good idea, a (as far as I can tell from reviews) decent implementation but you try to overarchive on the monetizing part and ruin it for some. I guess there's a lesson in here for startups somewhere..

I still hate how they remove LAN play from games now'a'days. My buddies and I have lan parties all the time, and its getting harder and harder to have them when lan play isn't allowed and you can't host a local server.

I like to be flippant and just blame Activision for that nonsense.

I hear you. But is that backed up by real evidence or is this just the naive "But Blizzard made me happy when I was young. They wouldn't possibly change for worse" feeling, mostly created by the common theme of holding ones past in favor?

It was better, back then, right? Now - was it? Or was there no way to pull off a restricted, overpriced release at that time and no way to go for the "online only" approach without broadband? Or was it impossible to create this amount of hype with TV commercials for your next big thing (tm) everywhere without having World of Warcraft to back you up?

What about "Money corrupts"? How much is WoW bringing in these days?

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