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Comment by mihaifm | Hacker News Reader

Blizzard games are not necessarily known for their innovation, but for their level of polish, lore and communities behind them. I mean RPGs existed before Diablo, MMOs existed before WoW, Warcraft was not the first strategy game and so on. Somehow Blizzard managed to make these representative for their genres.

The problem is they are in the same wagon with Activision which forces them into some questionable bussiness decisions, and their focus shift toward satisfying the market rather than continuing to make polished games.

It’s hard to imagine how a company that received $15 per month from 12 million WoW subscribers for 10+ years can go bankrupt, but I guess nothing lasts forever.

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> It’s hard to imagine how a company that received $15 per month from 12 million WoW subscribers for 10+ years can go bankrupt, but I guess nothing lasts forever.

On the flip side, that may be the exact reason they are going bankrupt or facing hard time. Making $15 x a month from 12 million subscribers must have lured them into thinking it will last forever so they get sloppy, lose focus, etc.

> It’s hard to imagine how a company that received $15 per month from 12 million WoW subscribers for 10+ years can go bankrupt, but I guess nothing lasts forever.

I don’t think Activision is anywhere close to declaring bankruptcy? While the stocks of many gaming companies have been suffering as of late, many of them presumably rose too high from the hype surrounding esports gaming, etc.

Innovation in my context is more in appealing to the user. The mechanics. You don't have to make something new like the wheel to innovate. Look at Apple. They're called innovative all the time but have never "invented" anything from thin air. They packaged and purposed something that appealed to more people than all those pieces separately.

The games they made were unique and copied countless times by people because of a unique combination of gameplay mechanics and style.

They didn't capture the majority of their users on lore or polish. They captured them because they were fun to play.

Warcraft was not the first strategy game, but WCIII was hugely innovative. I can't think of any RTS game with the concept of heroes before WCIII, and it was popularized by it (Star Wars: Empire at War used the concept).

It also spun off the entire MOBA period from AOS (starcraft) and DotA.

AFAIK Diablo was the first 'action' or real time combat RPG. That seems pretty innovative.

Correct, but that is one example from many years ago. I think his statement overall holds water.

That was more David Brevik's Condor that was subsequently purchased by Blizzard and named Blizzard North. They also had complete autonomy from Blizzard proper.

I mean, if you forget earlier real-time combat RPGs like The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy Adventure / Secret of Mana, Shadowrun or The Elder Scrolls then yeah.

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