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Comment by tjpnz | Hacker News Reader

I have such fond memories of Blizzard from back then. Such a shame at what they've become.

What have they become? I think most of the issues that have haunted them lately were related to people that worked on the games early on in their history and the culture that carried. I assume bad people can't hide there anymore with as much scrutiny that company has received. Or maybe your talking about the quality of games? I don't think Diablo Immortal is any indication of Diablo IV seeing as Diablo III is still releasing content without crazy monetization.

I look forward to Diablo IV personally. However I do feel that sense of nostalgia for the early Blizzard games. It's fun to see a post like this. Not sure the company is done with good content though. I still play their games a lot... I'm biased.

IMO the sense of wonder and the defined dark aesthetics of both the worlds created for Diablo 1 and 2 are something Blizzard will have to proove it can still pull off.

Diablo 1 and 2 were made by Blizzard North, a different group of developers than Blizzard. There's a reason Diablo 3 feels so different.

D3 was initially also developed by Blizzard North. But then it got overhauled, multiple time. I'd say Diablo 3 became a good game... but it started out terrible. The RMAH has taught me a great thing though (something I should've learned by playing MtG back in the days).

I mentionned that Diablo 3 feels different. Its art style and gameplay loop are both going in a different direction. It's quality has nothing to do with it.

There is that... and then there is explicitly mocking the fans who wanted the dark/gritty asthethic.

Do you have a smartphone though?

Monetization details for D4 were released it’s not pay to win but it’s cranked to the max : game purchase + dlc + cosmetic skin + paid currency + battle pass + paid battle pass upgrade ...

I was vaguely interested in it but meh, guess if I need to scratch that itch I’ll test POE2 or relaunch d2r.

Cranked to max? The only mtx are cosmetics.

Does it ever happen that a company manages to grow that big and not become something like that?

I think that the only way for large companies to stay cool is to remain private.

In the games business, Valve is surprisingly OK. Also they're private and not interested in becoming part of a roll-up. I don't think those things are unrelated.

They also got that steam train they've been riding which makes it pretty easy to say they're not interested in being part of a roll-up.

Good point, uh, GabeR

Valve dooes not make games anymore though. One game ( VR ) in the last 10 years?

That game was really good though. I was reminded of a comment I read earlier to the extend that HL3 was never made because they couldn’t find a way to make it as much of a game changer as HL1&2 had been.

They're still very much in the games business, though. And it's better to have published few games than to milk their "franchises" dry in the usual way.

"better"? The only reason they don't make game anymore is because Steam is a printing money machine.

Well, yeah. But it is better. I'll trade not having HL3 for not having "spend P2W gems to boost production" type games.

But sure, Valve has loot crates in TF2, so they're not saints, it's very likely true that it's just because they're printing money that they're not shovelling crap (of their own). But other companies shovel crap despite printing money.

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