posted
They might also have some other things, but yes, it takes months and months to create a good online game system. Indeed, they've probably been working on it for years, and this is only a modest overrun.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I'd rather them wait than produce anything less than an amazing game. Honestly not all that impressed with the battle videos I've seen. To me it looks a lot like Starcraft with slightly more advanced graphics (I kinda prefer the older look) and some different units.
Still, I'll assume any game produced by Blizzard will be fantastic until I am proven otherwise. I've been playing their games since 1994, and haven't been disappointed yet.
That said, I think I'm looking towards D3 a little bit more enthusiastically.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Xavier: I'd rather them wait than produce anything less than an amazing game. Honestly not all that impressed with the battle videos I've seen. To me it looks a lot like Starcraft with slightly more advanced graphics (I kinda prefer the older look) and some different units.
Still, I'll assume any game produced by Blizzard will be fantastic until I am proven otherwise. I've been playing their games since 1994, and haven't been disappointed yet.
That said, I think I'm looking towards D3 a little bit more enthusiastically.
See I feel this way too, but we've yet to see that philosophy of, "It'll be released when it's done" taken to the extreme. World of Warcraft was released and you could argue it was far from "done" and yet it was still an extremely enjoyable experience for me.
It would be one thing for them to say, the balance is not quite right, or they are not happy with the campaign. But to hold open beta sign ups, and then delays all the way into most likely spring of next year so they can work on the battle.net support structure seems strange to me.
If their track record is any indication, they've never been totally prepared for the enormity of the customer response to a new product anyway. Perhaps they are trying to fix that, but I dunno, I almost wish they had said, "Delays because it's just not awesome enough!"
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Wasn't World of Warcraft delayed significantly? I remember when I was in the beta for that folks had long been restless for it.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Xavier: Wasn't World of Warcraft delayed significantly? I remember when I was in the beta for that folks had long been restless for it.
Oh I'm sure it was delayed yes, but it has also undergone massive changes since it's inception.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Xavier: Honestly not all that impressed with the battle videos I've seen.
Neither am I.
The protoss theme got muddled into bulbousness and terrans are sporting silly units like flamethrower buggies and over half of the battle videos are flagrant demonstrations of SCII being Harass The Peons To Win, The Game.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Blizzard is to games what Pixar is to movies for me. I pretty much trust them implicitly. They've had plenty of delays on previous projects before, and I'm actually really happy about that. The point is: they make sure their product is quality before they ship it out.
I actually only recently started playing Starcraft (I was more into Warcraft [the strategy ones, not the MMORPG] and Diablo games before), but I'm pretty excited from all that I've seen.
The gameplay vids do seem to be about Harass the Peons as Samprimay says, but I always just enjoyed playing the single player campaigns and shied away from online confrontations (I don't have the dedication or skills to deal with the hardcore players).
Posts: 132 | Registered: Feb 2009
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Yeah, I'm scratching my head saying "this is news?" WarCraft III was delayed for something like 3 years. Whatever Blizzard gives as their initial estimate I add at least 2 years to, and that doesn't bother me in the slightest.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Does it really take months and months to prepared an online network that can handle this behemoth!?
Yes, definitely. Although I wish they'd use an existing, field tested framework (Steam, Windows Live, etc...) rather than reinvent Battle.net.
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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I trusted Blizzard before they were acquired by Activision. I even felt pretty good about Activision, before they started shedding games that weren't sufficiently "exploitable".
Now?... We'll see. I certainly don't wish them ill, but I want to see some evidence that bean counters and "focus testing" aren't running the show.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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I think Activision thinks that Blizzard games are plenty exploitable. I've also heard (not sure if this is the case in Activision's example) that in the 90s and first few millenials there was a lot of giant corporations buying up companies, completely shredding them and rebuilding them to make them more "profitable".... only to discover that doing so completely destroyed the atmosphere that lead to those smaller companies making good games in the first place. So what's been more common now is to buy game companies "whole" and leave them largely intact, to keep doing whatever they were doing that made them successful, just splitting profits differently.
In the case of Blizzard, it's been clear for years that taking their sweet time is part of what makes the company work, and there's no way that subject didn't come up when the merger negotiations were afoot. I do worry about the smaller companies that don't have the bargaining power to deal with Activision, but I'm not too worried about Blizzard.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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