BlizzCon was this weekend, and I admit that I stayed home on Friday to watch what was about to happen. I was not sure if it would be a weekend full of protests, or a weekend where Blizzard finally quelled the rising storm. The truth is… it seemingly was a little of column A and a little of column B. They opened the show with a statement by Blizzard President J. Allen Brack or JAB as people have taken to calling him. During the comment he said a lot of words that sounded pretty close to apologizing without actually ever apologizing. It was effectively the corporate version of reflexively saying you are sorry when you don’t quite know what you just did.
A real apology includes three components. First admitting that you realize what you did and being able to explain it. Second giving a heartfelt apology that relays an understanding of the harm that was caused. Third an explanation of how you are going to make the changes necessary to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The statement did none of the above, however it is likely the closest we are ever going to get on this situation. I give them credit for making an attempt however and for now I am going to lower my pitchfork, because quite frankly I am tired of having to be upset at Blizzard. I stand by my statement that in the Video Game and Entertainment industry, no one has clean hands and the only way to do so is to simply stop doing business with China in any form.
We are addicted to Chinese products, be it the cheap phone charger that you picked up to have a spare, the clothing that we wear, or literally every inch of your mobile phone. Blizzard is attempting to walk the line between our Western sensibilities and the Great Firewall that will lock them out completely from competing in the single largest market on the planet. There is a long list that Mashable compiled of companies that have bowed to the whims of China, and Blizzard is right up there with all of them. What I did see that I found interesting however were a bunch of subtle moments during the stream. There were times that the cameras focused in on “Free Hong Kong” t-shirts or the extremely long time that one focused on a shirt that read “Fire Bobby Kotick”. What I saw was a company trying to walk a very delicate path and coming off super awkward and frustrating in the process.
So I left a big thread about my feelings in regards to BlizzCon 2019. Something felt off the entire weekend and I think I realized what it was on Sunday. Because of the events leading up to the show I found myself in a state where I wasn’t quite willing to surrender myself to what I have called the “BlizzCon” spirit. In past years I let the hype flow over me and allowed myself to fall into the loving embrace of the big blue community. This year… I saw the imperfections and the seams. I saw the people straining under the yoke of not quite knowing how any comment was going to be received. I mean there was good reason for this because of the “Don’t You Have Phones” comment from last year and the controversy surrounding Blizzard this year. It was a show filled with anxiety and folks who looked tangibly like their jobs were on the line. However I could wallow in this awkwardness all morning long but lets get into some of the things that were announced.
Diablo IV
The big one for me of course is Diablo IV, aka the announcement I had been waiting years for. Now that I have it… I am not entirely certain what I think of it. It feels like they are leaning heavily into what is traditionally the Path of Exile space in an attempt to win back some of those former fans. It is going to be a juggling act to try and entice the “Diablo II” stalwarts while not losing any of the newer “Diablo III” fans. When we were still doing the Game Club, we picked Diablo II at one point and none of us actually managed to make it through the campaign. It was a sloppy mess from a bygone era and in part thanks to that I have realized just how amazing Diablo III was and still is.
If they can however somehow thread that needle of adding the complexity and depth that was Diablo II without giving up the fast paced gameplay of Diablo III it will be a phenomenal game. I’ve been in a position of “I will wait for it to release” for awhile thanks to a lot of half baked alpha programs… but I really would love to be in this testing program. I would love to help shape this game on the forums with comments and feedback, because I have a feeling if they manage to pull it off this is going to be my main Blizzard game going forward. I would love to transplant our Friday night seasonal starts over to a fresh new game. I have hope but I also have concerns… because again you have to split down the middle of two vastly different demographics. The leaning heavily on the darkness aspect makes me deeply concerned that they are going to make too big of a play for the Path of Exile crowd and leave me out in the cold.
Diablo Immortal
Not surprisingly they shadow dropped this Friday night. To the best of my recollection there was no mention of Diablo Immortal at any point during the Diablo streams. I get why given the extremely negative reaction last year, but I do still think this is going to be an interesting game. I will likely either play it from a Mobile Emulator on my gaming PC or from my Samsung S4 tablet. This feels like the true successor to the Diablo III lineage and I still hope that maybe just maybe it gets some sort of a PC release. This would also potentially be an excellent new Switch game.
World of Warcraft Shadowlands
Several months ago there was a leak floating around the internet that seemed a little far fetched at the time… but turned out to be exactly what the set up for the new expansion has been. Sylvannas was in fact trying to lead both the Horde and Alliance down a path to destruction, in order to create more souls to be trapped and used for some army in the Shadowlands by her master. We don’t quite know who that master is at the moment, but you as the player are going to venture forth into the lands of the dead as some sort of a planeswalker that can freely move between worlds. There you will join with one of four covenents that will shape your experience based on which you choose.
I like that they are leaning into class fantasy again, like they did in Legion. I also like that they are setting up to maybe bring a story that doesn’t rely entirely on the big dumb red versus blue storyline. Unfortunately it doesn’t go far enough for me. I want them to abolish the Horde and the Alliance and create a new tapestry of personal faction choices that ultimately dictate where you can go in the world. I want the faction wall to fall. No better time to make it happen than in an expansion where we are quite literally leaving Azeroth and going to the lands of the dead. The world is fractured enough as it is without adding a painfully artificial choice into the mix.
Overwatch 2
I like the world, setting and characters of Overwatch, but I gotta admit that the game itself is not really my Jam. I never really wanted a Team Fortress 3, but that is seemingly what we got. I would have loved to have seen what they could have done with this setting as an MMORPG, and while I realize there are good reasons Project Titan never got off the ground… I can still pine for what might have been. Overwatch 2 is bringing in the PVE game to the original Overwatch PVP focused game and I am going to largely take a wait and see approach on this. It isn’t a Destiny style game and instead seems to be something more akin to what Marvel Avengers appears to be shaping up to be. If they can give me an experience that feels similar to a Destiny Strike, I might be interested.
Hearthstone
Hearthstone announced another set. If this game is your jam then I assume you are excited, but it is probably hard to garner much excitement given the rapid release cadence of this game. I admit this was my signal to go use the bathroom during the opening ceremony. It isn’t so much that I dislike Hearthstone, it is more of a case that it was a methadone to my Magic the Gathering addiction. I played it for awhile because it gave me the best digital card game fix I had available to me. Then Magic the Gathering Arena released and I have never logged into Hearthstone after that point. If I could somehow gift my cards to someone I probably would. I hate to see them going to waste on an account that doesn’t care about them anymore.
All in all there was a lot of good stuff, but like I said before. Something felt off about all of it. I am going to just assume it was thanks to my mental state going into the event and not because they didn’t actually show off a bunch of interesting things. Like the topic states… for now I am lowering my pitchfork and moving on with my life. Being angry about something exhausts me when all I really want to do is try and find some way of bringing enjoyment into my often frustrating and maddening real life. I play games as an escape to the rigors of reality and when that relief valve is jammed shut… I find myself way less reasonable. Warcraft is back on the menu it seems, but even then I found it super hard to get back into Classic or Retail and will probably still mostly be playing Destiny 2.
I think there’s a pile of factors at play here, and most of them deal with Blizzard’s challenge in roadmap management. It used to be a wild place for some very interesting bits of data. Promises of giving players agency in the way forward.
With the exception of Overwatch (Blizzcon 2014), when is the last time that Blizzard announced anything that even remotely resembled the product at launch? Legion was announced at Gamescon (2015) and BfA at Blizzcon 2017. That’s a long time to go where the hype doesn’t match the delivery. Last year really drove that point home, where there was Immortal and WC3 remakes as the tentpole announcements. Oh, and people paid to beta test Classic.
Then there’s Blizzard’s penchant for refinement. When D3 launched, there wasn’t an existing market for an online ARPG. Now though… that’s a heck of a hill to climb and not a lot of space to innovate. Overwatch needs to compete with Fornite/PUBG.
WoW is the outlier, as trends show that the A/B expansions seems to generally favour strong/weak releases. So advantage to Shadowlands in that respect. Disadvantage that nearly every single system in BfA was horrendous (art/music are amazing), and that the devs stuck with it for so long, essentially telling the players they were wrong. There’s a fundamental trust issue here, that just seems to fray more and more.
That said, I don’t see how Blizzcon could have gone better. It’s a sales pitch, and they certainly made it with all the challenges present. What they need to do now is actually deliver on that pitch before the Activision axe comes down full swing.
Had that been an actual apology maybe I’d be back to playing WoW Classic, but combined with that PC Gamer interview it’s clear that the only thing they recognize is that they’re sorry that people are mad at them.
I’m just going to throw them on the pile with ArenaNet until they can actually demonstrate that they are doing better.
I’m excited about D4 and am intrigued by OW2 – but the hype’s mostly about D4.
But then again, I didn’t hop onto the boycott- or getting-upset-train since there’s a ton of companies that have their corpses in the trunk :c I mean, I like League of Legends and still play it as I really enjoy playing it, although I’m against all the sexism and homophobia and everything else that is going on behind the scenes at Riot Games. Oh well..
This was the first Blizzcon in a very, very long time that I didn’t tune in to watch the opening ceremonies. Nor have I read any of the news, nor watched any of the cinematics, nor panels.
There was no apology. And for me, I can’t start supporting them again simply because it’s so damn tiring being upset with them. I’m just not wired that way. I can think of what the people of Hong Kong are going through, and appreciate that missing out on a few games, regardless of how excited I’d have normally been for them, is a small price to pay.
That’s not me preaching how others should be reacting to this. It’s just a choice I’ve made.