This isn't true though. Delaying (and not announcing) Diablo 4 is typical "Blizzard Way" nonsense. Same with the Overwatch content drought.
> Overwatch you would be surprised to know has some very impressive player numbers even now, for a game that gets no updates. Now that Jeff Kaplan is gone, I'm afraid the last of the best of original Blizzard are gone. I really, really, really hope Overwatch 2 is good. I will give it a few solid chances and I will revisit it. I fear the worst though, I don't think Jeff would leave his baby like that.
I wouldn't be surprised about anything related to Overwatch as I have played competitively/semi competitively since the beta. Overwatch is kind of an excellent example of a good idea implemented so poorly it's really sad to watch. I don't think Jeff Kaplan was a great game director.
> The story of Activision Blizzard is monetization for the sake of monetization alone, and management decisions formed solely on the basis that they sound good to other managers. Overwatch had the pleasure of being shielded by Jeff Kaplan
You've convinced yourself of a very flowery narrative about Overwatch and Jeff Kaplan that I just don't think is based in reality. It's pretty bad from a content standpoint, terrible from a balance standpoint, doing horribly as an esport, about to pump out a "sequel" that is actually just fluff content. I think it's about as mismanaged as I can imagine.
I tried to get into Overwatch League, but found it hard to watch. All the rich colors and scenery of the game drowned out by the ugly monochrome of team colors. All the rich sound effects of the game drowned out by the world's most annoying casters. (Seriously, who hired these people!? Are real sports like this?) All the while not fixing obvious UI bugs (you will be watching first person through someone's camera and it will say "STOP THE PAYLOAD" at the top, but that person is actually pushing the payload). If they tried to make it bad, they did a great job. I don't think Jeff was at the controls pushing to erase his artists' choice of colors and sound. I think he did the minimum required to not get fired, and it shows there.
Jeff's a good dude, and I do worry about the future of the game without him. I can easily see a world where they don't even let normal people play the game, and they just make you subscribe to watching vetted pros play the game.
Overwatch was built intentionally to be a game that fostered an esports community. Jeff had a big part in the esports aspect of Overwatch in that the game was meant to be their gateway into LoL-esque esports. They wouldn't have made Overwatch at all had they not been interested in getting involved in esports seriously.
> I tried to get into Overwatch League, but found it hard to watch. All the rich colors and scenery of the game drowned out by the ugly monochrome of team colors. All the rich sound effects of the game drowned out by the world's most annoying casters. (Seriously, who hired these people!? Are real sports like this?)
It sounds like you just don't really like sports/esports. The casters are a big part of the experience. The game would be awful/unwatchable without them.
The viewing experience for Overwatch is terrible. There's too much going on, and if you're not actively involved (playing), it's just awful. Colors and lights everywhere, weird sounds, orbs flying all around etc. I think Overwatch is kind of a failure in that regard as well.
> Jeff's a good dude, and I do worry about the future of the game without him
I suspect there will be massive improvements relatively quickly.
I consider myself to be a pretty heavy gamer, played OW casually in the past but mainly Apex now. I used to go to Blizzard Studios in Burbank to watch OWL with my wife as she was a huge fan (funk pops and all that) and holy shit, even being a causal player of OW, trying to understand what is going on at all times and trying to glean any semblance of "exciting plays" or "clutch moments" from the pro gameplay is virtually impossible. The gameplay is essentially an unintelligible explosion of colors, sounds, and strategies that brings you to the brink of a seizure before ending for indiscernible reasons because it's impossible for the camera to view the important elements of the match at once.
This is in comparison to the popular competitors currently beating them in Twitch viewership above. I watched competitive Apex before playing it and it just made sense. Teams of 3, battle royale, they have different powers, now go survive. Done, easy. Same with COD, Valorant falls inline more with CS:GO which is equally understandable. All of which are proving to have more staying power than OW.
I think esports are best suited for games that are slower paced (LoL, DOTA, CS:GO) or easier to understand (CoD, Rocket League). Overwatch is a game that is very fast paced (Dive fights took like, 2 seconds from start to finish), and doesn't really have analogues in real life, so it's harder to connect with or intuit.
It's not that exactly. There is much that can be learned from the world's best players training together and performing together against an opponent that does the same. It's just the format is unwatchable. I do find watching sports on TV similarly impossible, whereas watching them in person is much more enjoyable.
I mostly watch streams. I don't think solo queue is as interesting a game as full teams playing multiple games together, but you do get to hear one player's thought process, which is always enjoyable. That is probably incompatible with true competition, but is entertaining.
I think someone decided what esports should be, and everyone else just copied that, but we haven't actually hit the global maximum for the format quite yet. What's strange is that we often take steps backwards. There was one season when you got the ability to select your own camera angles and chat in a members-only chat, and that was the season that I enjoyed the most. Chatted with the regulars in there, got to watch whatever player I personally felt was most interesting to watch (usually Jjonak fragging people as Zen), etc. Then they removed that, as well as the ability to pay them extra for the privilege. Strange decision!
> The viewing experience for Overwatch is terrible. There's too much going on, and if you're not actively involved (playing), it's just awful. Colors and lights everywhere, weird sounds, orbs flying all around etc. I think Overwatch is kind of a failure in that regard as well.
I hear that a lot, but don't really have a problem with it myself. The thing that gets me whether I'm playing or not is when people use an ultimate at some range outside your current camera position, and it's totally silent and you have no way of knowing that they used it. There was a time when ults were map global sounds, and that got patched out for no apparent reason, and it's never really been discussed as a problem. But I think it's weird to play around a Zarya with grav when she just used it to kill some Wrecking Ball over in Narnia. Why punish players that are tracking ults? Never made sense to me.
Diablo 3 was a rocky launch, and the always online requirement was indicative of poor choices by management. Recall, that they wanted a healthy real money auction house (presumably to take their percentage off the top), and always online is typically utilized to block piracy. Of course, anyone with a brain and not currently trying to get a promotion knows, that piracy is a distribution problem. D3 came back into popularity with the Reaper of Souls expansion, a lot of the early problems in the game were fixed, and it still today is incredibly fun to play. In addition, the tone deafness of "do you guys not have phones?" tells you everything you need to know. Some dude at the top saw that mobile is a big trend (good job!), then drew from a hat a name of a Blizzard game, then blessed that title with his brilliance.
Heroes of the Storm, they tried to push as an esport, and invested heavily into... everything except the game itself. What happened to build it and they will come? The truth is, it is a very fun MOBA, it fixes a lot of the problems of the entire genre. In doing so, it rewards team play so much more than being a lone hero. You would think it helps the competitive scene, but in the case of the MOBA playerbase that's often the most toxic and egocentric, it doesn't mesh well. They could have easily enjoyed having the most player friendly, low toxicity MOBA experience that tons of people crave. But no, if there wasn't a world championship scene on par with League of Legends, it wasn't worth Blizzard's time.
Hearthstone had some problems catering to China but I do think with the recent battle pass system and the increased in game economy, there are some great steps in the right direction. Good turnarounds in the monetization area for sure.
Overwatch you would be surprised to know has some very impressive player numbers even now, for a game that gets no updates. Now that Jeff Kaplan is gone, I'm afraid the last of the best of original Blizzard are gone. I really, really, really hope Overwatch 2 is good. I will give it a few solid chances and I will revisit it. I fear the worst though, I don't think Jeff would leave his baby like that.
Warcraft 3 Remastered was a disgrace by management. Truly. You could have literally, and I mean literally, took Warcraft 3 source code, and dropped in touched up models, sounds, and textures. It would have sold like crazy. That's it, no excuse. Why did they have to reinvent the wheel, with a team comprised mostly of interns and fresh college graduates, rush it, with no communication with the delays, oh and did I mention that the main menu is an unoptimized web app running on chromium?
The story of Activision Blizzard is monetization for the sake of monetization alone, and management decisions formed solely on the basis that they sound good to other managers. Overwatch had the pleasure of being shielded by Jeff Kaplan, so it suffered less than it had to. The other large projects usually launch like crap, but after management has had their way with the game for the first year or two, the devs slowly but surely bring it back and make it fun at the very least. Do they have the financial resources on their side? No. But be damn sure they will improve and polish the core gameplay loops.
I have watched this slow death since around 2014 at least, but it's hard to know where along the way the roots became so badly damaged that Blizzard became destined to be EA-like.