This is an odd, blanket statement considering 1. The quality/longevity of their games 2. The variance in genres they produce games in.

Comparing Starcraft to Candy Crush may help elucidate how off you are with the vape/fb comparison.

GP, while phrased a bit stridently, isn't totally off base here. Arguably, Blizzard led the charge in proliferating RPG systems into virtually all other genres and they proved the popular power of "grind" based systems.

The original RTS games (Warcraft 1-3, Starcraft 1) did not really contain these systems. But virtually everything else Blizzard has produced (including Starcraft 2) has grinding & collecting in it.

As mentioned, this spread to other genres, infusing Activision's flagship Call of Duty franchise with grinding & leveling. The mobile division, King, does all these things as a matter of course -- it's nearly 100% of the business and design models in mobile gaming.

To be fair, you can't blame Blizzard entirely for spreading these design choices. It was an industry wide shift. But they were one of the shining golden examples of its success, and they sure leaned into themselves.

Assuming gp was referring to these mechanics, there's a lively debate to be had about propensity to spur addictive behaviors.

> To be fair, you can't blame Blizzard entirely for spreading these design choices.

Many would blame Activision. And not a few would say that Blizzard sold out. To me they seem to be mostly milking the cash cow, and they’re hardly alone in doing it.

Blizzard was already creatively going downhill before Activision bought them, but they could have recovered. Joining with Activision was the death of Blizzard.

Not disagreeing with your larger point, but what grinding exists in Starcraft 2? Been playing for a decade and can’t think of anything.

I’m not sure who invented loot boxes, but that’s another (unmentioned) issue entirely.

Hm, not sure what I had in mind - I may be misremembering. Thanks for the correction.

I guess you could argue league systems are a pvp grind, but that's not quite the same as my original point. Competition naturally includes (relative) ranking.

Yeah, no worries. Unfortunately, the fact that Starcraft 2 has no such behavior cooked into it may actually be why it’s seen such a decline in popularity :,(

Starcraft 2 had achievement grinds, and later pay and grind unit skins. Coop mode has leveling and xp boosters were implemented but never really sold before support dropped

The grinding collecting "rpg" elements are 100% Activision influence as these are great entries to monetization. Blizzard barely had monetization on wow outside of the subscription until the merger. Every game since has been littered with some amount of monetization.

I strongly disagree with that categorization. "Grinding and collecting" has been the entire gameplay loop, since the beginning of WoW. Grind quests, so you can level up. Then grind dungeons to get some gear. Then grind Heroic dungeons to get better gear. Then grind raids to get better gear. Then grind Heroic raids to get even better gear. These days, you then grind Mythic raids to get the best gear. Then you find out it's not actually the best gear, and grind some random dungeon or PvP to get a trinket with a weird effect on it. And then by that time, the expansion is usually over, and the new one has a new set of more powerful gear, so you're back to square 1.

The phases change based on the expansion, but the core gameplay loop has always been "grind to get better gear, so you have to access to harder content that drops even better gear". There's precious little to do on a character that is max level and has cleared the highest tier of raid (kudos to those who pull it off, they aren't easy).

The monetization thing is largely Activision, or at least the degree of it is. Iirc, Blizzard dipped their toes into that water first by offering pets that you could buy or were rewards for buying Overwatch, etc. Activision did crank that knob up to 11 though.

WoW is an RPG so it has those elements, you can't infuse an RPG with RPG elements.

Blizzard always made the worse, but more popular game of the time period. Total Annihilation was better than Starcraft. Baldur's Gate 2 was better than Diablo 2.

Total Annihilation is an entirely different type of RTS than Starcraft. Command and Conquer is probably a closer comparison.

Likewise (and even moreso) Baldur's Gate 2 is a totally different subgenre of RPG than Diablo 2 (unless you're talking about Dark Alliance 2 on consoles).

Baldur's gate is a hybrid turn based DnD rules adaptation with multiple player characters and more of a focus on characterization and storytelling. Diablo 2 is a single player character, full real time, random loot, multiplayer focused action RPG.

There aren't really any contemporary games that were a "better version" of Diablo 2 because in improving what they did with Diablo 1 it popularized the subgenre and made way for later games. Later games that could be considered improvements to the formula are things like Titan Quest (great first playthrough experience, but less replay value) and Path of Exile (really feels like a true successor to Diablo 2, with it's endless replay value and deep build customization).

To be fair, the decision to make the original Baldur's Gate real time with pause instead of turn based was supposedly due to the popularity of diablo at the time. That doesn't take away from your point, but I do think it's an interesting connection to note.

They may have been different in many ways, but they were directly compared to one another on the playground in the late 90s (at least on my playground). They were competing games.

diablo 2 is a hack and slash. not a story driven RPG. poor comparison.