Almost all the veterans that made the company have gone, large portions of the talent that were responsible for the games you love are gone. They're not the company you fell in love with any more, they're just a big corporate soulless game factory with only one goal in mind, to make more and more profit. The company that exists today called Blizzard is not Blizzard, whatever they make in the future is in name only. This is the thing, people become loyal to companies and forget the people matter more than the name.
Considering Microsoft seems to ruin everything they touch, surely that is another nail in that coffin lol.
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I do think gamers are too tied to studios, take each game as it comes on its own merits. The one exception here is if you are thinking of playing something with a live service/cash shop, you can get a good idea of how that's going to go from what happened with the studios previous titles. But its live service, so that's going to be bad and it will get worse as time goes on, no matter what the studio so you know that anyway.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
For me Blizzard have never been good at storytelling, they're going at world building. However Diablo IV isn't good in the world building aspect and maybe it's just me but the online part of Diablo isn't what I remembered it to be with 2.
Now will Blizzard release anything good now that they've been acquired by Microsoft? That seems largely up to Blizzard. I do think with Bobby Kotick finally out of the picture they have a chance. My understanding is that they have a lot of directional autonomy with what games they want to build and how they want to build them. As you pointed out the original founders of Blizzard are gone. Is there anyone left who has the same talent and vision? Time will tell, but if not I'm not sure throwing MS under the bus is fair or accurate.
FAR from good ole Blizzard.
They used to spend 2-3 years on a game and made solid creations.
Guess it happens to most big companies, quality of product goes down look at IBM.
Blizzard was never purchased by Activision.
I think Blizzard has struggled with that part. We can debate all day long what it is (easy games, instant gratification, etc....) but to me, its about options and not being forced to play a certain way. I have been playing WOW again and finishing up the stories in Dragonflight and also Pandaria remix as well (Along with Diablo 4 too) and the games give me options. Not a single play session is the same and that is great. I am not trapped in a box and I love it.
I think we are starting to see Microsoft's influence on Blizzard and on Bethesda as well. The upcoming changes to FO76 are huge and things players have asked for for a long time. I do not see that everything they touch turns to crap.
Others have said it best, gone are the days of "____ studio makes great games". Games are so hit and miss and each game has to be judged on its merits. Play what you want, what you love it and enjoy it.
They aren't the same studio who made vanilla WoW and Diablo 2. They don't know how to make games for the hardcores anymore. They are, however, masters of making casual, fun mass market games. Diablo 3, once it was fixed, was THE best casual ARPG. Heroes of the Storm was the best MOBA for breaking away from the stale meta and sweaty palms of its genre. Same for Overwatch and shooters. They're good games in a different way, and their other new shit just isn't because it doesn't know what it wants to be.
Activision took over and its been downhill since.