Pending the releases of two immensely anticipated sequels, which by now truly are household names, Diablo III and Starcraft II, as many already have, I realized that Blizzard might be heading for its downfall. At some point, there is just too much money, brand awareness and pressure on a company for it to try anything but what can be mathematically predicted to make shitloads of cash. This happened to Nintendo, Microsoft, DICE and many others once they hit #1. So here follows a run-through of every single major release the Blizzard brand has given us since 1993.
1993 - The Lost Vikings
This was the very first release of Blizzard's, a cute and funny platformer where the objective was to guide three Vikings through the same levels, utilizing their different abilities to beat the ingenious level design. This game really has no hint of Blizzards future brands, but shows a willingness to think beyond the bare minimum and attack a tired old concept with new thinking and new ideas. It's important to remember that platformers were so dominant in the early 90s and late 80s because it was a tried and true concept that nicely fit within the limit of what a PC could do back then.
1994 - Blackthorne
Here we have another game in the spirit of the 90s console platform games. Similar to Prince of Persia and other more mature platformers, the game contained a bit of action and gunfighting but mainly focused around navigating mazelike levels with a good deal of thinking involved. This is still far away from the bright future of Blizzard and they are still just a struggling run of the mill game developer just trying to earn its bread.
1994 - Warcraft: Orcs and Humans
Here we go! As we all know, around this time Blizzard consists of a dozen or so nerds, neck deep in their D&D, Fantasy books but most importantly, Warhammer. The guys were simply crazy about the artwork, models and gameplay of Warhammer and Games Workshop. So, they approached Games Workshop and asked to collaborate with them in order to make a computer game of the brand. Unlike the Starcraft story, which is just a rumour, this one is actually proven to be true. GW however, did not feel confident about this proposal and thus turned them down, a mistake on par with the ones of the loads of people who turned down George Lucas or JK Rowling. Blizzard, probably disappointed, still happily said "fuck it" and went on to create the first game in the biggest franchise the computer game world has ever known.
Based on the gameplay of Dune and Command & Conquer, the game ended up a very appealing and well made RTS game, with artwork quite similar to that of Warhammer. The key here being the genius of Cris Metzen, while he did not take an active part in the game itself, he created the illustrations and cover art for the game, which combined with Blizzard excellent sense of execution and quality would eventually become the heart and soul of Blizzard.
An important observation we can make even this early is that Blizzard is not an innovator, more of a perfectionist. None of the three game I have talked about here are in any way original, the fantasy setting is borrowed and the game mechanics are nothing new, still, its rocketing upwards.
1995 - Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness
Following the release of several other less important games such as Death and Return of Superman, Rock N Roll racing, The Lost Vikings 2 and Justice League Task Force. Blizzard eventually comes around to the sequel of Warcraft, ie Tides of Darkness. The story centers around the Orcs once again invading Azeroth.
The game introduces many new elements such as flying and naval units, excellent graphics, CG videos and a ton of personality, action and memorable missions. It's the same old RTS as Warcraft but with something magical about it. While being engineered to utter perfection, the games superiority can largely be attributed to Chris Metzen, whom Blizzard liked so much they let him be creative designer of the game, and it shows. The games graphics, while cartoony, are extremely appealing with a bright and strong palette and tons of personality and character; What would eventually become the company's trademark is immediately observable here. It still borrows heavily from its Warhammer roots, but is moving away from the grim setting of GW:s towards something more dynamic.
1996 - Diablo
Blizzard thrives in its success of Warcraft and goes onto release an expansion, Beyond the dark portal, the following year, adding a new campaign featuring Outland as well as hero units. While possibly one of Blizzards less interesting expansions, it was still worthwhile. With Chris Metzen at the front, the team was looking for something fresh. They had satisfied their common roots in table top gaming with Warcraft. But they had so far not explored their other passion: dungeon crawling.
Typically the same crowd that goes for Warhammer also enjoys D&D. Late nights with coke, dimmed lighting, dice and spreadsheets. The team then pictured a tribute to this , a dark and thrilling game, submerging the player deeper and deeper into the earth while encountering more and more enemies. The end product was Diablo, an action RPG dungeon crawler with a horror twist. Gone was the bright colors and cartoony style of WC2. The game was an immediate success and extremely good at what it intended to do. The graphics were dark, mature and sinister and very gory. It was a great game and became one of the three major franchises Blizzard would end up with. While they tried something new, they have still failed to truly show originality. But, as any person in the industry will tell you, games are about 20% idea and 80% execution. Regardless of whatever it borrowed from, I have yet to play a single other game in this genre that could even begin to compare, and there has been MANY attempts.
1998 - Starcraft
Early this year, Hellfire, a licensed expansion for Diablo was released by a third party developer. Unfortunately, this was to be considered one of Blizzards few flops and was overall a bland and uninspired experience. Most importantly though, Blizzard and Chris Metzen are at it again. In an effort which combined the most mind-blowingly good artwork, story, creative design and visual concept together with unparalleled gameplay and balancing, Blizzard produces this masterpiece. 10 years later it still played tons around the world and considered by many to be the perfect RTS in competitive gaming.
The darker side of the story however, is that once again, the art wasn't entirely their own. As we already have established, Blizzard were huge fans of Warhammer and Games Workshop. So while there isn't any direct proof, it is certainly hard not to deduce that Blizzard borrowed a lot of the design from Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000. The story goes that Blizzard again wanted to collaborate with GW but got turned down, however this I find hard to believe as Blizzard already had its own visual concept and direction, that not withstanding the fact that some inspiration is evident in the game. As is the Blizzard tradition, later that year Brood wars was released as an expansion to an already amazing game, and somehow made it even better.
2000 - Diablo II
Following the original Diablo of 96, Blizzard started an annoying tradition of only releasing games every 2 years. Furthermore they completely dropped all games outside of the Diablo/craft franchises. Typically, Blizzard also always gave each franchise an equal amount of releases and took turns in developing them and released an expansion after one year. So in 2000 came Diablo II. As always with Blizzard, the anticipation was massive. And I still remember to this day how I ran home to my friend with a beta key every day after school in order to get a chance at the smooth new graphics, awesome barbarian class and fastpaced gameplay.
The game was, in essence, the original but on steroids. The concept was expanded upon and while it lost some the suspense, it became a much more enjoyable and accessible game. The collecting and trading aspect also increased the fun significantly, this time around Diablo II was all about the multiplayer. After the first run through of SP there was simply no point in starting anything but an online character, and it was incredible fun. While staying true to the concept with many additions it was still essentially the same game. D2 would spawn a whole new breed of addicts and was one of the major games that brought buying items for money into the mainstream. Still to this day it is one of the most popular non-MMOs played online. By now Blizzard had everything going for it and it had been so for a while, they were considered gods and completely incapable of producing anything but solid gold.
2002 - Warcraft III - Reign of Chaos
Blizzard is now beginning to enter its peak. There are still a few years left to the nuclear explosion that was WoW, and the company had slowly but surely went into its now fixed path. Here we had tons of decision making going on. Interestingly, Blizzard was exploring new directions and other options. And for a while, it seemed like there may still be hope, they may still produce another groundbreaking franchise or create a new world for us to explore. But as we know, "with great power comes great responsibility" or in other words, with great money comes great limitation. Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the clans was one effect of this. A point and click adventure game set in Azeroth. What a great idea!! They could master a new genre and explore the Warcraft world in a more intelligent manner. But, that's when the paranoia set in.
As we know, Blizzard is all about quality. They will not release a game unless it is a guaranteed 10/10 success. So, naturally as they don't have sufficient experience in anything but the RTS and RPG genre, they decide to drop Lord of the Clans, it's a new genre which means new grounds which equals a gamble. They are so afraid of staining or cheapening the brand that by now they simply can't innovate anymore. This is also evident in the production of Warcaft III. Reading up on the game prior to its release, it wasn't actually intended to be an RTS at all. It was going have no base building and instead focus on a select number of fighters, heavy on dialogue and RPG elements. But, fearing anything but a complete utter success they dropped this and pow, we get Reign in Chaos, a cheery and cartoonier Warcraft featuring hero units as the leftovers from the original ideas. Not a bad game by any means, actually excellent, but it is widely considered to be inferior to SC or WC2. More alarmingly they completely recycled the storyline from Starcraft, Ie "Good guy goes bad halfway through and conquers the universe" In my opinion, they should have made the gamble, yup, people would have been angry, many of them, but Blizzard would still have options. Now they are stuck.
Doomsday - World of Warcraft
The year after WC3, as expected, the expansion Frozen throne was released. Nothing much new here, mainly just a continuation of the story with some new units. More importantly though. Anticipation was building up for Blizzard's take on the now peaking MMO genre. There were loads of games around, developers attracted to the potential profits, but none really made the cut as a truly good game. Everyone knew that if Blizzard tried they would win. For a PC developer, they were swimming in cash, but not compared to what was to come.
We all know this story. Blizzard released WoW, a new world order dawns. People who never touched games flocked to their PCs just like The Sims. Blizzards amount of subscribing customers quickly exceeds the population of Ireland and starts approaching Sweden's while ending up past 10 million. Everything in the world is Warcraft. Addicts and rehab clinics start popping up like mushrooms. Blizzard has now, truly, taken over the industry. Should they merge with EA, we would up with an almost completely monopolized market. This is the point of no return. There is no going back. Blizzard IS the new, cooler and bluer EA but with actual games as opposed to just adds in 3D.
For the duration of the coming years, Blizzard is only WoW. Everything else is put on hold. They open up hundreds of new servers every month and they even had to stop production of the game several times to keep up with server capacity. The burning crusade is released to cash in some more and later Rise of the Lich King is announced, being the first Blizzard release to get three consecutive releases. Blizzard now declares that they are all about "customer service" and "giving fans what they want" or in other words, being fucking lazy and cashing in.
Not surprisingly, another spinoff is dropped during these years. Starcraft Ghost which was pretty much on the shelves, I even had it pre-ordered and paid for, got binned. This was going to be Blizzards attempt at the console market but it was deemed to be sub par Blizzards standards. After WoW, rumours were bustling about Diablo III being in development as Blizzard North was sacked and merged with Blizzard itself. Rumours circulated about the game being pretty much finished, but again, not up to standards.
2008 - Starcraft II and Diablo III are announced.
So, WoW is still going very strong and printing money as usual. Rise of the Liche King is due out the last quarter of the year, Blizzard realizes that its core fanbase are done with WoW and are craving something new from the mothership. So Blizzard finally unravels Starcraft II and Diablo III. And here we have the definite, most solid proof that the company we have now is of the shape it will go to the coffin with.
Starcraft II is well, it's a sequel, but somehow doesn't even obey the rules of sequels. The graphics are nice and while cartoony, still hold some measure of maturity. However, everyone knows sequels need to be bigger, badder and better with even more explosions. SC2 is the same core game with some units switched out, ragdoll effects and 3D. That's it. Seriously. What the hell? It's more of a remake than an actual sequel. If by fanservice they meant "keeping the Koreans happy" well then thumbs up, you did it, maybe. When I first watched the demo video, after the first few minutes of joy the fact of the matter began to set in and I simply stopped caring. Blizzard has done the unforgivable, they got lazy. I'm sure they worked many years trying to perfect the game and make the original battle.net fiends happy but this is just dull. I'm sure its going to be a nice and enjoyable 12 hour sitting through the storyline but its not going to change anyone’s perception of the genre, that much is certain.
Diablo III took a similar direction. No news, the characters are switched out and renamed, the Necromancer is now a Witch doctor. And overall it just seems like they took D2 and infused it with WoWiness. The colors are, as even my Amish grandmother is aware of by now, brighter.
And the game overall is more focused around fair play and teamwork, similarly to WoW. This is not a bad thing, but D3 is not Wow light. D3 is a grim, hard, difficult and bloody mess. And while I would be happy to play a different kind of RPG game in that setting. I don't want to play Diablo II:s system in a WoW setting, actually that's completely the opposite of what I want.
So to conclude this article. I absolutely adore Blizzards games, I think they are simply outstanding, and I will probably purr with pleasure when I go through these games next year with raving reviews, but that does not mean they are doing a good job. They are doing the bare minimum, and that is simply not enough if you want to compete with the growing talented studios out there, I'm looking at you Relic. I predict this will end up like Microsoft and Apple. The dominant player becomes fat, lazy and bored while the struggling one just blows past them with fresh exciting ideas. Is it just how it works? Or can Blizzard prove otherwise. We'll find out next year.
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