Studios being bought up like this usually means stuff from them will degrade in quality fast. The last thing from Blizzard I liked was Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 so for me no big loss. I’m more upset about Obsidian and InXile.
After Baldur’s Gate 3, contrasted against what EA’s Bioware has output lately, I’ll bet Microsoft is happy to let their RPG studios continue doing what made them a success in the first place.
I can’t think of a single exception to a big company buying up a game studio and that studio’s quality absolutely plummeting. EA has been buying up good studios and gutting them for decades, I doubt Microsoft is any better, they already have a history of doing that to different software.
I didn’t even bought the 3rd SC2 expansion, I bought the 2nd one and not even playing through half of it. I did play a bit of overwatch due to friends asking me to play with them, but quickly drop it cause I really don’t have time to grind or play that game and keep up with the meta.
They also bought out ZeniMax in the same deal, which means they also have ESO under their rap sheet.
The only thing that effectively changed in ESO since the acquisition in 2020 is that they added the endeavor system to the game, so there was an excuse to sustain loot crates and give people a means to get the loot crate items in the game… though that system is frankly still BS since the amount of endeavor and gems needed for that fluff is in real world dollars ridiculous. As is, I dumped ESO completely after High Isle and went back to only playing GW2 (I have been in both games since beta), since the nonsense happening in ESO was enough for me to see that Microsoft running into the ground was not an issue - ZoS already managed that themselves…
I imagine it will be the same for WoW. Zero sum game.
Studios being bought up like this usually means stuff from them will degrade in quality fast. The last thing from Blizzard I liked was Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 so for me no big loss. I’m more upset about Obsidian and InXile.
My wonder is how do you degrade from an IP that Activision Blizzard already ran into the ground?
After Baldur’s Gate 3, contrasted against what EA’s Bioware has output lately, I’ll bet Microsoft is happy to let their RPG studios continue doing what made them a success in the first place.
I can’t think of a single exception to a big company buying up a game studio and that studio’s quality absolutely plummeting. EA has been buying up good studios and gutting them for decades, I doubt Microsoft is any better, they already have a history of doing that to different software.
I didn’t even bought the 3rd SC2 expansion, I bought the 2nd one and not even playing through half of it. I did play a bit of overwatch due to friends asking me to play with them, but quickly drop it cause I really don’t have time to grind or play that game and keep up with the meta.
They also bought out ZeniMax in the same deal, which means they also have ESO under their rap sheet.
The only thing that effectively changed in ESO since the acquisition in 2020 is that they added the endeavor system to the game, so there was an excuse to sustain loot crates and give people a means to get the loot crate items in the game… though that system is frankly still BS since the amount of endeavor and gems needed for that fluff is in real world dollars ridiculous. As is, I dumped ESO completely after High Isle and went back to only playing GW2 (I have been in both games since beta), since the nonsense happening in ESO was enough for me to see that Microsoft running into the ground was not an issue - ZoS already managed that themselves…
I imagine it will be the same for WoW. Zero sum game.