hatebin friday

I think of Blizzard as sort of the Disney of video games. They're a highly respected, well-known company who made a lot of ridiculously good things...and then somewhere along the line completely stopped being able to put out anything of note.

And in this Disney parallel, I'd put Modern Blizzard at around ~2003 era Disney, which had such hits as...Brother Bear and The Jungle Book 2.

But this is where I start thinking I'm in crazytown. I think almost everyone would agree that Disney in the mid 2000s was in a massive creative slump and the quality had really gone downhill...but it feels like almost no one believes that Modern Blizzard's quality has gone down at all. Despite the fact that every game they've released since Starcraft 2 has been mediocre at best or derivative garbage at worst.

Ok, weird metaphor (that I still totally believe is valid) aside, Blizzcon is a thing that is happening.

And pretty much everything in it was awful. Here's why it was awful.

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== OVERWATCH ==

* Sombra is whatever, why would you have a 80 billion year ARG when you planned to announce her at Blizzcon anyways, that's pretty awful and pointless don't you think?

== OVERWATCH LEAGUE ==

* Seems heavily based off the League LCS System. This means stagnation and very few non-officially sponsored tournaments. Which is awful in every way for anyone that isn't Blizzard. DotA 2 this won't be.

* Geographically located teams sounds dumb on paper and even dumber logistically. Since Overwatch is a DIGITAL VIDEO GAME (citation needed), you won't have an arena or stadium to justify being in a city. ESports events are either online tournaments (NOT LOCATED ANYWHERE) or LAN events (EVERY TEAM GOES TO ONE PLACE).
This means that the city will have NO BEARING on how things play out. The "New York Overwhatevers" will play their matches in the Blizzard Studio in Anaheim or the Whatever Conference Center in LA.
Trying to have "local matches" every week and flying people all over the world to play a digital video game for 2 hours is the dumbest idea I've ever heard.

* The talent pool system is really stupid as well, great, now Blizzard are going to be the authority for who can and can't be eligible for a draft or whatever? And if talent is available globally, sorry "New York Overwhatevers", your team is going to be full of Koreans because they are Better Than You. Hope you can scrim against other Korean teams!

* Trying to make a DIGITAL VIDEO GAME work like a real sport is the height of folly. Baseball doesn't have MID SEASON PATCHES every season. Sorry "New York Overwhatevers", your hero pool got nerfed halfway through the season, good luck, idiots!

* Blizzard has say over who can buy a team, not even just who gets into their dumb official league. Gee, I'm sure this will never cause any drama. There's certainly never been any drama over the team makeup of the LCS in League of Legends, that's for sure!

* Besides all this, Overwatch is boring as heck to watch. It's game modes are dull from a spectator perspective. Thanks Obama.

== HEARTHSTONE ==

* The new expansion is the dumbest thing because the "3 faction" idea completely breaks down and amounts to nothing because the CARDS IS STILL CLASS RESTRICTED. Why would I care that there are 3 factions when each deck can only use cards from one of them anyways. This just has the net effect of Blizzard having to design 1/3 as many cards as normal that are class specific. Nice job, numbnuts.

* Hearthstone's degenerate, random-based mechanics are some of the worst card game mechanics I've ever seen. The 3 faction/guild thing just makes this worse. There's a card that gives you a random card from ANY OF 3 CLASSES CARD POOLS. There is a ~2/3 chance this card will have no synergy with anything.

* The lack of reaction in Hearthstone-style games makes them completely unfun and just rewards cookie cutter defensive or hyper-offensive play. No instants or blocking mechanics completely removes most avenues of counterplay and overinflates the value of creatures. Everything is random.
I hate these games. I tried Shadowverse the other day and it gave me cancer.
I have two weeks left to live.

== DIABLO ==

* Screw you Blizzard

* You killed Diablo 4 years ago. Let it enjoy the sweet, sweet embrace of death.

* Instead of allowing it the sweet embrace of death they killed me instead. They killed me by reviving the Necromancer. A class from a much better game. At the time of Diablo 3's launch they said that they didn't want to bring back the Necromancer because they had done all they could with it. That was also the reason they used the barbarian, they said they thought it had more room to expand.
Well, screw that. Let's milk some leftover $$$$ out of this game. So they're making an expansion without the content.
Screw you guys.

* Diablo 3's art style is the worst thing since Final Fantasy XIII. Seriously, it's godawful. The Necromancer's trailer highlights this problem. They have to make the skeletons BRIGHT BLUE BLOBS so you can see them against the washed out aesthetic.
Seriously, look at this garbage: http://i.imgur.com/TPTEex6.png. They don't look like Skeletons, they look like the Blue Man Group has taken up arms.
Diablo 2 somehow managed to have skeletons that, you know, looked like skeletons. 16 YEARS AGO: http://i.imgur.com/rZ6UzaE.png. Not Pictured: THE SMURF UPRISING

* Diablo 1 nostalgia pandering. Nostalgia pandering is bad enough on its own, but Blizzard always takes things up to 11. It's COSMETICALLY SUPERFICIAL nostalgia pandering, completely with GRAINY GRAPHICS FILTERS (????) and "8 directional movement". But here's the thing. It's not a Diablo 1 remake. Because. It will play. Just like Diablo 3. This is even worse than a normal remake because Diablo 3 is worse than Diablo 1.

* Diablo 3's class system is stupid anyways because there's absolutely no build commitment. You can be any type of Necromancer you want, instantly, just change around your dumb runes. There's no investment in your character. Pay your 15-20 Blizzard Funbux and do whatever you want immediately.

== STARCRAFT 2 ==

* A bad game since launch is still dead. No one cares about your mission packs or DeepMind AI.

== HEROES OF THE STORM ==

* Blizzard is probably still mad that LoL (and DotA 2 of course) is way more popular than their *EVEN MORE* casual friendly MOBA

* Blizzard game crossplay is awful and I hate it so much. Don't make your digital cosmetics need to play a completely different game to get. This reeks of desperation to boost HotS player numbers.

* Remember when Blizzard made a MOBA where you have mounts for some reason? lol.