Just to add to the bowl: Guild Wars 2, the 2012 game, is, too, still alive and well, lately seeing a resurgence of player count to boot (probably due to the third expansion in the works as well).
Your supposition is fundamentally flawed. One, the issue may have originated from Activision's people, not Blizzard's. Two, Starcraft II, Diablo III and Overwatch are all more recent than WoW. Blizzard hasn't just been coasting on WoW, even if that game is what they are most known for.
And so it ends. The WoW killer is Blizzard itself, as foretold. Bloated on hubris, blind and deaf to criticism and morality. Drunk on greed and arrogance.
Most accurate I've heard the situation described yet; they sat on their laurels, the rot kicked in, and now the fit young pretender FF14 has stepped in and stolen their throne while they fester. Can they make the major changes needed to turn this around? Unlikely.
I also think the issues in the lawsuit is purely caused by Blizzard and not Activision, in particular people with very long tenure in the company. Frat boy culture does not come from a profit squeezing machine.
@Andrew Hall i agree. Blizzard was incredible up until the Activision acquisition. Then it all went to hell from there. Every single IP from blizzard got noticeably worse.
Good writeup on the Blizzard issue. It's always nice to read something insightful instead of the usual "political correctness ruining gaming and wamen bad" that goes around on certain social media bubbles when similar things happen. I'm surprised I have not seen this topic on r/subredditdrama yet
You can say "all the real talent left because of activision", and no true scotsman your way to absolving WoW of any 'real' connection to the bad people. But as much as bobby kotick sucks, he wasn't the one TOUCHING people at activison blizzard.
Nah. Considering the companies own PR tries to subtly drop the activitision bit from when they are defending themselves, they did so in the responses TO the sueing. They WANT you to buy into the "blizzard is great, activision sucks" idea. It lets half of them stay 'innocent'. I don't buy it.
(2/2) Then Activision worked its magic on Blizzard, and all of the real talent in the company slowly left. Ten years later and its purely Activision now. Activision specializes in milking things to death. WoW and Blizzard are just surviving longer than average.
On WoW: WoW was the last product made by Blizzard before Activision. WoW was a product of Blizzard's old creative team at its best, and of Bliz's fanboys at their best. WoW is the best cash cow ever developed because the subscription model was accepted by millions. (1/2)
