@gameringexpertvalve is also greedy, but still sucesfull. Can't say they are not greedy charging 30% of all sells. They even stopped making games just to win money almost passively (not entirely, but, no risk involved)
"Head to Head." They called this "spawning" in SC1. You could install the game on a friend's computer, and they could play so long as you were in the lobby. That's the days when Blizzard was the good guy.
Right around the transition to Battlenet 2.0, you could input your original cd'key onto the website and verify ownership of the license of your physical copies since the original release of most of their games "except the first 2 warcraft because they werent compliant with the new platform." The last vestiges of whatever was left of original Blizzard died after the SC Remaster, which was followed by lootboxes/refunded 3 and all the crap since. Diablo 3 was the warning . . . if the REAL MONEY AUCTION HOUSE wasn't the siren in the night you'd have to be dead so as to not hear it.
@@WhatWillYouFind I liked the RMAH in d3 :/ Feel reaper of souls lacked longevity because of that removal, even though it was more fun.. They had to make all rare drops way more common with personalized loot and literally started handing out full sets for "completing the tutorial". Then it turned into a rift/greater rift simulator..
Ever hear of the ship of Theseus? The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment about whether an object is the same object after having had all of its original components replaced. like a sports team. If you take all the players and coaches away. All you are left with is a name and a logo. If you change all the parts of something, can you even call it the same thing?
its called organizational culture and it takes around 20 years to change, 10 years if you try hard. pretty sure bizzard is fu**ed at this point. lets hope frostgiant can live up to old blizz. stormgate somewhat unfished but for a startup alpha build it was good enought.
That is not the same thing. The ship of Theseus assumes negligible shift in overall quality. Blizzard is like swapping out the planks with rotten cardboard.
Narrator forgot to remind that reforged upon installation had deleted previous version of WC3 without any warning alongside with everything that was there. Some guys like me had custom maps there that are forever gone now
There is not a single person in the world who believes that Blizzard's reaction in the Hearthstone scandal had nothing to do with their relationships in China. Not one. He said it anyway.
Its not that big of a problem, it happens all the time. Like Bioware for example. And now we have Larian making Bioware style games. Dont be a fan of Blizzard, just be a fan of really good RTS games and the problem is solved. They still get made like Dune Spice Wars or Age of Empires 4. Its the endless cycle of: Company makes good games, company gets bought , company gets milked, company dies. Just know what you are dealing with and that the products of a company you like now, just wont be there in the future, but another will and thats ok too.
I love when the breastmilk theft comes up and the non-Americans are always like "But why was a breastfeeding mother at work instead of on paid leave?" Hahahahahahahaha
Hey Grubby, I wanted to comment on the "I don't understand why Dota players love Battle Pass so much" part. You see, Valve was actually the company that invented Battle Passes and Dota2 was the first game to have them. And veteran Dota2 players remember how it all started: price point was pretty cheap, rewards were very generous, you had options to earn huge part of the rewards by just playing how you liked, quests and modes included were fun, basically the only thing locked behind a serious paywall was getting an actual, physical replica of an aegis (which is very cool and it seems reasonable and understandable that someone who decides to pay a lot gets a physical trinket while those that play for free or decide to get only the base pass for 10 bucks get like 50-100 skins, 5 new couriers, 2 new maps, 10 new weather effects, 10 new sculptures, 10 new taunts, 2 new companion pets and more when even those basic immortal skins among those 100 looked super cool and made your favorite heroes abilites look different and epic - that was the 'rate' at which it was going for back then). All while supporting your beloved game and directly contributing to TI prize money. Fast forward to today and I don't need to tell you how things are now, even Valve realized how predatory and detrimental for the game itself Battle Passes have become. So yeah, that excitement and love for Battle Passes that Dota players have is basically nostalgia for how things used to be.
10:30 lots of real life celebrities did play WoW though. Stephen Colbert was a paladin, Verne Troyer did play and did a commercial, and (back before we knew he was a crazy person) Curt Schilling was a guild leader while playing pro baseball. Oh and that Henry Cavill guy not too many people know about, he played it a lot. Actually missed the call from his agent to play superman because he was tanking a cata dungeon lol. Edit; wrote this when I paused just before the bit he was mentioned.
I can remember being a kid whose neighbor has WC3 and all I wanted to do was go over his house and play it. My family finally got a PC and the top of my Xmas list was WC3. What do I open on Christmas Day? A box containing World of Warcraft. I was devastated.
@@ThePainOfSilencThat's a crazy mistake. You must have been reminded from Grubby's story of "World of Warcraft III" I think it's crazy because that's expensive for the parents, much more so if they just got the right game, assuming they paid for your monthly subscription. Did your parents pay the monthly subscription and how long?
I remember being on Blizzard's Reforged forums the day they announced it. All the people making the worst asks, that ended up coming through because it meant axing features. Everyone was swimming in copium, saying "This is it, this will make me come back!" No bot hosting? Got it. RIP Kicking racists from your games, or playing RPG maps solo. Did you like the limited re-connect feature? GTFO, desyncs and drops only. Working automated tournaments? Nah, we don't do that. All of this to say... The hypetrain fans help enable so many of Blizzard's bad decisions, and then somehow are so confused when everything turns out like utter crap. It makes me so sad to see a game I played continuously since 2004 get so consistently disrespected, and mutilated time and time again.
That story is probably grossly exaggerated, to use the same analogy as in the video, it was "stuffing the lawsuit". Same with the so called "Cosby room", it was a joke about the Cosby sweater and was made years before any of the allegations were known.
I remember when the Activision-Blizzard merger was announced too. I only remember the day though because my friends and I knew exactly what it meant, and we got blackout drunk together that night to mourn the loss of the best gaming company the world had ever known.
@Chris-eh8mi and then the next day we all cheered and loved the release of Wrath of the Lich King and it was amazing. And then we looked back and realized it was actually corporate garbage based off gambling mechanics and the rot that is Activision Blizzard was fleshed out and understood. It was really good at hiding.
@@Arcexey I knew it'd take a few years for the rot to worm its way in and destroy Blizz. And I did play WotLK on launch, but there was far too little launch content and it was far too simple compared to the last tier in TBC. I was so bored after a month of farming that raid tier that I quit WoW altogether.
@@godfreyofbouillon966 troll bait, but I'll respond anyway, you absolute tool. It happened and for a lot of people too. I've shared that story many times and gotten similar stories back. Anyone with a brain knew what that merger meant... and that does actually explain why you'd have trouble with this topic.
I was one of the 100,000 people who purchased and played warcraft 1. It was so fun I think I even played direct connect with the modem. No phone calls allowed! Such great memories!!!
I don’t comment often but after Grubby said he was wrong so many times I just have to. Hots development team was sacked and Hots was added to the classic team (this team manage all old games). The classic team then released some heroes which the old team had started developing
Be that as it may, support was not canned three years later. It was handed off to the classic team, this is correct. But as a player, we still felt supported for 2+ more years.
@@GrubbyTalks I was a Hots player and liked it. But even if we got a few heroes and some support (the game is also still supported). It was a super clear statement from Blizzard. Don't play Hots since we won't spend developers on it. And the community listened and got smaller. It was unnecessary, Blizzard could just can the e-sport team and release heroes way way slower.
@@GrubbyTalks By that logic, support for WarCraft 2 hasn't been canned either. It's been handed off to the classic team, after all, it recently got released on new platforms!
Having hope now for blizzard is like having you house burned to the ground and thinking that the insurance company (microsoft) is willingly going to cover everything you lost. We need a new word for that level of cope.
I never played Wow but I'm still in disbelief I watched my friends go through ups and downs of WoW over time. Then they just did it all over again with Classic. Despite everything ActiBlizz did, nothing was too low. They always came back.
Here's 1 thing Grubby, I've mentioned it a few times & just wanted to put it out in passing. I played in the first Heroes of the Dorm tournament right before graduating... Unfortunately we were the last Canadian team. Our final exams are in April & the main tournament was done... in April. As I think all 5 of us - maybe 4, were set to leave that year. We had people driving to Toronto & back from their Med School interviews before playing in the Quarter Finals. Since it was cast on ESPN & the timeslot was already set... we had essentially 0 capacity to move our gametimes. Only with a direct agreement by all 3 other teams would it MAYBE have been accepted. Unfortunately even the other times were difficult to perform at. - Essentially it went the way it went - and although I didn't directly deal with things as I wasn't the captain, I did come to realise the lack of adaptability that the co-ordinatours had towards the Canadian teams as a whole.
It really can't be understated *HOW* influential and inivative Blizzard and Blizzard North (Condor) was. Like, they *SINGLE HANDEDLY* popularized ARPGs, RTS, and MMORPGs on top of having the most pants shittingly amazing cutscenes you've ever seen. Diablo 1 came out the same year as Super Mario 64 to put it into perspective lol
58:12 I am surprised how you reacted saying it was a stupid question. It's actually a great question, not everyone knows this and if we are honest, it is rare to see this in a work environment.
Really? I guess it's rare in a country with pregnancy and parental leave, I guess. But in countries where mothers are expected to return to job almost immediately, it must be pretty common. Common enough for me to know about milk pumping. I also know how mammals work. But perhaps I should not have been so judgmental, you're right. It was kinda rude
33:27 So true. In other words, they lie to us. Executives probably decided to cut his salary or he was pushed out of the company. It’s pretty normal here in the U.S.
Why do these game companies keep sacking developers for the overpromising of marketing, if marketing made up 90% of development budget? Shouldn't they put more into development and delay marketing until they have any idea of what can be accomplished by release date?
When Blizzard announced Diablo Immortal, GGG games changed the name of their PoE expansion from Immortal to Betrayal... good luck for them they hadn't announced it yet, so it was still possible to change the name.
the one good thing about the reforged fail is that now, the classic graphics are still considered the ebst version. who knows what would have happened if the reforge actually was good and most people settle with the, now good, new grapics.
There is a rapper in Germany that has famously been known for playing a lot of WoW back in the 00's. He was also featured in german language ads (for bc I believe) and apparently made a deal with blizzard for a life-time WoW subscription for a sum that was equal to like 40years of subscription.
Thanks for this content, share like both original and this one! Still remember growing up with WC1 / WC2 battle chest when 6yo, then having the best time playing (mildly) competitive in the chilean wc3 small scene, sharing the love for the best game ever. Heartbreaking. -BlueSuN
Over watch was cool, good art, smooth gameplay, BUT i felt very unaccomplished while playing it. It felt like i was just playing a long ever lasting grind quest. When ever i actually made a good play it didn't feel like it effected the game in that big of a way.
As someone who has been playing War Thunder for about 5 years now, it's always funny to me when a video about a greedy video game company is sponsored by Gaijin (developers of War Thunder)
I'm with you on some of these Grubby. I felt like Diablo 3 was not as bad as people cry about. It definitely had its problems and the expansion made the game MUCH better but it wasn't all bad in the first place. And IMO, Overwatch was very overrated. I tried to like it for a while but it just never felt good to play and it was the first Blizzard game that felt like it developed 100% by the "new" Blizzard. The whole thing had a sort of Tumblr blog vibe to it that just didn't work for me.
I was watching this video yesterday and today the Overwatch 2 devs said PVE missions are no more. So people literally paid full price for something (patches, cosmetics) that others are getting the free!
the seeds for Blizzard's downfall were there in Diablo 2. I hardly see anyone ever mention this. The mechanic that was the high point of the game was also that seed. the hook up with itemization. I bet that someone behind the scenes watched that game's progress and the reception by the hardcore players and wondered why would they ever make a self contained game again and if people were so inclined to get on that mouse wheel surely they would also be willing to pay admission for it. WoW explored that potential with each update and expansion and by the time Diablo 3 was out their practices were at full swing. You cannot serve two masters.
1:13:03 I love that you call her a protagonist. That is my issue with the game, I wanted to be able to play as her friend, not foe, based on the characters on the other side.
I managed to break my childhood image of a company i loved. And now since classic wow, i have never played/given activision any of my money. I hope we all do the same and encourage our friends not to give our money into this milking company.
FYI Warthunder is a grind I still log on ever day , 300 days so far , not even halfway to too tier. I did buy a tank that I can’t use effectively , and I do love it. I don’t feel like it’s a skill thing, I think it’s the longer you try hard the better you get. Enphasis on the word “GRIND”
It took my boomer heart years to finally cut all bonds to Blizzard, and I still feel a bit guilty when I watch my dearly hold RTS e-sport games. When I became father, now many years ago, I even kept my subscriptions in oder to "support the devs", but as put out very correctly, it is our fault, when this kind of business makes not so kind people still rich.
Most battlepasses in other games are pretty good. DotA2 Battlepass is a weird outlier, but at least that one lasts for months. Other Battlepasses typically either refund you the money you spent to buy it, or you get a lot of things out of it for a really good price. The only catch is that you have to keep coming back to get the full value of it, but if you're already playing everyday already then it makes no difference
Thank you. It’s awesome to hear your perspective on the whole Blizzard subject. I think, in this case the saying “you either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain” is what is happening to many of our favourite game developing companies. Their success couldn’t have been eternal. Maybe it seems sad, but seems like it is just the natural order of things. New game companies will arise, new awesome games and RTSs will come out. Or maybe Blizzard will rise from the ashes, we never know. It can become a redemption story
I often wonder if the game development time (2-4 years) is so long that the tech of gaming makes it impossible to finish a game before you have to redo it for modern tech and hardware.
(As a fanatic Hearthstone fan and a ex-wow fan) Hearthstone is the item in WOW that every player uses to teleport themself back to their “home”. Hearthstone is meant to be a game that characters IN the universe of WoW play in the taverns by the hearth. It’s so thematically good.
still sad we got the valve dota 2 version instead of blizzards. I really dont like the graphics of dota 2 and believe that blizzards version would have been more similar to the OG one
The development was canned, that was done by a maintenance team, but you always had been a sweet summer child. :D That is pretty typical. The drop in rate indicates the canning of the entire team outside the necessary core. Once most of the assets are there this work can be done by a skeleton crew.
the year of the merger 2008, there was no issue showing until 2011... also there are plenty of inaccuracys around 'blizzard dota'. This is a very abridged version. Makes me question alot of the details in this video. most of this is public opinions or popular opinion on what happened at the time, it's not very deep research. Blizzard noth also wasn't actually Canned. Daiblo 3 after release was totally fine, people hated the RMAH but that was it. Alot of people actuallu disliked the loot pinata it became and ofc the launch was a serious problem for most people.... so yeah, I think this is a very surface level take on all of the issues he is addressing here. There also have been Private servers of Classic SINCE CLASSIC. They where not new in the 10's. by the end of this video i even question this guys actual interest in the history of what he is reporting on lol. Also mike morhaimes groups are STILL RECRUITING. They have a huge team over there so I've no idea what they're doing.
1:08:48 my favorite MOBA (Prime World) was closed because the devs were trying to tip players over the bridge... It wasn't cosmetics only though, but I enjoyed the game nonetheless while not spending money. Great reacts and commentary
Man they were so big so great. And so incredibly sad these times past away like my youth. Like blizz grew up too and became greedy and don't really care about players anymore
I don't agree on the skin part. When the grind reward is just a skin, you don't have to do it. It's optional and doesn't give you any benefit. If the grind is quick and easy so everyone has this skin it is now almost worthless, if grind is hard this skin has acutal value now. These however should not be available to purchase with real money.
Diablo 3 was an atrocity of a game when it came out. It is a stain on the fabric of humanity. Thankfully they made it better later, but the story they demolished can never be repaired. RIP
43:00 Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan, the original spanish translation was literally insane, i was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better than the original, well, only Arthas, the others were only great. but Arthas was the best actor in the entire game by far. If you want search the classic spanish cinematics of Arthas and you'll see
Grubby's review of this is superior to others posting this clip since he has expansive experience playing blizzard games and internal experience as a gamer and can fact check various claims, thank you for this detailed overview
I know it's really unpopular but i supported the real money auction house because people could make a living off of it, where it was a problem was blizzard flooding it with their own products. That killed it
Precaution for anyone blissfully hopeful with Microsoft's acquisition: Minecraft NEVER had much real controversy other than players themselves being stupid and hating new features until they love it. Up until recently.
They are an empty husk of what they used to be, only releasing bating games and content out of desperation, they cant release a single quality product...
for the DotA trademark, it was registered by playDotA, which was acquired by Riot, who then transferred the tm to Blizzard so Blizzard should have held it, not Valve
@@Jelissei yeah in Canada so it was EVEN worse! I went to university starting at the end of 2009 - the price of internet is horrid here too, that's what seems to always make it worse!
30:40 --- It would be easy if they just thought about where the name "Hearthstone" is from: the wort "hearth" which is just a fancy word for "home", more accurately the kitchen and cooking space... You can google the pronounciation. Its not hart ^^° 36:05 --- You cant really call it alive, if the last hero released in 2020... :P 38:00 --- Because... yes... they did. Did they know what he wanted to say specifically? Maybe. Maybe not. But he must have told them something, like "hey guys, when I take off the mask Imma gonna say somethin' ... dive down when I do". They sure a hell were warned if nothing else. Did it warrant this punishment? Of course not. On the other hand, there are rules on that sort of conventions and competitions that forbit participants to talk politics - and Blitzchung talked politics. Punishment was justified, but the scale went completely out the window. And as usual, Blizz shot themselves in the foot... 57:15 --- In their defence: back when the room was named, the scandal around Bill Cosby wasnt yet published. Apparently it was the terrible carpet that inspired the name. Who is to know? But again, the many crimes of Cosby were made public after the room naming when Cosby was still the well-tempered father figure everyone knew from the TV show. 59:45 --- I'm not a mother but I know from other women that "being full" without a baby in reach to feed is very, VERY painful. So being able to "tap" it is a very good thing, and companies are to be commended for giving mothers a space to do so in peace. Not so much if jerk colleges go and F***ING STEAL THE BREASTMILK!!! Like who TF does that??! 1:00:30 --- No. No, its not. You can meme about Kotick with devil horns and what not, but... fact of the matter... its actually pretty accurate. And no, it wasnt a joke either: apparently she threatened to go to the police over being harrassed by his staff - yes, his staff, not him personally. And also, he didn't do anything about it either. Its not known whether he was an abu**r himself but it seems he didnt stop others either. Which doesnt make him any better. 1:18:54 --- Microsoft isnt where it is by being "nice". They also didnt become the company they are now by "being fair" to their employees. They also didnt become one of the most profitable companies in the world by not having several corpses in their closets. By whats happened lately with Blizz... I wouldnt hold by breath. It might improve... after some more layoffs, some more scrapping and so forth... TL:DR Microsoft wont save Blizzard, they will just keep the juicy pieces and throw the rest into the bin, including employees.
Saying condemning China is "talking politics" is like saying condemning the Holocaust during WW2 would have been "talking politics." You can't compare countries committing genocide and ruthlessly oppressing their own people to issues like taxes or regulations.
@@markup6394 You called the punishment justified under "no politics." 🤷 I don't know how I'm supposed to get "Blizzard was wrong and China deserves to be condemned" out of that.
@59:00 women and men shouldn't work together and women during and after pregnancy shouldn't work either, preferably until a child is old enough to be left alone just creates a mess for everyone involved, as evident by modern companies
I've heard this opinion before, and I find its implication disturbing and retro into darker times, seems to invoke almost animalistic implications. What is your belief sourced by?
@@GrubbyTalks sexual tension, gender norms, power imbalance (both physical and mental). Did you know men and women on average prefer different temperatures. Men like 2 or 3 degrees lower temperature than women. This alone already creates issues. Men and women both have to self censor when speaking. Both men and women bad mouth each other in normal circumstances when they are frustrated, thus venting. You're from Northern country. Women are as equal to men as they are gonna get over there. Yet men and women always move away from each other when it comes to work, when they are not shoehorned in by government policies. I'm not a Muslim, but Muslims separate sexes for a reason. We Europeans did the same up until like 50 years ago. (This doesn't mean we have to treat them as badly as some of the nations do ofc) Women having to drain milk into a tube while working instead of taking care of their child is dystopian. Of course some lone, sexually frustrated man is gonna steal it. Then they proceed to pay a stranger to take care of their child instead of taking care of it on their own. It's unnatural. So now women are deciding to have less or no children at all. Society collapses. Korea is first on track to disappear.
I enjoyed Grubby's perspective but I think the source video was pretty shoddy. The constant barrage of short video clips is so frantic. Lots of mistakes too.
Only mildly related... but these internet historian type videos, sans the clever humor, are so hard to watch. I can't pinpoint exactly why. It's like watching a documentary through memberberry memes. Maybe it's only me 😂
I remember, installed world of Warcraft excited log in screen, putting my name and password to see message my internet is too slow to download patch 😂😂😂😂
InsaneMonster is actually doing a great job at reforging the campaign to what it should have been. Sure doesn't fix the buggy graphics, but man this is actually good stuff. Fk Blizzard for selling their soul, but the actal og members left anway so its just a shallow company with a stolen name.
we kinda found out who the breast milk thief was. Alteast his Username because he wrote about stealing breastmilk from a coworker on 4chan even before the story got puplic
Blizzard died long time ago
It's just Activision wearing Blizzards skin today
Warcraft 3 reforged is a testament to this comment
Activision is a necromancer manipulating Blizzard's rotten corpse
@@ppshchikpretty much everything they have put out since overwatch says it imo.
@gameringexpertvalve is also greedy, but still sucesfull. Can't say they are not greedy charging 30% of all sells. They even stopped making games just to win money almost passively (not entirely, but, no risk involved)
"Head to Head." They called this "spawning" in SC1. You could install the game on a friend's computer, and they could play so long as you were in the lobby. That's the days when Blizzard was the good guy.
Right around the transition to Battlenet 2.0, you could input your original cd'key onto the website and verify ownership of the license of your physical copies since the original release of most of their games "except the first 2 warcraft because they werent compliant with the new platform." The last vestiges of whatever was left of original Blizzard died after the SC Remaster, which was followed by lootboxes/refunded 3 and all the crap since. Diablo 3 was the warning . . . if the REAL MONEY AUCTION HOUSE wasn't the siren in the night you'd have to be dead so as to not hear it.
@@WhatWillYouFind I liked the RMAH in d3 :/ Feel reaper of souls lacked longevity because of that removal, even though it was more fun.. They had to make all rare drops way more common with personalized loot and literally started handing out full sets for "completing the tutorial". Then it turned into a rift/greater rift simulator..
All the people that made blizzard are long gone.
All thats left is the logo.
Yeah but a lot of those guys who made blizz were the breast milk thieving Cosby suit dwellers.
Ever hear of the ship of Theseus?
The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment about whether an object is the same object after having had all of its original components replaced.
like a sports team. If you take all the players and coaches away. All you are left with is a name and a logo. If you change all the parts of something, can you even call it the same thing?
Very good comparison.
@mikerundle72 Since all atoms in a human are replaced every so often.......................
Maybe it's just rotten... like food that you left for 2 years. It may stink, but it's still the same food, isn't it?
its called organizational culture and it takes around 20 years to change, 10 years if you try hard. pretty sure bizzard is fu**ed at this point. lets hope frostgiant can live up to old blizz. stormgate somewhat unfished but for a startup alpha build it was good enought.
That is not the same thing. The ship of Theseus assumes negligible shift in overall quality.
Blizzard is like swapping out the planks with rotten cardboard.
Narrator forgot to remind that reforged upon installation had deleted previous version of WC3 without any warning alongside with everything that was there. Some guys like me had custom maps there that are forever gone now
Fuck. I'm still looking for a custom map from my childhood
There is not a single person in the world who believes that Blizzard's reaction in the Hearthstone scandal had nothing to do with their relationships in China. Not one. He said it anyway.
Its not that big of a problem, it happens all the time. Like Bioware for example. And now we have Larian making Bioware style games. Dont be a fan of Blizzard, just be a fan of really good RTS games and the problem is solved. They still get made like Dune Spice Wars or Age of Empires 4. Its the endless cycle of: Company makes good games, company gets bought , company gets milked, company dies. Just know what you are dealing with and that the products of a company you like now, just wont be there in the future, but another will and thats ok too.
Corporate suits are like termites, once they get inside they eat through everything without anyone noticing until there is only a rotten husk left.
But consumers give them the power. They simply dont care and keep consuming blizzard products cuz they are so attached to their ips.
I love when the breastmilk theft comes up and the non-Americans are always like "But why was a breastfeeding mother at work instead of on paid leave?"
Hahahahahahahaha
Oh the paid leave thing... yeah.. it's a pity when you don't have it :/
@@GrubbyTalks yeah, planning ahead? Never heard of it!
I had the same question. Makes sense now. rip america.
@@a.f.7650 Yes. Planning ahead is to vote for policies that protect parents and make it more attractive and easier to have families.
@@dawoifee policies… you know how it works then. Who benefits from those.
Hey Grubby, I wanted to comment on the "I don't understand why Dota players love Battle Pass so much" part. You see, Valve was actually the company that invented Battle Passes and Dota2 was the first game to have them. And veteran Dota2 players remember how it all started: price point was pretty cheap, rewards were very generous, you had options to earn huge part of the rewards by just playing how you liked, quests and modes included were fun, basically the only thing locked behind a serious paywall was getting an actual, physical replica of an aegis (which is very cool and it seems reasonable and understandable that someone who decides to pay a lot gets a physical trinket while those that play for free or decide to get only the base pass for 10 bucks get like 50-100 skins, 5 new couriers, 2 new maps, 10 new weather effects, 10 new sculptures, 10 new taunts, 2 new companion pets and more when even those basic immortal skins among those 100 looked super cool and made your favorite heroes abilites look different and epic - that was the 'rate' at which it was going for back then). All while supporting your beloved game and directly contributing to TI prize money. Fast forward to today and I don't need to tell you how things are now, even Valve realized how predatory and detrimental for the game itself Battle Passes have become. So yeah, that excitement and love for Battle Passes that Dota players have is basically nostalgia for how things used to be.
RIP Maxis, Westwood Studios, Acclaim, Interplay, Lucasarts, Midway, Interplay, Visceral, Blizzard, and countless others.
I will never forgive Disney for what they did to Lucasarts :'-(
@@lucass.6546recently revived/repackaged as Lucasfilm Games
People need to boycott more often. The only power we have as the people, our only voice, is our money.
There are too many people with humuliation fetish. They love to defend this garbage.
10:30 lots of real life celebrities did play WoW though. Stephen Colbert was a paladin, Verne Troyer did play and did a commercial, and (back before we knew he was a crazy person) Curt Schilling was a guild leader while playing pro baseball. Oh and that Henry Cavill guy not too many people know about, he played it a lot. Actually missed the call from his agent to play superman because he was tanking a cata dungeon lol.
Edit; wrote this when I paused just before the bit he was mentioned.
"Tell them that the Lich King is dead, and that Blizzard died with him."
I can remember being a kid whose neighbor has WC3 and all I wanted to do was go over his house and play it. My family finally got a PC and the top of my Xmas list was WC3. What do I open on Christmas Day? A box containing World of Warcraft. I was devastated.
So, you still playing wow?
@@mojotmn Lol no. I don’t understand how any adult has time to play WoW, I barely have time to play a few Hearthstone games.
@@ThePainOfSilenc i guess you were busy running MySpace, so haven't had time for wow 😅😉
@@mojotmn Exactly
@@ThePainOfSilencThat's a crazy mistake. You must have been reminded from Grubby's story of "World of Warcraft III"
I think it's crazy because that's expensive for the parents, much more so if they just got the right game, assuming they paid for your monthly subscription. Did your parents pay the monthly subscription and how long?
I remember being on Blizzard's Reforged forums the day they announced it. All the people making the worst asks, that ended up coming through because it meant axing features. Everyone was swimming in copium, saying "This is it, this will make me come back!"
No bot hosting? Got it. RIP Kicking racists from your games, or playing RPG maps solo. Did you like the limited re-connect feature? GTFO, desyncs and drops only. Working automated tournaments? Nah, we don't do that.
All of this to say... The hypetrain fans help enable so many of Blizzard's bad decisions, and then somehow are so confused when everything turns out like utter crap. It makes me so sad to see a game I played continuously since 2004 get so consistently disrespected, and mutilated time and time again.
Who brings breast milk to work?
I am dying 😂😂😂😂
I really wasn't expecting to watch the whole thing. Congrats on keeping me interested!
That story is probably grossly exaggerated, to use the same analogy as in the video, it was "stuffing the lawsuit". Same with the so called "Cosby room", it was a joke about the Cosby sweater and was made years before any of the allegations were known.
I remember when the Activision-Blizzard merger was announced too. I only remember the day though because my friends and I knew exactly what it meant, and we got blackout drunk together that night to mourn the loss of the best gaming company the world had ever known.
@Chris-eh8mi and then the next day we all cheered and loved the release of Wrath of the Lich King and it was amazing.
And then we looked back and realized it was actually corporate garbage based off gambling mechanics and the rot that is Activision Blizzard was fleshed out and understood. It was really good at hiding.
@@Arcexey I knew it'd take a few years for the rot to worm its way in and destroy Blizz. And I did play WotLK on launch, but there was far too little launch content and it was far too simple compared to the last tier in TBC. I was so bored after a month of farming that raid tier that I quit WoW altogether.
@@Chris-eh8mi it's the 'making the game for mass audience' shit, quality of life changes, wow store bloating etcetc
r/thathappened
@@godfreyofbouillon966 troll bait, but I'll respond anyway, you absolute tool.
It happened and for a lot of people too. I've shared that story many times and gotten similar stories back. Anyone with a brain knew what that merger meant... and that does actually explain why you'd have trouble with this topic.
I was one of the 100,000 people who purchased and played warcraft 1. It was so fun I think I even played direct connect with the modem. No phone calls allowed! Such great memories!!!
Awesome stuff, in that age I started online gaming and the phone competition was hilarious
I don’t comment often but after Grubby said he was wrong so many times I just have to.
Hots development team was sacked and Hots was added to the classic team (this team manage all old games). The classic team then released some heroes which the old team had started developing
Be that as it may, support was not canned three years later. It was handed off to the classic team, this is correct. But as a player, we still felt supported for 2+ more years.
@@GrubbyTalks I was a Hots player and liked it. But even if we got a few heroes and some support (the game is also still supported). It was a super clear statement from Blizzard. Don't play Hots since we won't spend developers on it. And the community listened and got smaller. It was unnecessary, Blizzard could just can the e-sport team and release heroes way way slower.
@@GrubbyTalks By that logic, support for WarCraft 2 hasn't been canned either. It's been handed off to the classic team, after all, it recently got released on new platforms!
Having hope now for blizzard is like having you house burned to the ground and thinking that the insurance company (microsoft) is willingly going to cover everything you lost.
We need a new word for that level of cope.
And one more level for bethesda
I never played Wow but I'm still in disbelief I watched my friends go through ups and downs of WoW over time. Then they just did it all over again with Classic. Despite everything ActiBlizz did, nothing was too low. They always came back.
Having hope means it can't get worse anymore because it's at it's lowest.
The ones burning it to the ground left the company actually, so they dont care at all what happens with Blizz and Microsoft
Here's 1 thing Grubby, I've mentioned it a few times & just wanted to put it out in passing.
I played in the first Heroes of the Dorm tournament right before graduating... Unfortunately we were the last Canadian team. Our final exams are in April & the main tournament was done... in April. As I think all 5 of us - maybe 4, were set to leave that year. We had people driving to Toronto & back from their Med School interviews before playing in the Quarter Finals.
Since it was cast on ESPN & the timeslot was already set... we had essentially 0 capacity to move our gametimes. Only with a direct agreement by all 3 other teams would it MAYBE have been accepted. Unfortunately even the other times were difficult to perform at.
- Essentially it went the way it went - and although I didn't directly deal with things as I wasn't the captain, I did come to realise the lack of adaptability that the co-ordinatours had towards the Canadian teams as a whole.
Damn!
It really can't be understated *HOW* influential and inivative Blizzard and Blizzard North (Condor) was. Like, they *SINGLE HANDEDLY* popularized ARPGs, RTS, and MMORPGs on top of having the most pants shittingly amazing cutscenes you've ever seen. Diablo 1 came out the same year as Super Mario 64 to put it into perspective lol
58:12 I am surprised how you reacted saying it was a stupid question. It's actually a great question, not everyone knows this and if we are honest, it is rare to see this in a work environment.
Really? I guess it's rare in a country with pregnancy and parental leave, I guess. But in countries where mothers are expected to return to job almost immediately, it must be pretty common. Common enough for me to know about milk pumping. I also know how mammals work. But perhaps I should not have been so judgmental, you're right. It was kinda rude
19:50 and that's the only reason for reforged, so all the maps created on reforged from now on are blizzard's property.
33:27 So true. In other words, they lie to us. Executives probably decided to cut his salary or he was pushed out of the company. It’s pretty normal here in the U.S.
Why do these game companies keep sacking developers for the overpromising of marketing, if marketing made up 90% of development budget?
Shouldn't they put more into development and delay marketing until they have any idea of what can be accomplished by release date?
When Blizzard announced Diablo Immortal, GGG games changed the name of their PoE expansion from Immortal to Betrayal... good luck for them they hadn't announced it yet, so it was still possible to change the name.
There should be lawsuits over Reforged. It was an absolute joke.
What do you think is actionable? It was horrible and drove my friends and I away from rts forever but I don't see where there's a case.
@@jtaco4101maybe ruining the game you already bought and paid for, unless it was in the EULA that the company reserves right to ruin it at any point
36:09 who is that handsome fellow on the far right?
Nigel Farage?
Lol i didn't even see myself
such a shame how dirty they did wc3.. it deserved better
the one good thing about the reforged fail is that now, the classic graphics are still considered the ebst version. who knows what would have happened if the reforge actually was good and most people settle with the, now good, new grapics.
There is a rapper in Germany that has famously been known for playing a lot of WoW back in the 00's. He was also featured in german language ads (for bc I believe) and apparently made a deal with blizzard for a life-time WoW subscription for a sum that was equal to like 40years of subscription.
Thanks for this content, share like both original and this one! Still remember growing up with WC1 / WC2 battle chest when 6yo, then having the best time playing (mildly) competitive in the chilean wc3 small scene, sharing the love for the best game ever. Heartbreaking. -BlueSuN
It’s like in wc3 you kill 10% of your troops for food limit then rehire them…
Over watch was cool, good art, smooth gameplay, BUT i felt very unaccomplished while playing it. It felt like i was just playing a long ever lasting grind quest. When ever i actually made a good play it didn't feel like it effected the game in that big of a way.
I thought the D3 Story was fine. The replayability was where it sucked at launch.
As someone who has been playing War Thunder for about 5 years now, it's always funny to me when a video about a greedy video game company is sponsored by Gaijin (developers of War Thunder)
I'm with you on some of these Grubby. I felt like Diablo 3 was not as bad as people cry about. It definitely had its problems and the expansion made the game MUCH better but it wasn't all bad in the first place. And IMO, Overwatch was very overrated. I tried to like it for a while but it just never felt good to play and it was the first Blizzard game that felt like it developed 100% by the "new" Blizzard. The whole thing had a sort of Tumblr blog vibe to it that just didn't work for me.
I was watching this video yesterday and today the Overwatch 2 devs said PVE missions are no more.
So people literally paid full price for something (patches, cosmetics) that others are getting the free!
rewatching this again hearing Grubby say he'll try Helldivers too after the talk about companies extracting your money hits different.
the seeds for Blizzard's downfall were there in Diablo 2.
I hardly see anyone ever mention this.
The mechanic that was the high point of the game was also that seed. the hook up with itemization.
I bet that someone behind the scenes watched that game's progress and the reception by the hardcore players and wondered why would they ever make a self contained game again and if people were so inclined to get on that mouse wheel surely they would also be willing to pay admission for it.
WoW explored that potential with each update and expansion and by the time Diablo 3 was out their practices were at full swing.
You cannot serve two masters.
1:13:03 I love that you call her a protagonist. That is my issue with the game, I wanted to be able to play as her friend, not foe, based on the characters on the other side.
I managed to break my childhood image of a company i loved. And now since classic wow, i have never played/given activision any of my money. I hope we all do the same and encourage our friends not to give our money into this milking company.
FYI Warthunder is a grind I still log on ever day , 300 days so far , not even halfway to too tier. I did buy a tank that I can’t use effectively , and I do love it. I don’t feel like it’s a skill thing, I think it’s the longer you try hard the better you get. Enphasis on the word “GRIND”
It took my boomer heart years to finally cut all bonds to Blizzard, and I still feel a bit guilty when I watch my dearly hold RTS e-sport games. When I became father, now many years ago, I even kept my subscriptions in oder to "support the devs", but as put out very correctly, it is our fault, when this kind of business makes not so kind people still rich.
Most battlepasses in other games are pretty good. DotA2 Battlepass is a weird outlier, but at least that one lasts for months. Other Battlepasses typically either refund you the money you spent to buy it, or you get a lot of things out of it for a really good price. The only catch is that you have to keep coming back to get the full value of it, but if you're already playing everyday already then it makes no difference
I loved Diablo 3 untill the inferno nerf, then it sucked!!
1:02:12 both video progress bar are on the same distance
Thank you. It’s awesome to hear your perspective on the whole Blizzard subject. I think, in this case the saying “you either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain” is what is happening to many of our favourite game developing companies. Their success couldn’t have been eternal. Maybe it seems sad, but seems like it is just the natural order of things. New game companies will arise, new awesome games and RTSs will come out. Or maybe Blizzard will rise from the ashes, we never know. It can become a redemption story
There is no Blizzard anymore... There is only greed left. I dont even understand Developers working for such a company anymore...
Blizzard became a Chinese company
I'm still playing Everquest in 2024, new server comes out May 22nd
I often wonder if the game development time (2-4 years) is so long that the tech of gaming makes it impossible to finish a game before you have to redo it for modern tech and hardware.
(As a fanatic Hearthstone fan and a ex-wow fan) Hearthstone is the item in WOW that every player uses to teleport themself back to their “home”. Hearthstone is meant to be a game that characters IN the universe of WoW play in the taverns by the hearth. It’s so thematically good.
42:18 .. u can download and replace the audio .. (german in my case) .. (arthas new voice fuckd me up fr)
really? did they add it or is there some secret tech i don't know about? i loved the old german kael'thas voice
How?
People are still playing Everquest on Project1999, that's crazy
still sad we got the valve dota 2 version instead of blizzards. I really dont like the graphics of dota 2 and believe that blizzards version would have been more similar to the OG one
Lost viking were the so good.
Very fun and funny.
The development was canned, that was done by a maintenance team, but you always had been a sweet summer child. :D
That is pretty typical. The drop in rate indicates the canning of the entire team outside the necessary core. Once most of the assets are there this work can be done by a skeleton crew.
Love your content, Grubby. Totally agree with what you said about the battle pass stuff.
the year of the merger 2008, there was no issue showing until 2011... also there are plenty of inaccuracys around 'blizzard dota'. This is a very abridged version. Makes me question alot of the details in this video. most of this is public opinions or popular opinion on what happened at the time, it's not very deep research. Blizzard noth also wasn't actually Canned. Daiblo 3 after release was totally fine, people hated the RMAH but that was it. Alot of people actuallu disliked the loot pinata it became and ofc the launch was a serious problem for most people.... so yeah, I think this is a very surface level take on all of the issues he is addressing here. There also have been Private servers of Classic SINCE CLASSIC. They where not new in the 10's. by the end of this video i even question this guys actual interest in the history of what he is reporting on lol. Also mike morhaimes groups are STILL RECRUITING. They have a huge team over there so I've no idea what they're doing.
1:08:48 my favorite MOBA (Prime World) was closed because the devs were trying to tip players over the bridge... It wasn't cosmetics only though, but I enjoyed the game nonetheless while not spending money.
Great reacts and commentary
i have stopped playing all games that have customer hostile monetizations.
Man they were so big so great. And so incredibly sad these times past away like my youth. Like blizz grew up too and became greedy and don't really care about players anymore
Dreamhaven, Frostgian and Bonefire studios. Are all Companys from Blizzard devs
So far I haven't seen much promise from any of them. They people really responsible for the old magic are mostly old now.
42:30 I cant use the classic spanish audio 😢
I don't agree on the skin part.
When the grind reward is just a skin, you don't have to do it. It's optional and doesn't give you any benefit. If the grind is quick and easy so everyone has this skin it is now almost worthless, if grind is hard this skin has acutal value now.
These however should not be available to purchase with real money.
Diablo 3 was an atrocity of a game when it came out. It is a stain on the fabric of humanity. Thankfully they made it better later, but the story they demolished can never be repaired. RIP
Many of the issues you mentioned about Diablo 4 were fixed quickly and the item issues are fixed next season (2 days from this post).
hearethstone in chat replay made me crack up, I hope the user who said that finds this message you are wonderful
Wow, Lost Vikings was from this guys. Didn't knew that, I loved that Lemmings-like game.
The sarcasm at the end of the video about Blizzard improving was brutal
43:00
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan, the original spanish translation was literally insane, i was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better than the original, well, only Arthas, the others were only great. but Arthas was the best actor in the entire game by far. If you want search the classic spanish cinematics of Arthas and you'll see
Grubby's review of this is superior to others posting this clip since he has expansive experience playing blizzard games and internal experience as a gamer and can fact check various claims, thank you for this detailed overview
the ending was peak comedy
44:42 it's only 99% for the english version of the game. All other language versions are still not using the old voice lines.
20:25 Holy! Never even had ever thought about that small detail!🤣
11:08 that one aged like fine milk.
breast milk?
tbh fans took A LOT of time to notice the shift. at least most of i spoke with
thanks grubby for fighting the good fight on wc3 CLASSIC. its a masterpiece!
missing 5-8% of your fingers is a really good analogy
To be fair, Diablo 2 Resurrected was nearly perfect. We even got about 6 updates that were small but great for refreshing gameplay
I know it's really unpopular but i supported the real money auction house because people could make a living off of it, where it was a problem was blizzard flooding it with their own products. That killed it
“Who brings breast milk to work?” “What a stupid question to ask” hahahahah that’s peak content lmfao I love you Grubby
I literally lol in office damn
Precaution for anyone blissfully hopeful with Microsoft's acquisition: Minecraft NEVER had much real controversy other than players themselves being stupid and hating new features until they love it. Up until recently.
what browser is Grubby using? looks clean
IIRC Opera GX
They are an empty husk of what they used to be, only releasing bating games and content out of desperation, they cant release a single quality product...
for the DotA trademark, it was registered by playDotA, which was acquired by Riot, who then transferred the tm to Blizzard
so Blizzard should have held it, not Valve
"Times change."
OHHHH to have sufficient internet before University... Even in the 2000s!
In Europe we actually had ISDN from 1995 on. When I later (around 2001) went to the states I was shocked how slow US internet was.
@@Jelissei yeah in Canada so it was EVEN worse! I went to university starting at the end of 2009 - the price of internet is horrid here too, that's what seems to always make it worse!
30:40 --- It would be easy if they just thought about where the name "Hearthstone" is from: the wort "hearth" which is just a fancy word for "home", more accurately the kitchen and cooking space... You can google the pronounciation. Its not hart ^^°
36:05 --- You cant really call it alive, if the last hero released in 2020... :P
38:00 --- Because... yes... they did. Did they know what he wanted to say specifically? Maybe. Maybe not. But he must have told them something, like "hey guys, when I take off the mask Imma gonna say somethin' ... dive down when I do". They sure a hell were warned if nothing else. Did it warrant this punishment? Of course not. On the other hand, there are rules on that sort of conventions and competitions that forbit participants to talk politics - and Blitzchung talked politics. Punishment was justified, but the scale went completely out the window. And as usual, Blizz shot themselves in the foot...
57:15 --- In their defence: back when the room was named, the scandal around Bill Cosby wasnt yet published. Apparently it was the terrible carpet that inspired the name. Who is to know? But again, the many crimes of Cosby were made public after the room naming when Cosby was still the well-tempered father figure everyone knew from the TV show.
59:45 --- I'm not a mother but I know from other women that "being full" without a baby in reach to feed is very, VERY painful. So being able to "tap" it is a very good thing, and companies are to be commended for giving mothers a space to do so in peace. Not so much if jerk colleges go and F***ING STEAL THE BREASTMILK!!! Like who TF does that??!
1:00:30 --- No. No, its not. You can meme about Kotick with devil horns and what not, but... fact of the matter... its actually pretty accurate. And no, it wasnt a joke either: apparently she threatened to go to the police over being harrassed by his staff - yes, his staff, not him personally. And also, he didn't do anything about it either. Its not known whether he was an abu**r himself but it seems he didnt stop others either. Which doesnt make him any better.
1:18:54 --- Microsoft isnt where it is by being "nice". They also didnt become the company they are now by "being fair" to their employees. They also didnt become one of the most profitable companies in the world by not having several corpses in their closets. By whats happened lately with Blizz... I wouldnt hold by breath. It might improve... after some more layoffs, some more scrapping and so forth... TL:DR Microsoft wont save Blizzard, they will just keep the juicy pieces and throw the rest into the bin, including employees.
Saying condemning China is "talking politics" is like saying condemning the Holocaust during WW2 would have been "talking politics." You can't compare countries committing genocide and ruthlessly oppressing their own people to issues like taxes or regulations.
@@TheCrushmaster Dude, I dont make the rules. If Blizz says its considered "talking politics" under their roof... well, complain to them, not me.
@@markup6394 You called the punishment justified under "no politics." 🤷 I don't know how I'm supposed to get "Blizzard was wrong and China deserves to be condemned" out of that.
I just had a memory of buying boxed wow subscriptions in huge box form that had a little giftcard inside.
@59:00 women and men shouldn't work together and women during and after pregnancy shouldn't work either, preferably until a child is old enough to be left alone
just creates a mess for everyone involved, as evident by modern companies
I've heard this opinion before, and I find its implication disturbing and retro into darker times, seems to invoke almost animalistic implications. What is your belief sourced by?
@@GrubbyTalks sexual tension, gender norms, power imbalance (both physical and mental). Did you know men and women on average prefer different temperatures. Men like 2 or 3 degrees lower temperature than women. This alone already creates issues.
Men and women both have to self censor when speaking. Both men and women bad mouth each other in normal circumstances when they are frustrated, thus venting. You're from Northern country. Women are as equal to men as they are gonna get over there. Yet men and women always move away from each other when it comes to work, when they are not shoehorned in by government policies.
I'm not a Muslim, but Muslims separate sexes for a reason. We Europeans did the same up until like 50 years ago.
(This doesn't mean we have to treat them as badly as some of the nations do ofc)
Women having to drain milk into a tube while working instead of taking care of their child is dystopian.
Of course some lone, sexually frustrated man is gonna steal it.
Then they proceed to pay a stranger to take care of their child instead of taking care of it on their own.
It's unnatural.
So now women are deciding to have less or no children at all. Society collapses.
Korea is first on track to disappear.
I enjoyed Grubby's perspective but I think the source video was pretty shoddy. The constant barrage of short video clips is so frantic. Lots of mistakes too.
Only mildly related... but these internet historian type videos, sans the clever humor, are so hard to watch. I can't pinpoint exactly why. It's like watching a documentary through memberberry memes.
Maybe it's only me 😂
So exactly what we thought, no new information at all.
I remember, installed world of Warcraft excited log in screen, putting my name and password to see message my internet is too slow to download patch 😂😂😂😂
Blizzard is dead. Lets hope Microsoft or someone else can fix Warcraft 3.
I am now getting Desktop notifications to change my default PDF viewer, sure they will.
Warcraft 3? Lol I wouldn't hold my breath.
MS is busy promoting their Age of Empires games. Conflict of interest
InsaneMonster is actually doing a great job at reforging the campaign to what it should have been. Sure doesn't fix the buggy graphics, but man this is actually good stuff. Fk Blizzard for selling their soul, but the actal og members left anway so its just a shallow company with a stolen name.
we kinda found out who the breast milk thief was. Alteast his Username because he wrote about stealing breastmilk from a coworker on 4chan even before the story got puplic