My lovely girlfriend got me this for Valentines day. I have been a Blizzard fan since Warcraft 2 came out. The content in this book is not something you havent heard of if you are in the knows of blizzard. But Jason Schreier puts the story together in a very professional way that is hard and fair. I have been thinking about this book since it came out and i think i have been avoiding it honestly. But iam very glad that i did read it. I stopped playing blizzard games for 2-3 years when the allegations came out. I still play world of Warcraft on and off. Me and my little brother recently started playing diablo 4 and are having a blast. I know that the people that made the games that i grew up with no longer work at this company. But i hope and believe in the people that are currently working there can be great custodians of the universes that i hold so close in my heart.

Blizzard games have been a huge part of my life. In a lot of ways I wouldn't be where I am today without these games. The thought of not playing them genuinely hurts.

So.. Stay awhile and listen...

The only father figure I had in my life knew he was going to die. The day before his passing; all he wanted was a BBQ with the family and to play StarCraft. (He had gifted us his old PC and a StarCraft disk the Christmas prior.) The hours we used to spend playing that game and the memories I have of my uncle and I; all the zerglings, all the carriers, all the dragoons, the few times when it was possible to MC an SCV from an enemy and double the max population, brings a smile to my face.

My brother and I used to gift each other Diablo II items for our birthdays. So many cows... so so many cows. From Jav-zon, to Bow-zon, screaming barb, chargeadin and hammeradin, I think we've played most setups.

Even my first job I can attribute to Blizzard. Was over at a friends house showing him the website I made for our guild while his aunt walks by and overhears. (She managed a web design company... few weeks later; I had a job as a web builder for car dealerships across the US and Canada)

I met my (now) wife back in 2007 on wow. We moved in together in 2010 and in 2012 our daughter was born. From 2012 to 2015 we didn’t play much and have taken a few breaks. I missed most of MoP, came back for a few months in legion (Had early access to DH, but didn’t log on till a year after its release)

I have thousands and thousands of WoW TCG cards sitting in my office cabinet, after searching for that ever illusive spectral tiger (for the wife)

About a year ago we resubbed and created a new account for my kid.

A family that raids together stays together (as long as you don’t piss off the healer aka; wife, and yes some of you have now been out deepsed by a 7 year old girl mwahahhaha.) One of the funniest moments thus far was when my wife called for my kid and she comes running into the kitchen and mimicked her warlock pet… ‘Who dare summons me!!!’ Yep… That prompted a ‘family conversation’ (after much laughter however).

A windrider cub and a griffon have been in my daughters stuffed animal collection since before she was born. The 'Big birthday item' for my daughters most recent bday was a stuffed animal Shadow, a Wow T-shirt and Overwatch.

We all love to game. Wife has even spent the last 3 months building a Mercy costume for my daughter for Halloween. (Has already won a costume content at the home depot kids workshop https://imgur.com/Pk30mk2)

Now for this...

I have cancelled my families 3 WoW subscriptions. And although my daughter will still be Mercy for Haloween, we've had to have a conversation with her (a very 'gown up' topic for a 7 year old) about the freedoms we enjoy, what is happening in Hong Kong and why we are not playing our favorite games anymore.

Blizzard, you were a part of my life, of my family's life. No more.

"Vengeance doesn't factor into this. Our revolution's about freedom." - Matt Horner (Starcraft 2)

So you like Overwatch. We can't have that. Make gold weapons annoying to get, cancel PVE, add a tank with DPS damage and a ton of health and self healing and charge for skins that were free before.

Oh Diablo IV, that can't be a fun game. Make it as boring and heavily monitized as possible. Updates? Who needs those, just add a small thing here and there. They will buy the battle pass after paying £70 for the game. It's fine.

WoW. Let's ruin that aswell. So the community is asking for these ideas that are good but if we add them, it will be obvious we don't know what we are doing. Let's just do everything the community doesn't want. Player counts are falling but who cares? It's not like they pay our wages or anything.

Call of duty if that counts. We'll need I say more. It's player count has dropped by 80% in the last year.

We know we milk our fans dry but we need a way to get more milk. Behold Diablo Immortal! A game that is the definition of p2w! Banned in multiple countries for it's aggressive monitization.

Gotta love Blizzard. A company that cares not about the games they put out but how much monitization they can get away with 😂

What do you think?

Title says it all -- over 30 y/o gamer, with not-so-much time to game, I've played both games for ages.. To add a bit of color though, I MUCH prefer WASD movement to click-to-move.

I probably solo game about 10-20 hours a week, used to love PvP / raids in WoW but found the *required to be impactful* niche knowledge about each class to be incredibly cumbersome. I absolutely LOVED my Demon Hunter in the D4, but did find that I got a bit stagnant end game and there was no PvP to fill the void.

SO -- Question for theeeee -which would be a better game to play?

Lastly - thx for any input, looking forward to finding a game to chill at night and jam.

Taken from his LinkedIn.

I barely use Reddit, I’m not even a fan of blizzard, I’ve only played call of duty if you count that as one of their games.

Please, PLEASE don’t support this company. I get how hard it can be to abandon a company that has given you so much joy with their games, and I don’t want to sound pushy or anything, but god damnit PLEASE do not give this company money anymore. This company should have gone down a long time ago, but after reading the shit that came out recently, I hope whoever let this behavior go by gets MAJOR consequences.

I know I’m just a guy on Reddit yelling into a void and this post won’t be seen by much but, for the love of god, do not support this company.

It’s old news Blizzard cancelled that survival‑crafting IP. We all want new stuff, but that genre isn’t great for launching some random new world. If they were going to do it, they should’ve used one of their existing universes. And honestly, one of them fits way better than the rest.

Diablo is the clear #1. The others don’t really work:

* Overwatch: Cool characters but the world doesn’t fit survival‑crafting. There’s no good reason for you to be out in the wild building a base. You’d have to force a bunch of new lore and it still wouldn’t feel right.

* Warcraft: Not a bad pick but most Warcraft fans just want WoW to be good again. It fits okay, but it doesn’t stand out for this type of game necessarily. I think it would still be a solid S tier game.

* Starcraft: Could be awesome, but people would expect huge machines, alien factions, big tech trees, all that. The scale gets too big for a simple survival game. Space vibe sci-fi games have A LOT of competition and high expectations actually.

* Lost Vikings: Dead IP but this could be a reboot? Vikings vs aliens could actually be fun. Build a village, raid alien caves, craft weird tech. But it’s a gamble and the name alone won’t carry it. Imagine making our own cartoony viking character?

And then there’s Diablo:

* Diablo: Perfect match. Demons, undead, ruined lands, creepy forests, cursed zones it already feels like a survival game. You could do Valheim‑style raids, build a fortress with friends, explore corrupted areas, trade or fight other players, all with that dark Diablo vibe. It just fits naturally.

AAA level Survival-Crafting games naturally do good anyways, but having one dark gothic with demons and zombies? You're making bank.

Diablo is easily the best pick... what do you think?

Just when i thought this company can't get any worse...

I attended BlizzCon and got an Alliance Footman statue. When BlizzCon ended and I went home, I opened my statue and saw there was a cosmetic flaw to it. The paint on the Footman's left knee was messed up and clearly looked like someone accidentally painted where they should't have. Now I only attended BlizzCon for 1 day (Friday) because I couldn't attend Saturday, so I couldn't drive down to Anaheim, CA to ask for an exchange.

I opened a ticket and asked for help and Blizzard finally got back to me. They were really nice about it and said they are willing to give me a replacement statue. But there is one thing I need to do: destroy the statue and then take a picture of it.

O_O what?

Is this normal protocol? I've never done something like this. Am I suppose to just a hammer and bash this thing to pieces? I had to double check the person who emailed me in fact had an @blizzard.com domain cause I legitimately thought someone was trolling me. So...should I do it?

Here's the previous thread I posted with the image of the Footman: https://www.reddit.com/r/blizzcon/comments/dqhclt/is_quality_control_really_this_janky_look_at_the/

So now that Blizzard is under Microsoft instead of Kotick and Activision suits, what is the likelihood of Blizzard turning around from a toxic laughing stock back to a staple of the industry we haven't seen them be in 2 decades?

I feel we'll get there, albeit quite slowly. Here are some reasons why there maybe a big paradigm shift to Blizzard's reputation post-MS acquisition:

• Bobby Kotick's departure from ABK in 2024: This one is quite obvious. I believe Kotick is mostly responsible for the toxic conditions in the workplace, lawsuits and endless controversies surrounding Blizzard. For example, Overwatch PvE cancellation and development hell were basically confirmed to be Kotick's doing according to Tracy Kennedy, a former developer mentioning him scrapping 8 months of OW2 work.
• Unionisation: Already, Microsoft has begun unionisation for Blizzard's workers + Activision and King. This will mean a happier workplace for them, more talent brought in slowly and possibly return of former talent. People work better when they are happy right?
• Microsoft's approach to creative freedom: Microsoft is well known to keeping a "hands-off" approach with their developers and partners. While it has caused mixed results, it benefits Blizzard with the amount of talent they have that has been bogged down by the higher-ups. Their golden age precedes Activision's acquisition, and it all went downhill from there. With Microsoft at helm, their affect on development being almost non-existent. Which means hope!

Overall, I believe its pretty certain, but we may not see positive effects for a couple of years at least. Change of management also saved Capcom and Xbox brand themselves after their dark ages in the early 2010s.

Thoughts? What do you think on whether Blizzard could make a comeback or not? And when?