Napalm Riot

I'm not feeling confident with the recent activities of Blizzard. I wasn't terribly excited with their merger with Activision in the first place, fearing that big-buck corporation greed mentality would kick in...and it seems like my fears are not totally unfounded. There are several major concerns I have begun to see in the last few months.

The Dragonball Z Effect
Also known as "over 9000" on most of the 4chan boards, this refers to the exponential upscaling of item stats in Game: World of Warcraft. This was visible around the launch of Game: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, and is mainly a side effect of the way WoW works. Unlike most "true" RPGs, in which character skills and stats are innate and not derived from the items being worn, WoW is almost entirely gear-centric. As a result, the Blizzard guys have to offer new gear with better stats as an incentive for players to continue through the game. This means invalidating old high-end armor that players may have spent months to get in the name of consumer base. Ultimately, as per the curve imposed by the theory, player characters will become almost godlike in their abilities (this is actually evident in one boss encounter in which the players fight and defeat an avatar of Kil'Jaeden, a near-god in the Warcraft universe). As a side effect of this, the older zones in the game world are being totally neglected, and there seems to be no reason whatsoever to stick around in what used to be an immersive and detailed land. It's a complete waste of old content, some of which cannot even be experienced any longer due to changes made in the 3.0 patch.

Divide And Conquer
It seems, through a recent announcement, that Blizzard has taken the long-awaited Game: StarCraft II, and split it into three separate games. Each game will comprise one race's campaign, though in multiplayer all three races can be played from just one copy. I understand that these campaigns will each be as long, in terms of number of missions, as the length of the original Game: StarCraft in its entirety--if not longer. Nonetheless, this essentially constitutes selling a $40 game for $120. And it doesn't sit well with me; I get the feeling that this decision was not made by Blizzard and that the Blizzard employees (or even its management) is simply being silenced by a corporate handkerchief soaked with chloroform. I see no reason to have to pay for a third of a game, regardless of how good the game might be. The original Game: Lumines: Puzzle Fusion was a blockbuster, a great example of a perfectly-executed puzzle game. The game was ported over to Xbox LIVE as Game: Lumines Live!, which was only sold as the very core game, and other maps, game types and avatars had to be purchased separately. By breaking up the game into several pieces, the publishers attempted to milk more money out of the consumers addicted to the game, and as far as I know the attempt has so far failed miserably. This is the same thing Blizzard is proposing to do with Starcraft 2, and I can easily forsee the same fate.

Why Get It For Free When You Can Pay For It?
I have also heard that Blizzard's flagship Battle.net will be transformed into a paid-subscription service in the near future, probably at the same time as the release of Starcraft 2. Battle.net was the premier online gaming service before more recent competitors such as Steam and Gamespy. Battle.net has been a totally free service for fifteen years now, and while it might not be particularly mind-blowing, it was very good for its time and has needed virtually no major overhauls in years. (I might also note that both of these competing services are free off the bat, but offer other amenities such as video game downloads for individual fees.) Blizzard claims they aren't making enough money to continue with their projects at current. Given that they have a consumer base of 11 million paying $15 a month just to play World of Warcraft, the only way so much funds could be squandered in such short time would be if the chairman of AIG also happened to be the CEO of Activision Blizzard. I doubt this will go over well with the people who have been comp-stomping on Battle.net for over a decade, and I won't be surprised to see some sort of mass quitting to (hopefully) make Blizzard see the light.

On The Camel's Back
All of this is compromising everything Blizzard has spent the last decade and half building. It doesn't help that Activision has since announced their intention to flay the living daylights out of every franchise they get their hands on. I've already heard some people referring to Activision as the new EA, and with this in mind, that analogy might not be entirely inaccurate.