Thank you for letting me know that the much awaited Q2 report was released.
Now, take the following with a grain of salt. I am not going to claim to be a financial expert and am actually able to reliably read what's in the report:
But page 9 of the report, which has the segment revenue breakdown:
@ June 30, 2012:
Blizzard revenue was approx. 634 million.
Activison revenue was approx. 373 million.
@ June 30, 2013 (this report):
Blizzard revenue was approx. 224 million.
Activision revenue was approx. 347 million.
The report lists what appears to be a drop of 410 million dollars in revenue from Blizzard from a year ago.
Now as I said I am not going to attempt to draw any finite conclusions from this document. As I said I am not qualified to read this information.
Are you really so foolhardy that you keep coming up with your 'statistical proof' consisting out of one single google trends link that I already adressed with five of my own four pages ago? Either explain why your one bit of data is more important than five others coming from the same source, provide us with other sources, or admit you're wrong.
Last try...
I already did dude. You failed to respond to my reply to yours. And your last try expired when you stopped developing maps completely. I gained "more tries" - as you so put it - when I got back into it. I've already stated my reasons for doing so.
Further more to the point. You have failed to provide any viable solutions to our current issue. You will never succeed in business with your mentality. You don't like how customers think? Great!
Get over it or get out. You are never changing customers. They have something you need and you are trying to convince them to want your product. and they know it. They will be so cruel as to taunt you about it. Either do the work for them (hence why they are paying you in the first place) or fail.
Whether or not you claim that I'm wrong is irrelevant. All along I've been trying to find and get solutions implemented. All you seem to be doing is bitching about it.
Go on ahead and just keep trying to be right. Heck you may actually slip something convincing in. It won't matter though, until you can provide a reasonable and particle solution to the problem your quest to win a petty forum argument means jack .
And you keep one very important point in mind. Very few people in the entire community, active, inactive, left or otherwise have done as much as me to actually get things changed. I hunted down and pestered developers, I did everything I could to hit the right nails on the head. And you just sat on your fat %%%. Did I go about it all the right way? Probably not. Only those who put as much or more effort as I did into recovering the scene have any moral right to judge me on that count. And that is most certainly not you.
Were my solutions, many of them I listed, actually going to work? We will never know because they were never tried. Was the fact that were not tried due to the methods I used to get the point across? Once again we will never know. Blizzard had no intention of committing the kind of resources and effort any of my solutions. Or for that matter anyone else's either.
Edit: Stray thought just occurred to me.
How many of you were claiming that everything was doing fine and the scene would succeed back when I was predicting that it would fail? I seem to recall Mozared was one of them...
Actually come to think of it anyone who dug in and kept saying the scene would succeed should not have anything they say taken seriously. Track records must be remembered...
Now lets watch you be a fanboy and claim that this statistical proof backing up my statement doesn't matter for what ever reason you can pull out of your *.
If you poked out your eyes you wouldn't be missing much more than you already are. All you are doing is trolling on behalf of Blizzard.
Don't worry! You already won. No need to keep trolling. Blizzard is done working on Battle.net. The scene is at it's absolute minimum and this is summer (almost over for me). You got what you have been so desperately trolling for all along, a dead Blizzard custom modding scene. StarCraft 2 is the last game that will have one of any considerable size. Once WarCraft 3's fire finally burns out, it will be the end of it. The reason? The people who made up the scene, some of them around for the full 10 years are going to leave. The accumulated knowledge and experience is the biggest loss here. Not just in mechanics, but also game design. All of the hard lessons many have learned are going to have to be re-learned by a new community.
If Blizzard wants it back they are going to have to spend a lot of money and effort on it. Since that they have admitted early on that custom map search system sucks and yet did nothing for 2 years it is safe to claim that the entire decline was done willingly and with full knowledge on Blizzard's part.
Regardless of what graphics "improvements" they have made, the fact is that those changes were largely useless. They've been wasted on a game that isn't growing.
StarCraft 2 should have as large or bigger player base at this point as when it was released. Its player base, for the most part, have already been playing some blizzard RTS for at least 3 straight years.
StarCraft 2 was supposed to be a golden age that never happened. They are focusing on E-Sports. Besides South Korea it isn't a safe investment. Furthermore in South Korea the E-Sports scene is a complete prop. The real reason it ever got that big has as much to do with shielding South Korea's youth from North Korean communist propaganda.
The viewer base for the largest tournament was under 150k viewers. Still a good number, but not a growing viewer base.
Jack you are forgetting a major issue. So is Eitmr (who appears to be on the wrong website entirely).
This system you are referring to that isn't at fault was only implemented around last November, 2012.
That means the last parts of 2010 went by, 2011 blew completely and almost all of 2012 before anything useful was done. And if you count WoL Beta where the potential flaws were already being pointed out by some you find yourself with roughly 2 solid years of Blizzard not given a rats *. Whatever excuse you can make on behalf of Blizzard does no hold when you count that they had 2 solid years to fix it.
90% of all map development was tried before 1.5 came out. Most of the mappers had already gone before 1.5 came out. No I'm not saying one of the issues you guys are claiming may have not cropped up at some point even it if was fix. My point is the community nor the mod makers were even given the chance to fail.
I can't afford reading every post anymore, so I can't really participate on anything else, but this is unrealistic. Blizzard, even after their "arcade overhaul", never supported the view that they were wrong to begin with. They still don't. With so many people ranting about SC2 and D3 they still keep the same tone in everything they say, and they won't change it.
With so many ladder players hating David Kim for the path SC2 ladder has taken, they still act like nothing is happening. Seriously, just check the post on any balance update thread. A good part of them isn't about the exact changes at all but the way the game plays. So if we consider they focus their attention on esports we should at least see a different reaction from what we have seen for the arcade complaints.
I could go on with suggestions on how to improve, but we all had these same suggestions years ago. The damage has been done, Greedyvision/Blizzard is what it is. You could ask me why I'm still around, and my answer is: I never modded to get popular, I mod because I like to see the result. I modded SC1 and never released what I created except for a single custom unit sprite. So the size of the player base doesn't matter to me.
Realism wasn't a requirement I put in there. I was just saying what I think would do some good. Whether Blizzard will do it or not... Well since their activity over the last 3 years on this matter is something along the lines of "jack " whether a suggestion is realistic or not makes absolutely no difference.
What are all these debates accomplishing? Nothing right? Because you are dead on with one of you points. Blizzard still doesn't think it's their fault.
We've seen how many business in this recession go bankrupt and more than a few have said it wasn't "their fault". Well their competition faced the same problems, any many of them are still around and even growing.
So Blizzard doesn't think it's their fault? Great! They, like so many others, can go bankrupt believing that. Now I'm not saying Blizzard is going to go bankrupt. After all it isn't even Blizzard by itself any more. Odds are Activision-Blizzard (the parent company) will probably just shut them down if they start losing too much money.
Business is a harsh world of sharks. Blizzard is still stuck in the 90's in their minds. Whether or not the player base became worse is obviously being contested. What cannot be contested is that they have refused to adapt to the situation. If you think the arcade can still recover somehow, more power to you. If you think it cannot, then get a petition started with curse to shut down this website.
First of all, this. Alot of the featured maps on the Arcade also offer completely new playstyles, for examples the Battleship and Warship maps that werent possible in WC3, to a lesser extend maps like Trail of Zeal and TOFU. And lets not forget all those small funmaps that are made only possible by the capabilites of the SC2 editor.
All your arguments seem to be based on premature hate on the Arcade. As it stands now, I think the Arcade is a great system: You can get every map played that you want, seeing how alot of people actually use the open lobby system and thats all that matters. Its probably better than WC3 map system.
As it is right now, it is probably over-all better than what Battle.net 1.0 and the stock WarCraft 3 editor offered. I hear the 3rd party editors were better than Galaxy Editor.
The trouble is the required fix came 2 years too late. In that Moz and so many of us are not wrong. At this point Blizzard is going to have to do every more if they want the arcade to have any real chance. Its the usual price for putting stuff off.
"Quote from FockeWulf: Go
Now about how active the early StarCraft 2 scene really was. I agree plenty of people were leaving. Even then maps were still racking upwards of 30,000 hours. People started quitting from square one because of the popularity system. They couldn't play the maps they wanted to play. Its a design failure and the responsibility for creating and fixing it is Blizzard's.
We agree on what happened, but we disagree on the reasoning. Let me put it like this. I'll give you a stack of cards and tell you to invent a completely new card game for me to play. Meanwhile I'll wait around for you to come up with something with nine palls who are really into card games. I assure you that you won't be able to come up with anything without one of my nine palls saying "that game exists already, it's known as French Poker/Blackjack/Hearts/Indonesian Remi/WhatHaveYou". When my palls get tired of waiting and take off, who do I blame for the failure? You? The fact that you brought a really ugly set of cards? Or perhaps the fact that it's incredibly hard to come up with new card games considering how many have been thought up over the ages?"
If this argument were valid, then there wouldn't be any poker tournaments today. You are completely missing the point that not everything has to be new. In fact almost nothing that we call "new" is in fact new. The new thing, when it comes out, always looks like the old one that it replaces after all. Fundamental rule of selling any invention.
So can I come up with a new card game? No. And I don't need to. The old stuff, usually with a twist works just fine. Nearly all RTS games follow the same general flow, the same general gameplay, the same general concepts.
It really sounds like you are saying that each time a mod comes out it has to create a new genre. You are expecting another DotA. DotA was not in any major way not original (several other similar games came before it). DotA had some interesting new twists but that's all.
If you seriously think novelty is all that matters then why do you stick around? You really can't have that kind of novelty in a mod without a complete total conversion. In fact why are games like Nexus was and Desert Strike the most popular after all this time?
Now what's the pattern? Oh that's right they are familiar. There is hardly, if any novelty involved. But wait a second. What about all those shooters and such that Bounty came up with? You know he eventually got very close? But wait... the concept was too novel. I mean trying to make a 3d parody of Tron?
The popularity data tells the tale. Players didn't want novelty. They didn't want a completely new game type. They wanted the familiar stuff. Maybe with some new twists, but nothing completely out of the blue. All those shooters and other games failed not only because of Blizzard (thank you Battle.net for unnecessary imposed delay), but because they were too far out of the norm of StarCraft 2.
What about DotA? If you were there then you would have known that most of the DotA players started out as melee. In fact the key to it's success was that half of it was copied directly from WarCraft 3 melee. It was familiar and therefore an attractive game.
You seem to think that game design evolution is a fast process. That every new game must be completely new. It doesn't work that way. It doesn't in industry and it doesn't here. Completely new and unfamiliar concepts always fail in favor of the old methods unless they are similar to the old method.
I mean look at the most recent Microsoft blunder, Windows 8. Uses an almost completely different interface layout from Windows... 95 through 7. And guess what? Microsoft got to change the GUI back to the old version and release it as Windows 8.1. Its no different here. You cannot win against human nature. You just have to cope with it.
Ok so it was in April that the jump occurred. That is another jump right after it that that indicates the patch. Lets see in April there was... oh school was starting to come out for the summer. College first probably (my semesters end in April), then later primary. So my point still stands. People did in fact check back. Except that 1.3.5 wasn't out yet. Instead they were presented the same popularity system. By the time 1.3.5 came out they had all already written it off. Thank you for pointing that out. My overall point is even stronger than it was before.
So the correct read again reinforces my main point.
Was I a part of the SC1 and WC3 mod scenes? No not in any major way. But I did play customs throughout much of both games life spans.
And it is you who does not know what you are talking about. Not only did WarCraft 3 not bring more than a little bit to the table. And nearly every other successful game borrowed at least a good share of its components directly from melee play.
Your whole argument is based around a false concept. That people always want something new. To a tiny degree you are right. People want it to feel new. But in reality its mostly the same as before. A little bit changes each time. So happens in each mod. So happens in each game. People prefer familiarity to a completely new concept. Nearly all of the successful mods in any game were successful because they were familiar. Just a slight twist here and there.
Now another hole to punch in your argument.
This is the... what'th thread that has broken out about what happened? The same arguments are run over and over again?
And lets be realistic. What is going to have to change for the arcade to truly recover? I don't buy the idea that nothing can be done. If you do, then Curse would be smart to close this enterprise because it's clearly become a waste of money and resources. The server capacity would be better spent elsewhere.
So instead how about you come up with a list of what will make the scene recover? I doesn't matter if they are practical, although it helps. If you seriously think the players are at fault then obviously you think that the solution is to change the players right? Change normal human behavior right?
I'll get the ball rolling. Here is my list.
Blizzard needs to fundamentally shift their policy to allocate sufficient resources to the arcade scene.
Blizzard needs to higher a good-sized group of map makers and offer cash prizes to others to remake a those classis maps people want to see.
Blizzard needs to implement a responsive shooter system into native StarCraft 2 to support further map development in that arena.
Blizzard needs to hire art interns (because they are cheaper and they get experience this way) to make models that the arcade mod makers want for their maps.
Blizzard needs to actually release the art tools.
Blizzard needs to hire some prominent mod maker from the current scene (my 2 votes are DrSuperGood and OneTwoSC) to over see and run the scene. This is because any current Blizzard employee both doesn't know what they are doing when it comes to arcade and such an current employee wouldn't get much credibility in light of what Blizzard has pulled so far.
Blizzard needs to redesign the arcade and the entirety of Battle.net 2.0. One major flaw that has been pointed out is that playing the game in any way is still too isolated. Chat needs to be prominent on the player's screen.
Blizzard needs to fix a multitude of bugs and errors in the editor and arcade.
Blizzard needs to bring StarCraft 2 to the level of capability of WarCraft 3. A true naval system needs to be added (boat games are reviving in general) and he path-finding engine needs to be made more flexible to compensate for large groups of units (Like Desert Strike).
Blizzard needs to issue a formal and public apology to all it's customers for what it has pulled with Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2.
Blizzard needs to set a great deal of account issues right.
Blizzard needs to make the spawning system, as it was during the event (not after) a permanent feature of StarCraft 2.
Blizzard needs to implement a Star Wars: Empire a War style galactic campaign map for casual melee players along with splitting gameplay for the casuals into space and land elements.
I've got more but I'm going to stop here. The last 2 were especially good.
Why in the hell was StarCraft 1 able to produce so many "classics"?
The thing you fail to realize is that is not always about what the game itself can and cannot do. Almost every format of custom mod in WarCraft 3 started life in StarCraft 1.
It not almost about how flashy or realistic you can make a unit. People kept enjoying games because of gameplay, not about what was possible or not in the game.
I mean there was of course many, many popular grand strategy maps. There were also many, many RPG's, one of my favorites, every today, being Space Pirate War.
Heck I'm sure you've heard what game the inspiration for DotA right? AoS.
So what if StarCraft 1's editor couldn't do as much as WarCraft 3 or StarCraft 1? People still made plenty of very good mods and plenty of people played them. Heck I went beck a little before StarCraft 2 Beta came out just so I could brush up on melee play. There were still a few new custom maps coming out even after a decade. Heck I checked back into WarCraft 2 and they still had one or two custom mods going.
Just because you have primitive mechanics doesn't mean you can't have creative and fun gameplay. For crying out lead even today one of the most popular games is Tetris. Pray tell me what is extremely complicated about that? Or what about Super Mario? Or the old Mortal Combat? Heck I still have a working N64. My favorite racing game of all time was Star Wars Episode 1: Podracer.
You cannot go around claiming that a gaming scene can't be active just because mechanics are out of date. I mean try these guys:
Forged Alliance Forever.
Its a similar story to ours. They kept the old game alive because the new game, Supreme Commander 2, was seen as crap. Who's fault is that? The developing company.
Now about how active the early StarCraft 2 scene really was. I agree plenty of people were leaving. Even then maps were still racking upwards of 30,000 hours. People started quitting from square one because of the popularity system. They couldn't play the maps they wanted to play. Its a design failure and the responsibility for creating and fixing it is Blizzard's.
People wanted StarCraft 2 to succeed. Many of them still do. Most have given up hope. And after nearly 3 years of neglect, who can rightly blame them? But for a short time. A very short time, there were a lot of players. Google trends for SC2mapster supports this (hey, you wanted numbers right?). And then Google Trends shows another spike for SC2mapster around 1.3.5.
The second peak, around 1.3.5, would probably have been close to the sustainable level had the system been made well in the first place. You can clearly see from the numbers (now you've seen some accurate ones) What happened to the activity of the mod scene. This is what I base my argument on and you cannot say it isn't a credible and concrete source. In fact, its probably the most accurate data outside of Blizzard's own internal data. It's the best anyone can go on.
"SC2 mapping was never as large as WarCraft 3 mapping, from the moment the game was released. It shrunk over the years, sure, but it was never much to begin with. This is why I'm saying you can't really "blame" Blizzard for all this - there's more to it than their mistakes."
I'm going to have to claim that this assumption is incorrect.
First of all, back in WoL Beta the mapping section was more alive than it has been before or since. The smart ones left before StarCraft 2 came out. They saw what the popularity system would do ahead of time. They warned about it. They were ignored. In fact almost everyone was claiming with confidence (myself included) that Blizzard would fix it.
And you are also missing one very large point. Sure it may never be as large as WarCraft 3... if all the mod makers and players actually came from WarCraft 3. Roughly half came from StarCraft 1 though.
And that is where a lot of you seem to be missing the point. At the very early stages of StarCraft 2's life the scene was saturated with the custom mod communities of both WarCraft 3 AND StarCraft 1. That is, combined it was larger than either of the previous game's communities.
StarCraft 1 had a mod scene every big as large and vibrant as WarCraft 3. There were at least as many 3rd party editors made for StarCraft 1 as WarCraft 3. And it lasted for even longer than WarCraft 3's scene ever did.
That is why I keep nailing what happened pre and post 1.3.5. Most were content to wait for a fix. Not more than a year sure but most were watching to see if Blizzard would fix it. 1.3.5 proved to them, in their minds, that Blizzard would never fix it. At least not in time. And they were right. And then games began to be uninstalled.
Now why is the StarCraft mod scene not raising their voice. Well they are, you still see a mod maker who claims to have done work in StarCraft 1.
But if the Galaxy Editor was difficult for the WarCraft 3 people, it was completely alien to the StarCraft 1 mod makers. And since no documentation or tutorials (minus a few, like those made by OneTwoSC. Without him the community may not be alive at all today) were ever made by Blizzard they were left out on a limb. So most of them jumped ship.
You can speculate what was wrong with the community all you want. You may be right, you may be wrong. But the crux is the community was never given even the chance to fail or be at fault.
The popularity system, and the lack of documentation or ease of use in the editor is what did the initial damage. Whatever fault may be of the community, maker and player alike is irrelevant. No one was going to risk the time it took to make a genuinely new and innovative map because the cost of failure, all that work going down the drain, is was and is so high that almost every single mapper that held on decided the tried and true was a better bet that all their work wouldn't be for nothing.
Again its a flaw in the design of the system that was never fixed. And the responsibility for that rests solely in the hands of Blizzard.
StarCraft 2 saw the merging of all of the Blizzard mod communities into a single game. A single community.
0
Probably a fair verdict.
I didn't see anything in there about HotS sales though. That's what chiefly interests me.
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@Triceron: Go
Thank you for letting me know that the much awaited Q2 report was released.
Now, take the following with a grain of salt. I am not going to claim to be a financial expert and am actually able to reliably read what's in the report:
But page 9 of the report, which has the segment revenue breakdown:
@ June 30, 2012: Blizzard revenue was approx. 634 million. Activison revenue was approx. 373 million.
@ June 30, 2013 (this report): Blizzard revenue was approx. 224 million. Activision revenue was approx. 347 million.
The report lists what appears to be a drop of 410 million dollars in revenue from Blizzard from a year ago.
Now as I said I am not going to attempt to draw any finite conclusions from this document. As I said I am not qualified to read this information.
But it could make a good discussion. Comments?
Here is the link: http://investor.activision.com/results.cfm
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Start @ 13:06
Well he can see the need for better custom mods and fixes to Battle.net.
Yes I know its January 29th but much of what he says is still true today. The scene is clearly not getting enough support from Blizzard.
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I already did dude. You failed to respond to my reply to yours. And your last try expired when you stopped developing maps completely. I gained "more tries" - as you so put it - when I got back into it. I've already stated my reasons for doing so.
Further more to the point. You have failed to provide any viable solutions to our current issue. You will never succeed in business with your mentality. You don't like how customers think? Great!
Get over it or get out. You are never changing customers. They have something you need and you are trying to convince them to want your product. and they know it. They will be so cruel as to taunt you about it. Either do the work for them (hence why they are paying you in the first place) or fail.
Whether or not you claim that I'm wrong is irrelevant. All along I've been trying to find and get solutions implemented. All you seem to be doing is bitching about it.
Go on ahead and just keep trying to be right. Heck you may actually slip something convincing in. It won't matter though, until you can provide a reasonable and particle solution to the problem your quest to win a petty forum argument means jack .
And you keep one very important point in mind. Very few people in the entire community, active, inactive, left or otherwise have done as much as me to actually get things changed. I hunted down and pestered developers, I did everything I could to hit the right nails on the head. And you just sat on your fat %%%. Did I go about it all the right way? Probably not. Only those who put as much or more effort as I did into recovering the scene have any moral right to judge me on that count. And that is most certainly not you.
Were my solutions, many of them I listed, actually going to work? We will never know because they were never tried. Was the fact that were not tried due to the methods I used to get the point across? Once again we will never know. Blizzard had no intention of committing the kind of resources and effort any of my solutions. Or for that matter anyone else's either.
Edit: Stray thought just occurred to me.
How many of you were claiming that everything was doing fine and the scene would succeed back when I was predicting that it would fail? I seem to recall Mozared was one of them...
Actually come to think of it anyone who dug in and kept saying the scene would succeed should not have anything they say taken seriously. Track records must be remembered...
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@Eiviyn: Go
I like how you fanboys always seem to forgot evidence presented previously in the same damned thread.
I found the graphs via another source but here it is nice and clean: http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=sc2mapster#q=%22hive%20workshop%22%2C%20sc2mapster&cmpt=q
Now lets watch you be a fanboy and claim that this statistical proof backing up my statement doesn't matter for what ever reason you can pull out of your *.
If you poked out your eyes you wouldn't be missing much more than you already are. All you are doing is trolling on behalf of Blizzard.
Don't worry! You already won. No need to keep trolling. Blizzard is done working on Battle.net. The scene is at it's absolute minimum and this is summer (almost over for me). You got what you have been so desperately trolling for all along, a dead Blizzard custom modding scene. StarCraft 2 is the last game that will have one of any considerable size. Once WarCraft 3's fire finally burns out, it will be the end of it. The reason? The people who made up the scene, some of them around for the full 10 years are going to leave. The accumulated knowledge and experience is the biggest loss here. Not just in mechanics, but also game design. All of the hard lessons many have learned are going to have to be re-learned by a new community.
If Blizzard wants it back they are going to have to spend a lot of money and effort on it. Since that they have admitted early on that custom map search system sucks and yet did nothing for 2 years it is safe to claim that the entire decline was done willingly and with full knowledge on Blizzard's part.
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@Eimtr: Go
Regardless of what graphics "improvements" they have made, the fact is that those changes were largely useless. They've been wasted on a game that isn't growing.
StarCraft 2 should have as large or bigger player base at this point as when it was released. Its player base, for the most part, have already been playing some blizzard RTS for at least 3 straight years.
StarCraft 2 was supposed to be a golden age that never happened. They are focusing on E-Sports. Besides South Korea it isn't a safe investment. Furthermore in South Korea the E-Sports scene is a complete prop. The real reason it ever got that big has as much to do with shielding South Korea's youth from North Korean communist propaganda.
The viewer base for the largest tournament was under 150k viewers. Still a good number, but not a growing viewer base.
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@JacktheArcher: Go
Jack you are forgetting a major issue. So is Eitmr (who appears to be on the wrong website entirely).
This system you are referring to that isn't at fault was only implemented around last November, 2012.
That means the last parts of 2010 went by, 2011 blew completely and almost all of 2012 before anything useful was done. And if you count WoL Beta where the potential flaws were already being pointed out by some you find yourself with roughly 2 solid years of Blizzard not given a rats *. Whatever excuse you can make on behalf of Blizzard does no hold when you count that they had 2 solid years to fix it.
90% of all map development was tried before 1.5 came out. Most of the mappers had already gone before 1.5 came out. No I'm not saying one of the issues you guys are claiming may have not cropped up at some point even it if was fix. My point is the community nor the mod makers were even given the chance to fail.
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Someone hasn't read the title.
And seriously I think this forum is more of what you are after: Your text to link here...
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Realism wasn't a requirement I put in there. I was just saying what I think would do some good. Whether Blizzard will do it or not... Well since their activity over the last 3 years on this matter is something along the lines of "jack " whether a suggestion is realistic or not makes absolutely no difference.
What are all these debates accomplishing? Nothing right? Because you are dead on with one of you points. Blizzard still doesn't think it's their fault.
We've seen how many business in this recession go bankrupt and more than a few have said it wasn't "their fault". Well their competition faced the same problems, any many of them are still around and even growing.
So Blizzard doesn't think it's their fault? Great! They, like so many others, can go bankrupt believing that. Now I'm not saying Blizzard is going to go bankrupt. After all it isn't even Blizzard by itself any more. Odds are Activision-Blizzard (the parent company) will probably just shut them down if they start losing too much money.
Business is a harsh world of sharks. Blizzard is still stuck in the 90's in their minds. Whether or not the player base became worse is obviously being contested. What cannot be contested is that they have refused to adapt to the situation. If you think the arcade can still recover somehow, more power to you. If you think it cannot, then get a petition started with curse to shut down this website.
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As it is right now, it is probably over-all better than what Battle.net 1.0 and the stock WarCraft 3 editor offered. I hear the 3rd party editors were better than Galaxy Editor.
The trouble is the required fix came 2 years too late. In that Moz and so many of us are not wrong. At this point Blizzard is going to have to do every more if they want the arcade to have any real chance. Its the usual price for putting stuff off.
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Any number of Bounty's maps?
DarkRev's first map (before mafia) with a full physics system?
Anything that uses a 3rd or first person camera (take you rpick).
Oh and don't forget loads of hybrid units.
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And you completely blew past my points:
"Quote from FockeWulf: Go Now about how active the early StarCraft 2 scene really was. I agree plenty of people were leaving. Even then maps were still racking upwards of 30,000 hours. People started quitting from square one because of the popularity system. They couldn't play the maps they wanted to play. Its a design failure and the responsibility for creating and fixing it is Blizzard's.
We agree on what happened, but we disagree on the reasoning. Let me put it like this. I'll give you a stack of cards and tell you to invent a completely new card game for me to play. Meanwhile I'll wait around for you to come up with something with nine palls who are really into card games. I assure you that you won't be able to come up with anything without one of my nine palls saying "that game exists already, it's known as French Poker/Blackjack/Hearts/Indonesian Remi/WhatHaveYou". When my palls get tired of waiting and take off, who do I blame for the failure? You? The fact that you brought a really ugly set of cards? Or perhaps the fact that it's incredibly hard to come up with new card games considering how many have been thought up over the ages?"
If this argument were valid, then there wouldn't be any poker tournaments today. You are completely missing the point that not everything has to be new. In fact almost nothing that we call "new" is in fact new. The new thing, when it comes out, always looks like the old one that it replaces after all. Fundamental rule of selling any invention.
So can I come up with a new card game? No. And I don't need to. The old stuff, usually with a twist works just fine. Nearly all RTS games follow the same general flow, the same general gameplay, the same general concepts.
It really sounds like you are saying that each time a mod comes out it has to create a new genre. You are expecting another DotA. DotA was not in any major way not original (several other similar games came before it). DotA had some interesting new twists but that's all.
If you seriously think novelty is all that matters then why do you stick around? You really can't have that kind of novelty in a mod without a complete total conversion. In fact why are games like Nexus was and Desert Strike the most popular after all this time?
Lets see: Desert Strike replaces Desert Strike Nexus Wars replaces Castle Fight.
Now what's the pattern? Oh that's right they are familiar. There is hardly, if any novelty involved. But wait a second. What about all those shooters and such that Bounty came up with? You know he eventually got very close? But wait... the concept was too novel. I mean trying to make a 3d parody of Tron?
The popularity data tells the tale. Players didn't want novelty. They didn't want a completely new game type. They wanted the familiar stuff. Maybe with some new twists, but nothing completely out of the blue. All those shooters and other games failed not only because of Blizzard (thank you Battle.net for unnecessary imposed delay), but because they were too far out of the norm of StarCraft 2.
What about DotA? If you were there then you would have known that most of the DotA players started out as melee. In fact the key to it's success was that half of it was copied directly from WarCraft 3 melee. It was familiar and therefore an attractive game.
You seem to think that game design evolution is a fast process. That every new game must be completely new. It doesn't work that way. It doesn't in industry and it doesn't here. Completely new and unfamiliar concepts always fail in favor of the old methods unless they are similar to the old method.
I mean look at the most recent Microsoft blunder, Windows 8. Uses an almost completely different interface layout from Windows... 95 through 7. And guess what? Microsoft got to change the GUI back to the old version and release it as Windows 8.1. Its no different here. You cannot win against human nature. You just have to cope with it.
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/2983579
Ok so it was in April that the jump occurred. That is another jump right after it that that indicates the patch. Lets see in April there was... oh school was starting to come out for the summer. College first probably (my semesters end in April), then later primary. So my point still stands. People did in fact check back. Except that 1.3.5 wasn't out yet. Instead they were presented the same popularity system. By the time 1.3.5 came out they had all already written it off. Thank you for pointing that out. My overall point is even stronger than it was before.
So the correct read again reinforces my main point.
Was I a part of the SC1 and WC3 mod scenes? No not in any major way. But I did play customs throughout much of both games life spans.
And it is you who does not know what you are talking about. Not only did WarCraft 3 not bring more than a little bit to the table. And nearly every other successful game borrowed at least a good share of its components directly from melee play.
Your whole argument is based around a false concept. That people always want something new. To a tiny degree you are right. People want it to feel new. But in reality its mostly the same as before. A little bit changes each time. So happens in each mod. So happens in each game. People prefer familiarity to a completely new concept. Nearly all of the successful mods in any game were successful because they were familiar. Just a slight twist here and there.
Now another hole to punch in your argument.
This is the... what'th thread that has broken out about what happened? The same arguments are run over and over again?
And lets be realistic. What is going to have to change for the arcade to truly recover? I don't buy the idea that nothing can be done. If you do, then Curse would be smart to close this enterprise because it's clearly become a waste of money and resources. The server capacity would be better spent elsewhere.
So instead how about you come up with a list of what will make the scene recover? I doesn't matter if they are practical, although it helps. If you seriously think the players are at fault then obviously you think that the solution is to change the players right? Change normal human behavior right?
I'll get the ball rolling. Here is my list.
Blizzard needs to fundamentally shift their policy to allocate sufficient resources to the arcade scene. Blizzard needs to higher a good-sized group of map makers and offer cash prizes to others to remake a those classis maps people want to see. Blizzard needs to implement a responsive shooter system into native StarCraft 2 to support further map development in that arena. Blizzard needs to hire art interns (because they are cheaper and they get experience this way) to make models that the arcade mod makers want for their maps. Blizzard needs to actually release the art tools. Blizzard needs to hire some prominent mod maker from the current scene (my 2 votes are DrSuperGood and OneTwoSC) to over see and run the scene. This is because any current Blizzard employee both doesn't know what they are doing when it comes to arcade and such an current employee wouldn't get much credibility in light of what Blizzard has pulled so far. Blizzard needs to redesign the arcade and the entirety of Battle.net 2.0. One major flaw that has been pointed out is that playing the game in any way is still too isolated. Chat needs to be prominent on the player's screen. Blizzard needs to fix a multitude of bugs and errors in the editor and arcade. Blizzard needs to bring StarCraft 2 to the level of capability of WarCraft 3. A true naval system needs to be added (boat games are reviving in general) and he path-finding engine needs to be made more flexible to compensate for large groups of units (Like Desert Strike). Blizzard needs to issue a formal and public apology to all it's customers for what it has pulled with Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2. Blizzard needs to set a great deal of account issues right. Blizzard needs to make the spawning system, as it was during the event (not after) a permanent feature of StarCraft 2. Blizzard needs to implement a Star Wars: Empire a War style galactic campaign map for casual melee players along with splitting gameplay for the casuals into space and land elements.
I've got more but I'm going to stop here. The last 2 were especially good.
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@Mozared: Go
Let me ask you this:
Why in the hell was StarCraft 1 able to produce so many "classics"?
The thing you fail to realize is that is not always about what the game itself can and cannot do. Almost every format of custom mod in WarCraft 3 started life in StarCraft 1.
It not almost about how flashy or realistic you can make a unit. People kept enjoying games because of gameplay, not about what was possible or not in the game.
I mean there was of course many, many popular grand strategy maps. There were also many, many RPG's, one of my favorites, every today, being Space Pirate War.
Heck I'm sure you've heard what game the inspiration for DotA right? AoS.
So what if StarCraft 1's editor couldn't do as much as WarCraft 3 or StarCraft 1? People still made plenty of very good mods and plenty of people played them. Heck I went beck a little before StarCraft 2 Beta came out just so I could brush up on melee play. There were still a few new custom maps coming out even after a decade. Heck I checked back into WarCraft 2 and they still had one or two custom mods going.
Just because you have primitive mechanics doesn't mean you can't have creative and fun gameplay. For crying out lead even today one of the most popular games is Tetris. Pray tell me what is extremely complicated about that? Or what about Super Mario? Or the old Mortal Combat? Heck I still have a working N64. My favorite racing game of all time was Star Wars Episode 1: Podracer.
You cannot go around claiming that a gaming scene can't be active just because mechanics are out of date. I mean try these guys: Forged Alliance Forever.
Its a similar story to ours. They kept the old game alive because the new game, Supreme Commander 2, was seen as crap. Who's fault is that? The developing company.
Now about how active the early StarCraft 2 scene really was. I agree plenty of people were leaving. Even then maps were still racking upwards of 30,000 hours. People started quitting from square one because of the popularity system. They couldn't play the maps they wanted to play. Its a design failure and the responsibility for creating and fixing it is Blizzard's.
People wanted StarCraft 2 to succeed. Many of them still do. Most have given up hope. And after nearly 3 years of neglect, who can rightly blame them? But for a short time. A very short time, there were a lot of players. Google trends for SC2mapster supports this (hey, you wanted numbers right?). And then Google Trends shows another spike for SC2mapster around 1.3.5.
Don't believe me? See for yourself: http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=sc2mapster#q=sc2mapster&cmpt=q
The second peak, around 1.3.5, would probably have been close to the sustainable level had the system been made well in the first place. You can clearly see from the numbers (now you've seen some accurate ones) What happened to the activity of the mod scene. This is what I base my argument on and you cannot say it isn't a credible and concrete source. In fact, its probably the most accurate data outside of Blizzard's own internal data. It's the best anyone can go on.
And here is the story of the WarCraft 3 mod scene: http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=sc2mapster#q=%22hive+workshop%22&cmpt=q
Oh ya and about the StarCraft 1 scene: http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=sc2mapster#q=star%20edit&cmpt=q
And while we are at it how about the diplomacy scene that some of have claimed doesn't exist: http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=sc2mapster#q=diplomunion&cmpt=q
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Little bit of an update:
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"SC2 mapping was never as large as WarCraft 3 mapping, from the moment the game was released. It shrunk over the years, sure, but it was never much to begin with. This is why I'm saying you can't really "blame" Blizzard for all this - there's more to it than their mistakes."
I'm going to have to claim that this assumption is incorrect.
First of all, back in WoL Beta the mapping section was more alive than it has been before or since. The smart ones left before StarCraft 2 came out. They saw what the popularity system would do ahead of time. They warned about it. They were ignored. In fact almost everyone was claiming with confidence (myself included) that Blizzard would fix it.
And you are also missing one very large point. Sure it may never be as large as WarCraft 3... if all the mod makers and players actually came from WarCraft 3. Roughly half came from StarCraft 1 though.
And that is where a lot of you seem to be missing the point. At the very early stages of StarCraft 2's life the scene was saturated with the custom mod communities of both WarCraft 3 AND StarCraft 1. That is, combined it was larger than either of the previous game's communities.
StarCraft 1 had a mod scene every big as large and vibrant as WarCraft 3. There were at least as many 3rd party editors made for StarCraft 1 as WarCraft 3. And it lasted for even longer than WarCraft 3's scene ever did.
That is why I keep nailing what happened pre and post 1.3.5. Most were content to wait for a fix. Not more than a year sure but most were watching to see if Blizzard would fix it. 1.3.5 proved to them, in their minds, that Blizzard would never fix it. At least not in time. And they were right. And then games began to be uninstalled.
Now why is the StarCraft mod scene not raising their voice. Well they are, you still see a mod maker who claims to have done work in StarCraft 1.
But if the Galaxy Editor was difficult for the WarCraft 3 people, it was completely alien to the StarCraft 1 mod makers. And since no documentation or tutorials (minus a few, like those made by OneTwoSC. Without him the community may not be alive at all today) were ever made by Blizzard they were left out on a limb. So most of them jumped ship.
You can speculate what was wrong with the community all you want. You may be right, you may be wrong. But the crux is the community was never given even the chance to fail or be at fault.
The popularity system, and the lack of documentation or ease of use in the editor is what did the initial damage. Whatever fault may be of the community, maker and player alike is irrelevant. No one was going to risk the time it took to make a genuinely new and innovative map because the cost of failure, all that work going down the drain, is was and is so high that almost every single mapper that held on decided the tried and true was a better bet that all their work wouldn't be for nothing.
Again its a flaw in the design of the system that was never fixed. And the responsibility for that rests solely in the hands of Blizzard.
StarCraft 2 saw the merging of all of the Blizzard mod communities into a single game. A single community.