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Ex-World of Warcraft developer's thread about China and the gaming industry

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408 points seapunk | 1 comments | 09 Oct 19 10:27 UTC | HN request time: 0.264s | source
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euix ◴[09 Oct 19 13:11 UTC] No.21202809[source]▶
blizzard hasn't made a good game for about 15 years now. When I was kid Blizzard produced games like warcraft 2 and Diablo. That all ended when they discovered the cash cow of mmorpg. The last unequivocally old blizzard quality game was frozen throne.
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rejschaap ◴[09 Oct 19 13:31 UTC] No.21202998[source]▶
People have a tendency to remember games from their childhood more favorably. World of Warcraft and StarCraft 2 were very high quality games. Obviously the business model had to change, we don't live in the 90's shareware world anymore.
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dragonwriter ◴[09 Oct 19 13:36 UTC] No.21203045[source]▶
> we don't live in the 90's shareware world anymore.

We do more than any other time since the 1990s; the modern F2P + IAP model is pretty much exactly a resurrection of the 1990s shareware model taking full advantage of low-friction online payments.

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1. bsharitt ◴[09 Oct 19 13:56 UTC] No.21203250[source]▶
I disagree, there's often no "full version" of these free to play games to buy. There are a few developers that do the in app purchases to unlock the full version, and it seemed to a more popular business model in the early days of mobile app stores, but now they seem to be drowned in a sea of games that rely on an unending stream of in app purchases that incrementally move you forward.