Welp, that was a surprise announcement.

Sauce: Near the end, will get exact minutes when the stream shuts down.

Presumably this means they're going to try and turn the platform into their own version of Steam for Activision games, the same way EA did with Origins (and we all know how that went).

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This strikes me as a bad idea but let's see how it turns out.

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My Worldbuilding:
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I think Dru and everyone else saying the same thing are right. We're looking at the beginning of Activision turning Bnet into their steam/origin.

I think it's a wait and see overlal, but for the people who sell tokens or are insanely rich in WoW it's definitely a good thing. They've already said that you'll be able to purchase Destiny with bnet balance. The token sellers will be making fucktons of easy money as token prices are likely about to jump, and the rich will be able to buy all of their Activision games without spending their own cash.

Those who rely on tokens for game-time, on the other hand, might have it rough.

Not really​, Acitivision pretty much has nothing to do with that, except of being intermediary.
People from Blizzard were involved in the creation of Destiny and even considering to buy Bungie. So, no surprise what they finally get it someway.

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I'm surprised it took this long for Activision to encroach so directly on battle.net.

I don't like it, but, whatever.

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You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake.

hahaha

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Fucking Epic :X

lol @ tokens raising by 3k / hour

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Yeah, took them long enough.

Not sure it's any good for Blizzard though. So far they had control over the platform, as in, the products there were all theirs, and followed a common ground regarding quality, aesthethics, etc.

Another similar case would be Nintendo, but they're pretty big, and their products still rule their shop even with all the third parties.

Blizzard could be damaging its brand by putting their game next to all the Activision garbage. Let Blizzard customers get into some Activision product thinking they'll find the same quality, and find how well that turns out.

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Metzen: They are one of the ancient races of Northrend that we haven't spoken of before... because we hadn't made them up before. (laughter)

~Main: Expansion theorycrafting, Expansions list, The Age of Nightmare, Empire of the Tides (coming soon)~
~Fan ficton: Anachronos Journey: The Timeless Heir~ ~Geography of continents series: Old Kalimdor (original), Pandaria~
~Locations as zones series: Azjol-Nerub, Barrow Deeps, Zul'Aman, Demon Hunter zone, Caverns of Time~

yeah. WoW token prices are going through the roof.

quarter milion gold for a token price.

Meh, they can't really make me lose faith in them more than I already have.

So in a perverse sense this can only work out for me because it doing bad won't affect me but it turning out well might.

Feel the same way, they lost their soul ages ago.

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“Listen to the Chair Leg of Truth! It does not lie!”

As I said earlier in this thread, this will be great for token sellers.

I bought $200 worth of tokens today and have no regrets. This is almost certainly the highest they'll go for a long while. Not cashing in on it would just be silly. Someone else I know bought $500 worth.

I preordered it but now that I can use my BNET Balance, I may go ahead and just do that. I think its a pretty cool idea doing this.
Is this a slippery slope? Possibly. As long as we don't see CoD on there Im ok with it

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^

This is going to end in tears.

You guys are funny.

Its probably got more to do with Battle.net having top notch anti-cheating tools and they plan on introducing competitive pvp in destiny

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Fucking Epic :X

Getting a good reputation (like Blizzard and Nintendo) takes time, a lot of time. It can be lost very quickly, and I don't think Blizzard has the means to recover it, since they're mostly living off the brand built by others, now long gone.

Activision's sales will improve for a while thanks to the platform merge, but they will eventually return to normal. Blizzard sales will take the blow though. They will go on to become another corporate whore, like BioWare and many others before them. This won't happen tomorrow, it could take 10 years for all I care, but I firmly believe it's a sealed fate now.

Their games will become a minority in Battle.net as well, don't even doubt about it, and that will affect their image, for the worse. In this new platform, we could even get to see some abominations like "Call of Duty: StarCraft". Yeah, laugh at me. See who laughs last.

I consider this is the point of no return for Blizzard Entertainment, and I'm dead serious. If you love this company, good luck. I'm really sorry for you, and I mean it for real. It will be slow and painful, and no one deserves that. It's how things work with Activision, milk and move.

Aaay lmao.

Sweet summer child.

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Metzen: They are one of the ancient races of Northrend that we haven't spoken of before... because we hadn't made them up before. (laughter)

~Main: Expansion theorycrafting, Expansions list, The Age of Nightmare, Empire of the Tides (coming soon)~
~Fan ficton: Anachronos Journey: The Timeless Heir~ ~Geography of continents series: Old Kalimdor (original), Pandaria~
~Locations as zones series: Azjol-Nerub, Barrow Deeps, Zul'Aman, Demon Hunter zone, Caverns of Time~

I agree this will probably be bad but you guys are acting like Blizz is something special right now. Imo their games are nothing special anymore, the story is generally on the okay-mediocre-crap spectrum and even the gameplay is no longer great since imo they are now overmonetizing things and it affects their design choices.

I guess the "there is always something worse" applies but this is hardly the case of graffitiing the Mona Lisa.

I know. Their decline started with WotLK. Yeah, great expansion, but it was the first time they started half-assing, rushing, and scrapping content. The old Blizzard would have delayed release to deliver a good product, yet they didn't. Remember Crystalsong Forest? Azjol-Nerub? Path of the Titans? Dance Studio? They crossed the line here the first time.

Then it came SC2, their big first fiasco. Was it a good game? Kinda, average at most. The fiasco is not because of that, though. We got Facebook bullshit connect at release, yet it took 6 months to get chat channels. The custom map community was ruined by the popularity-based lobby system for custom games. Took them years to change it, and when they did there was no one left anyway. And don't forget their original plan was to create a marketplace of real money transactions for map creators, lol. Those who tried going back to W3 couldn't either, because it was killed too through a tactical "feature patch" that broke many of the classic favorites. The campaign had shitty writing and shitty story, and the trilogy approach was pretty cash-grabby, and felt they cut the game to deliver it later through expansions. Not to talk the expansions took too long, and you can't have a proper eSport without a finished game. Speaking of eSports, they killed the SC1 scene to shove in SC2, and it failed miserably. Now there's neither SC2 nor SC1.

Their second big fiasco came next, D3. Even shittier story than SC2, barely any procedural maps, too short and repetitive, dumbed-down with attribute point customization gone, simplified mechanics due to adapting it for consoles (conspiracy later proven true), error 37 the first weeks, and worse of all, the combination of the Real Money Action House together with a purposefully and dishonestly broken endgame loot, that forced players to either exploit or spend money to progress.

Things kept going downhill since WotLK. And no, I don't blame Activision. I blame Blizzard, and Blizzard alone. They became greedy, and that lead them to join Activision.

As you see above, Blizzard has been shit since long ago. Their newer games, even if "good", are still cash grabbing machines with no depth, no customization, and no variety. Some pretty graphics here and there, and that's it. Almost like they went from making complex tabletop games, to making casino machines with flashy lights.

Still, I think everyone of us had a small glimmer of hope, that maybe, some day, the good old days could be back, even if the original developers are gone. Not anymore. Make an effort to consider all their franchises dead, because they are, and whatever crappy sequels they come up with won't live to their name. Games like Warcraft 4, if they ever happen, will be an absolute abomination, and you'd better stay away from them.

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Metzen: They are one of the ancient races of Northrend that we haven't spoken of before... because we hadn't made them up before. (laughter)

~Main: Expansion theorycrafting, Expansions list, The Age of Nightmare, Empire of the Tides (coming soon)~
~Fan ficton: Anachronos Journey: The Timeless Heir~ ~Geography of continents series: Old Kalimdor (original), Pandaria~
~Locations as zones series: Azjol-Nerub, Barrow Deeps, Zul'Aman, Demon Hunter zone, Caverns of Time~

You should check out HS, it is very symptomatic of everything wrong with Blizz.

For one the game is painfully freemium. You gotta put in a lot of money (hundreds of dollars) or huge amounts of your time to get anywhere (and probably both).

And game design is riddled with issues directly connected with their attempts to maximize profits. Like no card trading whatsoever which means you gotta earn every card on your own and leaves you at the mercy of pack RNG. Packs themselves are terribly rigged and you have to buy hundreds of them to get anywhere near a full collection. And worst of all they introduced Standard mode which A) they promised they would not and B) effectively removes a year worth of cards every year which implicitly means you have to buy more of the newest packs to remain competitive... and I could go on but you get the picture.

This was a game made initially by seven devs. And now it is probably earning more than WoW with minimal investments. The future is here boys

I stopped playing Blizzard games 1 month after Diablo III. Gave them a second chance, and came back for StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, but I just pretty much played the campaign and left again.

Will probably never bother with them again. I still follow part of their works for mere game-design reasons, but that's it.

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Metzen: They are one of the ancient races of Northrend that we haven't spoken of before... because we hadn't made them up before. (laughter)

~Main: Expansion theorycrafting, Expansions list, The Age of Nightmare, Empire of the Tides (coming soon)~
~Fan ficton: Anachronos Journey: The Timeless Heir~ ~Geography of continents series: Old Kalimdor (original), Pandaria~
~Locations as zones series: Azjol-Nerub, Barrow Deeps, Zul'Aman, Demon Hunter zone, Caverns of Time~

Don't get destiny 2.

I have the first one and its pretty lackluster. Rise of Iron was pretty disappointing and Bungie is absolute dogshit at balancing PvP.

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