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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ristamar" data-source="post: 1140385" data-attributes="member: 1207">"Somebody out there made a joke that Blizzard could put a brick in a box and label it “Brick, the Game” and it would sell a million copies to a million happy fans. Those fans would form fansites and delve into the gameplay, figuring out the best build orders or skill upgrade routes. It would be hailed a success and the best Brick players in the world could win $20,000 at monthly tournaments."The above quote (from a positive FiringSquad review of WC3) touches on how I feel about Blizzard, though my view is a bit more cynical.  Their fans are usually more willing to overlook their mistakes simply because they're Blizzard, makers of WarCraft, WarCraft II, Diablo, and StarCraft, all of which were innovative and instant classics.Lately though, I think Blizzard's been slipping, or perhaps they're simply just not as far ahead of the competition as they once were.Take Diablo II, for instance.  Why did Diablo II run at 640x480?  Certain parts of that game were as ugly as sin, and for as long as it had been in development, it was rather ridiculous.  Maybe they should've devoted a little less time on the cutscenes and more time on the engine.  And then there were the ridiculously unbalanced skill trees.  They did internal playtesting and a beta run, it's not like they could have been absolutely clueless about the dominating power of Corpse Explosion or the Blood Golem/Iron Maiden combo or how underpowered the Poison based skills were for the Necromancer, let alone all the changes/problems with the other classes.  Sure, they released patches, but how does that help if you've already placed loads of points into skills they've changed in the patch?  Don't like how the skill works anymore?  Tough, you're screwed, you have to keep it, that is unless you want kiss the official servers goodbye and be restricted to single player or playing with others who stay with patch release you like.  Or just ditch the character and start all over again.  Yay.The hacking of the servers I can somewhat understand, as people will always find ways to cheat the system, but their server availability was disturbing.  It was a chore to get on the official servers for weeks, as if they didn't know the game was going to be swamped with eager players.Had any other click'n'slash fantasy scavenger hunt had these problems, it'd probably would've been crucified by fans and reviewers alike, but somehow D2 made it through the flames relatively unscathed.Moving on to WarCraft 3.  I can't comment extensively, as I admittedly haven't played it a lot, but I'll give a few thoughts.  WarCraft III, IMO, is not a bad game, but I'd say it's slightly overrated.  It doesn't really do anything that other RTS' hadn't done long before its release (3D engine, Hero units, etc.).  Don't get me wrong, it does have polish and balance, but I believe it receives more attention than competing games in the genre that are as good, if not better, simply because of the Blizzard brand name...   ...Which I suppose is the point of this little rant.</blockquote>

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