Is MS buying Blizzard bad or good for Blizzard?

It cant be much worse than it is with blizzard. To the point that MS buying them really sounds appealing to me.

Meh, Rare ended up not being great so I'm not holding my breath here

It’s the greatest thing that could of happen. Now everyone will forget all the bad stick that was happening with them. Microsoft just saved our favorite games.

@mesome713: I hope your right.

StarCraft 3 on gamepass day 1

Scrap current retail WOW and get working on wow 2.

A man can dream.

Warcraft is dead, Diablo and Starcraft are on life support, Overwatch 2 is in dev hell. All the talent is long gone, Blizzard has nowhere to go but down.

@fedor: I felt the exact same. But I think this move might give them a chance to steer coarse. Activision was giving unreasonable time frames for blizzards releases. Why diablo rehash was missing features, why wow went straight MTX, why reforge was a rushed turd.

Who knows, maybe this can save them. Before the Activision merger they were no where near this bad.

Well with all the sex scandal going on, I’m not sure

have you not played sea of thieves?

Yeah, gives them a chance to regroup after al lot of bad press, and MS will probably allow more creative freedom with looser time constraints than Activision did.

Overall I think this much consolidation is a bad thing, but Blizzard might start making better games again at least.

I think it’ll be good for Blizzard. Things have turned into a real ****show lately with Activision so I don’t see things getting any worse from there now.

I think Blizzard has been circling the drain quality-wise for some time now.

Microsoft genuinely seems to want to make games, so I think it might be a good thing for the games? Maybe they'll release some more games. Would love to see a World of Starcraft or that Ghost action game.

Let's just say I'd rather work under MS than Activision, though I'd prefer to not work under either of them.

We will have to do like everyone else, that is we have to wait and see.

Hopefully the MS acquisition forces an overhaul of Blizzard's negligent HR situation, frankly don't see how it could be any worse.

Good for Bobby Kotick, same thing as usual for employees.

I'm really hopeful about this actually. It means more to me than the COD acquisition. Yes it's funny to bash the cows with COD, but its not really a game I care too much about end of the day. Warcraft, starcraft though mean way more to me. The fact that MS is one of the biggest rts developers around could mean good things for blizzard to get back in touch with their roots. Also the fact that pos Bobby isn't calling the shots is that much better. I feel like blizzard will get more breathing room to create again.

@girlusocrazy: They have done alright with tactics games, halo wars 2, gears tactics, and AOE we're all pretty solid games and made well for PC.

MS has done a pretty good job making games for both console and PC, Blizzard games are usually PC first. If anyone was to aquire them, I think MS makes the most sense honestly. I will say MS hasn't made an MMO, I just realized they have Bethesda and elder scrolls online, kinda wild MS aquired 2 of the most popular MMOs in less than a year. Wow and ESO are 2 of the most popular games in this fading genre. I like MMOs, MS should definitely push making a better WOW.

@blaznwiipspman1: agreed if anyone can do these PC oriented games like Diablo, StarCraft, WoW with blizzard. I think MS is actually a really good fit for them.that Bobby guy will be let go and Phil taking the reigns. Could be shit but then again blizzard is already in the shit. I'm optimistic, I hope they help save these franchises, even if it is out of just wanting solid content for gamepass

We shall see. I think one reason Activision did what they did to Blizzard was because of how dependent they were on Call of Duty. Blizzard traditionally had their own things of releasing games "when they're done" and supporting them for years and years, which gives them a stable revenue stream, but doesn't look explosive on the quarterly profits sheet like Activision want.

With Microsoft's far broader content portfolio, I think Microsoft have a lot more room to be patient with Blizzard, which is surely a good thing. They have already shown this patience with Halo Infinite, for example. However, I would temper expectations for things like StarCraft 3 or WarCraft 4; they could happen eventually, but I think they already have a lot on their plate getting Diablo 4 out the door, saving Overwatch 2 and revitalising World of WarCraft.

This is why I said this acquisition makes decidedly less sense to me than Bethesda; as cash-strapped as Bethesda was at the time, their content pipeline was still humming along nicely, and integrating them into Microsoft's ecosystem was smooth. With Activision, I conjured an image of a massive, malfunctioning Rube Goldberg machine that's barely holding itself together, and Microsoft standing there with their overalls clutching a box of tools going; "where the Hell do I even start?"

I mean blizzard haven’t released a game since D3, all we gotten since that is expansions after expansions… so can’t really get any worse I suppose??

We cant know yet. If MS bring back Warcraft series I might be interested in Bliz games again. I don't care about any of the newer stuff they've made thats more recent than the last Starcraft Game, its all been crap IMO.

I think it might be a good thing. I mean, they can't get worse.

It is a "wait and see" for me. I have seen events that the "experts" claim to be "good" only to turn out worse than expected. I really do not want to be too optimistic nor too pessimistic.

from an optimism point of view I want to answer yes, but honestly no way to know, one would hope though they're going to use some of that depth to not only release sequels but maybe spin off projects within those IP's.

I think MS will give them much more creative freedom than the c*nt that ran Activision/Blizzard into the ground for the last 2 decades.

It will definitely be a better work place for employees they will probably have more creative freedom.

Wasnt CoD based on a very old quake engine for a very long time? Perhaps they can now use a much more up to date id Tech engine.

As for Blizzard side, their programs never gave the impression of needing better netcode, but hey, their biggest games right now are an mmo and an fps, that always helps.

@sargentd: While Fedor might be right but I'm more on the positive side with this acquisition. First of, I'm not a fan of major publishers buying other companies unless it's for a good reason, and I can see what MS is doing both Activision/Blizzard a favor by cleaning house...which I hope that's the case. Whilst is good that this could change Activision/Blizzard culture, I wholeheartedly agree with Shinobi602 over at Twitter that the big guys like this have massive potential to just push people out, a publisher that owns multiple studios being bought is alot different than just 1 studio like when Sony bought Insomniac btw.

With that said, I really hope MS can do good with Blizzard stuff such as maybe get a Starcraft 3 now? (My question is, will they finally finish Starcraft Ghost?)

It will be a much needed shot in the arm for all the devs concerned.

I mean they're all gonna need to up their game bigly if they even want a chance to be a 1337 GP dev. :P

@girlusocrazy: interesting that one went under the radar for me, IGN gave it a 9/10. Interesting, I totally missed this game

100% this ... in fact most of what's left in the StarCraft community thinks the same like ... yeah, it can't get any worst and maybe they'll thrown us a bone or two.

They released Hearthstone and Overwatch and they were massive success ... until Blizzard started to mess with the formula.

Thinking that Microsoft buying Blizzard is a "good" thing is just like the now-absurd belief more than twenty years ago that allowing China to join the World Trade Organization would make it into a more freer nation. It turns out to be false and now China is more repressive and dangerous than ever before.

you... you think this is like that? I might regret asking, but can you draw the parallels a bit more clearly? Who's China in this scenario, and what form does their dangerous and repressive status take in Warcraft land?

@xantufrog: it's a funny comparison 🤣🤣🤣

Maybe Blizzard is like South Korea and Activision is North Korea and MS is America trying to stop the spread of Activition completely taking over South Korea.

I dunno this **** is goofy 🤪🤪🤪

@sargentd: lol, alrightalright, I'm starting to feel it

Makes no odds to me personally. Sure a big portion of their fans are already on PC, and doubt that side of the landscape will change.

@madsnakehhh: I said it before, but activision itself can kick rocks. Blizzard is the one acquisition out of this entire deal that means anything to me. And I think a bunch of people would agree with me on that. The possibility of blizzard finally making good games again is a serious blessing in disguise.

I voted yes because it is difficult to make more mistakes than what Blizzard have been doing since its acquisition. But I got this feeling that what made Blizzard good ain't there since 2010 or so.

Could we see a revival of StarCraft Ghost?

@Archangel3371:

I think it's more likely we'll see a revival of that "Battlefield: StarCraft" game that got cancelled instead.

But again, many years down the line, I'm afraid, and by then the calculations might well change. ActiBlizz is currently basically in the opposite state as Bethesda: Bethesda was cash-strapped but otherwise in good shape, while ActiBlizz has plenty of cash but is in crisis. Microsoft have a lot of work to do fixing the mess Bobby Kotick will leave behind.

This. Blizzard was far better on their own. Why would one corporate owner be better than the other?

It's not like Microsoft is on the same level as THQ Nordic or something, truly invested in old IP.

@madrocketeer: I must have missed that “Battlefield: StarCraft” game. That does sound interesting though. 🤔

Huh?

• Age of Empires 4 - 81 on Metacritic
• Age of Empires 3 - 81 on Metacritic
• Halo Wars - 82 on Metacritic
• Halo Wars 2 - 70 on Metacritic

To what MGS MMOs are you referring?

@girlusocrazy: The first three were written by Ensemble Studios, a MSGS first party studio.

You may think Halo Wars is "meh", but it didn't score that way.

@girlusocrazy: Infinite is not overrated, it's awesome - so much fun to play.