PC Gaming

I still play warcraft 3 (non shitified version), StarCraft 2, diablo and the diablo2 remaster.

But yeah all their modern stuff is balls.

Hoping Microsoft will use the IP better.

D2r is scratching the itch

D3 was fun too, but that was also a long time ago. D4 was pretty cool while leveling, but fell off hard once I finished the story. The end game there is pretty underwhelming. It felt like work, not play.

SC:BW, Vanilla WoW, WC3 + Frozen Throne, D3: Reaper of Souls (the original had um... RMAHitis that needed fixing), SC2 - campaign pretty good, multiplayer had various problems until several patches into legacy of the void, but overall pretty fun. Oh, and Overwatch was a blast when it first launched, and I mean before the competitive scene was pushed, before the forced que roll BS and all of that. Honestly, one of the best parts of Overwatch 2 is the open role que - where you get decent and interesting comps, and usually have balanced outcomes until change is needed - it's just fun chaos. Just don't pay attention to the battlepasses.

If you play casually, and don't treat the games as forever games - blizzard makes decent stuff... mostly. The issue is, under activision, and especially in the last few years, the push for hyper monetization has left a sour note in everyones mouth... and it's showing. But we love the IP, and we want to play through the story.

This is where the hope for Microsoft leadership comes in. Microsoft wants gamers - they want to expand the player base. And functionally, this means while monetization is useful for funding development, being aggressive with monetization is generally bad. And really, we have seen in the last year or so at least from the WoW team some pretty awesome changes in the systems, with a renewed focus on evergreen content, and persuing making the game more fun to just like... play.

Is Blizzard perfect? No. They have had some missteps. Should you pre-order a game? No. Pretty much never. But Blizzard has not completely flunked out to a point where disregarding their game releases (like Ubisoft) is warranted just yet. And given what we have seen from blizzcon, from various interviews, well: I'd say - while you should take everything said with a pinch of salt, I'm optimistic blizzard after a half decade or so of making some lacluster products, is heading in the right direction. Because lets face it: Microsoft wants the Late 90's to early 2000's blizzard, not the Activision blizzard. Because late 90's to early 2000's blizzard kicked ass and chewed bubblegum while swimming in cash that players wouldn't stop throwing at them.

And so we get to a truth: Nostalgia - a LOT of people grew up on blizzard games. We met lifelong friends, formed relationships with people around the globe, ran into people from all walks of life, learned to be better leaders, better team mates. We Grew up.

Blizzard isn't just another company - they created a gold standard of RTS, they established ARPG's as a Genre, and they took the concept of an MMO and created something that resonated with people across generations, income brackets, career paths, and so on.

To FINALLY ACTUALLY SIMPLY ANSWER THE QUESTION

Many people buy blizzard games because well, these IP's are our childhood. They are our pass times of happiness when things were stressful, or not so great. They were the way we connected with people we couldn't feasibly go and meet up with.

For awhile Blizzard and playing their games wasn't just entertainment - it was, in a way, a life style. The Clans of BW, the Servers of D2, and the Guilds of WoW.

And hell, I learned I needed to grow the hell up, from a guy who told it to me straight when no one in my actual damn life did. Ya, I've largely moved on, the guild fell apart, we went different ways. But there will ALWAYS be a place in memory and the heart for those people.

HOTS is the only current Blizz game worth playing but it is really good. I think people play that then think their other games must be good quality