How Blizzard distilled Overwatch’s hope from Project Titan’s failure
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There's that quadruped mech again. Hearing a lot of potential rumblings about that maybe being the next character 
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I'm still kinda sad that Project Titan is dead. I saw some concept art way back during... late wrath and Cata, and it looked *great*. WoW 2.0. Overwatch isn't for me, but it looks amazing, and I get why people love it. But... I'd love Titan. WoW is still great, and Legion is very fun, but the basic limitations of WoW's engine are really beginning to show.
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There's that quadruped mech again. Hearing a lot of potential rumblings about that maybe being the next character
I don't know... that large image seems to suggest that isn't a mech, but rather an insectoid creature. There appear to be other little insects on the ground as well. It isn't that visible from the first image, but that same creature is also in the first set's second image (titled "Overwatch is Born"). She's in the back near the center (behind the hulking, red character), and we can see that there is some sort of human-like aspect to that hero character, but still seems to have insect-like appendages. The brown character on the far right also gives off a bit of an insectoid vibe.
Now, if we look at the same "Overwatch is Born" image, we do see what appears to be a quadruped mech on the far right.
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Don't forget that back in late December, early January, a 4chan poster correctly predicted several things, including the Lunar New Year event and Meis skins. They also predicted a "quadruped mech" as an upcoming hero.
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"It seems totally plausible. At any time, I could be represented in the game." - Jeff
This quote is definitely going to be fodder for those who would love to see Jeff in the game, because he has done such a good job leading this team and engaging with the audience. Wrestle with Jeff...
I recall going to the first Blizzcon, and Jeff, who I think was a team lead for World of Warcraft, left a good impression back then, which I still remember more than a decade later, when talking about the challenges and goals for the game (unless someone comes along and points out that I'm totally mis-remembering what team he was on, haha). He does a remarkably good job of communicating in an honest and approachable way, and his skills are apparently equally applicable to both WoW and Overwatch.
I'm certainly disappointed that Titan didn't turn into WoW 2.0, but when I look at where WoW was when I started playing it on release, and where it is today, I think it has already transformed into WoW 2.0. It's not a new game, but it's not the old game either. I'll happily take Overwatch as a side-effect of the failed Titan development, because it's rad.
Edit: I'm not trying to disagree with what Static and Noise said above. I certainly think that a new MMO from scratch would allow Blizzard to do some neat stuff that they won't do with the existing WoW engine (and probably even things they would change with respect to the overall server architecture).
This quote is definitely going to be fodder for those who would love to see Jeff in the game, because he has done such a good job leading this team and engaging with the audience. Wrestle with Jeff...
I recall going to the first Blizzcon, and Jeff, who I think was a team lead for World of Warcraft, left a good impression back then, which I still remember more than a decade later, when talking about the challenges and goals for the game (unless someone comes along and points out that I'm totally mis-remembering what team he was on, haha). He does a remarkably good job of communicating in an honest and approachable way, and his skills are apparently equally applicable to both WoW and Overwatch.
I'm certainly disappointed that Titan didn't turn into WoW 2.0, but when I look at where WoW was when I started playing it on release, and where it is today, I think it has already transformed into WoW 2.0. It's not a new game, but it's not the old game either. I'll happily take Overwatch as a side-effect of the failed Titan development, because it's rad.
Edit: I'm not trying to disagree with what Static and Noise said above. I certainly think that a new MMO from scratch would allow Blizzard to do some neat stuff that they won't do with the existing WoW engine (and probably even things they would change with respect to the overall server architecture).
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I tried to like Overwatch, but for as much as it's a serviceable team based shooter, the community and blind box games Blizzard plays with it have sucked all the fun out of it.
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There's that quadruped mech again. Hearing a lot of potential rumblings about that maybe being the next character
Jeff took time immediately after that slide popped up to address that very speculation, saying that was not the hero everyone thought it was. (or something similar to that)
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The community online seems rather annoying, frankly. Big reason I haven't bothered to buy the game.
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To be frank, I wasn't really attuned to Project Titan's failure as I wasn't really paying attention to Blizzard back in 2013. Overwatch has made me interested in their games again. I enjoy it quite a bit.
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Like a lot of things, the community is what you make of it. I love Overwatch, and 99% of the time I'm playing, the people I play with (I generally go solo, so it's usually internet randos) are good and fun to play with.
It is a large community though, so there are some dickheads around, and it isn't always fun to get locked into a game with one, but that's only ~20 minutes of my time playing the game every so often so I can deal with it.
I used to not be an online mutliplayer kind of person, but I got massively into TF2 back in the day and it helped me break down a lot of my feelings about playing online with other people. Overwatch has managed to continue doing that for me, making me feel comfortable playing in an environment I wasn't otherwise comfortable with.
tl;dr: Overwatch is wonderful and Blizzard are the best. The. Best.
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maybe put - "creating a new game from scratch" - in parenthesis... good game that it is.
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The idylic Santorini/Ilios shot reminded me of possibly the greatest user-made deathmatch map for Dark Forces II, Jedi Knight. It was called "Drazen Isle". It was an island resort with a hotel, beaches, etc. With some surprise like a bee swarm, a stormtrooper sheriff, etc.
Tame I guess by today's standards, but it was awesome back then.
Tame I guess by today's standards, but it was awesome back then.
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Honestly, Overwatch was a spectacular return to form for Blizzard. WoW hasn't been compelling since the novelty wore off ~6 years ago, Diablo 3 didn't even remotely live up to its own hype (despite being a good enough game after patches), Hearthstone is a well-crafted but somewhat sterile experience, and Heroes of the Storm didn't even make a dent in its own genre. But Overwatch? Man, Overwatch steamrolled its objectives. I truly, 100% did not think Blizzard would pull it off that well, but they did.
My own response to the closed beta was surprise; "Whoah, this is good. REALLY good." It blindsided me in a way that most games don't.
HotS makes me kind of sad by comparison. Overwatch shows what happens when they dive headfirst into something new and pump resources into it, whereas HotS shows that they won't produce gold if they're just splitting off a relatively tiny team and getting them to mod SC2. They missed a huge opportunity by not building something from the ground up like Overwatch.
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Wow, D.Va changed big time from concept to the final game. I do find the game to be as they intended. It's a very bright, positive, happy fun place that I love to visit.
Now as for who is dating who......as a player of Mr. Roadhog......he's more of a hooker.
Now as for who is dating who......as a player of Mr. Roadhog......he's more of a hooker.
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So they went from what was going to be a WoW clone to a TF2/team shooter clone. Congrats... I guess?
I'm fully prepared to be downvoted for this post, but I just don't get the appeal of Blizzard games any more. Diablo II was their last playable game in my opinion.
Blizzard seems to have elevated the approach of making highly polished formulaic and bland games to an art form. Diablo 3, WoW (especially the expansions), and Overwatch all left me with the opinion that.. yep... that's a game. Nothing really stands out as unique or groundbreaking, just a new skin on the same old formulas...
That's just my opinion though, obviously Blizzard has a huge fan base that I'm just not part of.
I'm fully prepared to be downvoted for this post, but I just don't get the appeal of Blizzard games any more. Diablo II was their last playable game in my opinion.
Blizzard seems to have elevated the approach of making highly polished formulaic and bland games to an art form. Diablo 3, WoW (especially the expansions), and Overwatch all left me with the opinion that.. yep... that's a game. Nothing really stands out as unique or groundbreaking, just a new skin on the same old formulas...
That's just my opinion though, obviously Blizzard has a huge fan base that I'm just not part of.
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Funny, my experience/reaction has been entirely the opposite. I love the community of players in Overwatch, mostly because it is vastly better than what you'll find in other FPS type games. I can actually play Overwatch without hearing about how many 13-year olds banged my mom last night, for instance.
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I've been playing and loving Blizzard games for many years. The effort they put into polishing their work is always industry leading, and although none are perfect I've been able to glean countless hours of fun from their dedication. Still looking forward to WC4 one of these decades.
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Beginning to show? My friend, they showed when the game launched over twelve years ago. That the game is still as popular as it is now is nothing short of a miracle. Props to Blizzard.
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There's that quadruped mech again. Hearing a lot of potential rumblings about that maybe being the next character
Jeff took time immediately after that slide popped up to address that very speculation, saying that was not the hero everyone thought it was. (or something similar to that)
Rumour has it that the tank is piloted by a gender-bent imitation of Ed from Cowboy Bebop.
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I really enjoy Overwatch. The characters all have a lot of personality, back story, and interaction, even though the gameplay doesn't really require it. It is what would happen if you mixed Street Fighter aesthetics with Quake 3 OSP game play.
But I still just play it for fun. When you get all competitive with a game, it just takes the fun out of it. I don't throw the game, and I don't fart around and screw the game up for other players, but if we lose or if we are are currently losing, I don't get all toxic.
I'm playing to relieve stress, not relive stress.
But I still just play it for fun. When you get all competitive with a game, it just takes the fun out of it. I don't throw the game, and I don't fart around and screw the game up for other players, but if we lose or if we are are currently losing, I don't get all toxic.
I'm playing to relieve stress, not relive stress.
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Polish makes the experience much better, in my opinion. For example, HotS wasn't much of a hit (even though it's been growing these past few months, apparently), but the banter between characters is great. Diablo saying – no, screaming "Your healing is serviceable!" when healed, Xul saying "I'm returning to town... er, to the hall of... whatever it is." when hearthstoning, hardly any character understanding what Murky says…
Is it innovative? No. Does it change gameplay in any way? Nope. But it's charming, and one of the reasons it's my go-to game when I want to relax for a bit. And the music… Even Hearthstone's soundtrack is great!
So they take what some call formulaic but others might call tried-and-true formula, and polish the hell out of it. Personally I like that a lot, but I understand why some people like you wouldn't.
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That's the thing, though. Before Overwatch arrived, the class-based arena shooter only really had a single AAA title in it: Team Fortress 2.
Have you looked at Team Fortress 2's development lately? The first major 2016 update was in July and basically tried to copy Overwatch's matchmaking and competitive systems (which had been in beta since October 2015) and also made some questionable balancing changes. The other two major updates were the two yearly holiday updates in October and December, which introduced community created cosmetics, taunts, and maps. Oh, and a single taunt from Valve just to show that they still have animators and modelers since they didn't do anything else the entire year.
As a side note, there's also circumstantial evidence on Valve's server mailing list that rolling out TF2's Casual Mode was a decision made after Overwatch launched, specifically this May 13 email from Valve developer John Schoenick. The reason this post is circumstantial evidence is because the May 13 post was about servers being trusted, but the July 7 update removed all non-Valve servers from matchmaking services. Overwatch launched May 24.
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The limitations of the engine had been showing since Wrath and especially so in Cata, let's be real. Cata's raids in particular had a LOT of experimentation where they really pushed the limits of WoW's engine (recall Throne of the Four Winds, and the weird fights like Spine (don't remember if this is actual name) in Dragon Soul).
Blizzard's done a great job of patching it up in various ways with a lot of great and solid design work to keep the game interesting, though. They've applied a lot of ingenuity to keep the game going with what they've got.
That said, I'd also love a WoW 2.0.
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I got into a few of the OW betas, and other than limited characters/maps, it barely felt like a beta. I have purchased, played, and enjoyed games that, even after multiple patches, didn't come even close to the level of polish that OW did a year or more before release. It was pretty evident how hard the team was working on it. They did a 20-minute short with, mostly Chris Metzen talking about the transition from the Titan failure to the OW success, and it was pretty fascinating. It was also utterly apparent how deeply it hurt the team to fail, and how focused they were on making OW their comeback.
It's pretty cool that other teams seem to have taken inspiration from the Overwatch dev team in terms of community engagement. The guys over at WoW have been stepping it up lately, and at least according to blue posts, the trend will continue. It also goes without saying, I think, that Jeff Kaplan has become an absolute superstar for his leadership.
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It's pretty much the only game I've been playing since it came out, so kudos to them on that.
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I love Blizzard and I love all their games, including Overwatch. I reinstalled TF2 and I still love that game. I don't know what to play half the time, but I need to give Overwatch another spin.
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The Overwatch community is the worst I've seen in gaming, only comparable to Dota 2 community. Having played maybe 100 hours I think I have blocked around 200 players. People are just horrible to each other. The friendly ones are a small minority unfortunately.
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Diversity wasn't an explicit goal, but inclusiveness and open-mindedness was...? I dunno, I think those two things pretty much make up the concept of "diversity."
"We didn't want to make a sci-fi game, but rather it came about from our explicit goal of spacefaring combat pitting humans against aliens on a galactic scale!"
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After 100+ hours into the game I felt that the community was much more positive and friendly than in any other similar game.. Players playing cooperatively, chatting in a friendly way etc.. I suppose that you either were extremely unlucky, are a toxicity-magnet or focus too much on the negative (or maybe you played in the lowest leagues where more kids hang around)..
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Yeah. How dare they actually try to make their game appealing to all types of gamers instead of focusing on the same immature dude-bros that all the other games cater to.
Only idiots think that being inclusive and being fun are somehow mutual exclusive.
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For me the big issue with OW is that it melds arena shooter gameplay with MOBAisms. I like arena shooter but MOBAs don't do it for me on any level and OW seems to have drunk a lot from the MOBA cup with regards to its character dynamics.
Thus when I played the beta while it was kinda fun it didn't blow me away and so did not earn my credit card.
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Sugarland makes a terrible point, of course, but I find that Blizzard's press-release-and-documentary-video approach to diversity does feel rather corporate.Yeah. How dare they actually try to make their game appealing to all types of gamers instead of focusing on the same immature dude-bros that all the other games cater to.
Only idiots think that being inclusive and being fun are somehow mutual exclusive.
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I have seen a couple videos and literally no ideas what the hell is going on. The whole story and setup seems to be a big fat mess. Could he fun though obviously but don't pretend you did that out of some purpose
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[url=https://arstechnica.co.uk/civis/viewtopic.php?p=32875053#p32875053:29b8ydbs said:
So you won't be joining the Overwatch community? What a shame, your continued absence will be a terrible thing for the rest of us to endure.
I guess you'd better just head on back to /b/ or r/thedonald or whatever hole you crawled out of and cry about how bad us white folks have it.
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I don't know, Wow was a game i spent years playing from Beta until the expansion before Cataclysm. I was really excited for new mmo from the masters that brought mmos to the spotlight and what did we get another lobby shooter "sigh".
I know the game isn't for me and i am definitively not its target audience but going from Wow to Overwatch is like going from steak to hamburger No story, no new game play, now new combat just people shooting each other. I am aware that Blizzard was trying to recapture the e-sports game segment and they make tons of cash but they definitely lost audience.
Furthermore how long will they able to milk wow, i mean at some point people are going to get bored with that game and then its going to be interesting to see what they will do? Probably a F2P model maybe a new game no one really knows.
I know the game isn't for me and i am definitively not its target audience but going from Wow to Overwatch is like going from steak to hamburger
No story, no new game play, now new combat just people shooting each other. I am aware that Blizzard was trying to recapture the e-sports game segment and they make tons of cash but they definitely lost audience.Furthermore how long will they able to milk wow, i mean at some point people are going to get bored with that game and then its going to be interesting to see what they will do? Probably a F2P model maybe a new game no one really knows.
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