true about Blizzard but getting Warcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch is huge. I'm excited to see what MS do with them. This is effectively a clean slate for them. Blizzard was never gonna turn itself around but with MS there is some hope that they can go back to making great games.
It's an opportunity to turn themselves around but the issue is more or less the talent and people in charge. The people who made those franchises aren't there anymore with maybe a couple exceptions like I believe the art director. The results of that are telling.
Overwatch 2, which honestly shouldn't even exist, lost its director who was a huge driving force of the first game and it has been in development hell. The Warcraft team has lost so many people and you can see how that has affected the game. Three of its last four expansions were garbage. I know. I played them religiously. Final Fantasy 14 actually overtook World of Warcraft as THE MMORPG on the market. Something no one honestly believed would ever happen. Heroes of the Storm never caught on like DOTA or League of Legends and it ended up largely abandoned. Hearthstone became a microtransaction mess. Starcraft has one foot in the grave despite an ongoing tournament scene and rumor has it that a sequel was repeatedly rejected. This caused a large portion of the Starcraft team to leave Blizzard to either make new companies or join them later. Diablo had its issues but it's probably the only franchise that is "healthy" among them. I'm not even going to get into their remasters which have had issues to say the least.
What is fucking perplexing to me is that the man who is ultimately responsible for the mess Activision Blizzard is in and also responsible for the state of Blizzard's ailing franchises is getting to keep his position. While he will be under Spencer and thus subject to being told to stop being a cunt, that all depends on if Microsoft cares or if they see him as a man who makes money and let him continue to do his thing. I don't think those franchises will ever be what they were. There is a small chance new leadership could take them back but I find it more likely they'll either stay the course or become something else. "Something else" could be a good thing but it certainly won't be what made people love them to begin with. Those days are gone.
My only real hope is that the games are "good" again so I can at least have an excuse to go back to the worlds I enjoyed.
