They've grown to include wider appeal and be more profitable.
Since the merger, Blizzard has aggressively moved towards in-game real money transactions including one high profile fuckup where they irreparably ruined the economy of an entire game, ruining the game itself for many players (especially their older and more devoted fans).
They've scrapped their major next MMO, pushing it back and folding much of the staff into other projects while this one goes back to the drawing board.
They predictably released StarCraft 1.5, the graphics update, but StarCraft is a known commodity and they didn't have the leeway to make substantial changes without massively disrupting the playerbase.
I can't find a single product of theirs that screams character and love and devotion to video games like their classics do, but every single product does appear to be a financially calculated move to extract as much money as possible from gamers.
From this long time (and no longer) Blizzard fan, modern Blizzard looks more like Zynga than the company they once were. More interested in ARPU than making wonderful games.
Speaking of love of and devotion to games, if you want to see what the original Diablo team has done lately take a look at Torchlight II - it still has that something that D3 is missing and D1/2 had.
Since the merger, Blizzard has aggressively moved towards in-game real money transactions including one high profile fuckup where they irreparably ruined the economy of an entire game, ruining the game itself for many players (especially their older and more devoted fans).
They've scrapped their major next MMO, pushing it back and folding much of the staff into other projects while this one goes back to the drawing board.
They predictably released StarCraft 1.5, the graphics update, but StarCraft is a known commodity and they didn't have the leeway to make substantial changes without massively disrupting the playerbase.
I can't find a single product of theirs that screams character and love and devotion to video games like their classics do, but every single product does appear to be a financially calculated move to extract as much money as possible from gamers.
From this long time (and no longer) Blizzard fan, modern Blizzard looks more like Zynga than the company they once were. More interested in ARPU than making wonderful games.