>>716123207
>tried too hard to e-sports it
This has been the story of Blizzard for the last 15ish years now. Everything has become antiseptic and sapped for fun in a poor attempt make everything "balanced" and competitive. Wonder, exploration, and interesting gameplay have all eaten shit for builds, metas, and leagues. I assume they were spited by how competitive StarCraft occured organically, and I assume the dota lawsuit buck broke them to insanity.
SC2 was sort of interesting, but losing unit collision really fucked with how fast games were played and interest waned as Blizzard kept turning the gameplay upside down to reset a meta, but never could admit that the core gameplay was just too fast to be an esport
HotS could have just stayed a simple, casual assfaggots game, had an amazing sound and art team, but it didn't pick up ESPORTS PRO status, causing Bliz to just abandon it instead of just continuing it with a small dedicated team
OW should have just stayed a goofy team shooter with whacky events and characters added frequently. Instead they got stuck in a balance loop trying to push that stupid league, alienating 85% of the player base who just wanted to suck with their friends and collect outfits
The only semi interesting thing going on in WoW is mythic raiding which again 95% of the player base doesn't partake in due to all the sweating necessary. There is no longer a world, nor is there even a warcraft as the faction war is gone.
Can't speak for Diablo or Hearthstone but I'm sure it's the same; ignoring 96% of the fan base to appeal to the top and bottom 2% while nickel and diming whales for cosmetics