"As long as we're digging in my 2008 archives, I suppose we can expect some patch 4.1 news around the February 24th Rift Headstart, since that's how Blizzard treated Warhammer."
- Me, Feb 1
"Patch 4.1 on PTR - Zul'aman and Zul'gurub are back!"
- MMO-Champion, morning of February 24th.
It's a rough industry and has been for some time. Anyone who thinks games companies just do their own thing and ignore the opposition is hopelessly naive.
ReplyDeleteBlizzard also tried to spoil AoC, releasing details of the Death Knight hero class just as Age of Conan was launching.
On reflection this might come back to bite them.
ReplyDeleteIf WoW is, for most players, periods of boredom punctuated by brief weeks of excitement at something new it seems 4.1 won't actually give us anything new, just rehashed old content. Unlike Naxx which most people hadn't seen a lot of us did ZG and ZA to death.
Nothing here to pull me away from Rift.
Good call. Blizzard is predictable.
ReplyDeleteIf they want players back, they can do the following three things:
1) GM response times that are an hour or less, not days.
2) Graphical update that brings the game into the realm of today's games.
3) Separate from Activision.
Since I don't see any of the above happening, I'll be playing elsewhere.
GA, that was awesomely prescient. I wonder what they have waiting for when SWTOR releases.
ReplyDeleteIt's rather funny how everyone is up in arms about Blizzard's announcement on the eve of RIFT's early start. If you are going to play RIFT the announcement isn't going to stop you. If you aren't going to try RIFT, the announcement isn't going to sway one bit. It's all down to individual's choice, the moment we admit that we are feeble enough to be sway in one direction or another by a carrot on a stick we need to reassess our own thinking process.
ReplyDeleteWell played sir!
ReplyDeleteThe ironic thing is that the biggest criticism - indeed, pretty much the only serious criticism - of Rift is that it's all a bit too "seen it all before." And that Blizzard then try to steal their thunder by announcing.. two old raids being reused as level 85 content! Could have at least announced something we hadn't seen before, guys!
It's business. Anyone who thinks Microsoft (for example) wants any other company creating an OS needs to read through the thousands of pages of court documents from their anti-trust lawsuit. Blizz wants to stay on their throne, and in business that means crashing everyone else's party...or at least attempting to.
ReplyDeleteCan't say anything in that announcement really excited me much. But then, I'm not much of a raider so I'm really not their target audience with it.
ReplyDelete