Did blizzard basically just steal all their stuff?

blizzard north i enver realized was an independant company blizzard purchased then disintegrated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_North

Mike Morhaime and all these guys seem to get credit when they just bought a company that was founded by david brevik and the like?

I didn't read that and I4m stll posting

I4m terrible :p

If Blizzard stole Diablo, then Valve has stolen literally everything they've ever made.

Blizzard created StarCraft and WarCraft internally.

But blizzard north was part of the development of those games. Vanilla Wow and Burning crusade were good. Then the game went to crap. Blizzard north is credited in vanilla wow and the b urning crusade not coincidently? Everything blizzard has released since then has been garbage.

meanwhile games like torchilight 2 and path of exile come out.

Cribbed heavily from Warhammer and Warhammer 2k, anyway.

StarCraft II and WarCraft III say no.

They really weren't. The team was spending most of their time on Diablo. They may have helped with a few things (artists at Blizzard work on everything, for instance), but the core WoW team and the core StarCraft team has been the same for a while.

Also, Mists is the best WoW expansion since Burning Crusade, by a wide margin, pandas or not.

Torchlight 2 is better though imo. I just think Blizzard is one of these companies that have so much money they could crap in a bucket and it would be halfway decent. Never been a big fan of valve either. EA. Activision. Some of these companies you can tell where their motivations are more heavy.

There are other big companies i tend to respect more. Naughty Dog is one. I think they are more focused on making the best possible product they can.

So what? Disney stole all their stories for films and yet their films are loved all around the world. Uncharted is quite obviously inspired by Tomb Raider. Not to mention the huge number of MOBA's appearing now all using the same damn copied map lol.

Who cares if people are inspired by other franchises/games? If they feel they have something to offer in that genre, let them do so. It just means we get more good games. (sometimes bad ones, Demigod springs to mind)

The issue with companies like blizzard and activision though is they don't seem to respect these companies though and what made them successful and popular in the first place. If they were fans wouldn't they want to honor those things? Instead you have jay Wilson telling David Brevik what he did. Just seems like arrogance to me.

I would imagine Blizzard is as well, considering it took them 12 years to make a StarCraft sequel. They didn't just release it to cash in.

JJR Tokens invented fantasy.

Starcraft and Warcraft is a copy and paste from Warhammer/Warhammer 2k. In fact they were actually suppose to make those games but turned down the deal. Honestly if I was GW I would've sued the shyt out of Blizzard.

They did, and they lost. WarCraft bears very little resemblance to Fantasy, and modern StarCraft bears almost no resistance to 40K, and I say this as someone who plays 40K.

I'm trying to imagine the Raynor/Kerrigan romance stuff from early on in Heart of the Swarm, taken and put into the setting I saw in Dawn of War. It doesn't quite mesh, no...

This, exactly. It's good to see that people are finally starting to realize that Blizzard is actually not very good at making games. Blizzard North was. And Blizzard North hasn't existed in almost 10 years.

yup, this.

My mom was once told me there is nothing wrong with stealing as long as u dont get caught.

I don't know if the people who hate Blizzard actually play their games or not, because nobody can say with a straight face that SCII or Hearthstone is crap, or that Mists of Pandaria was a bad expansion. Like DarkLink said, MoP is perhaps the best expansion since TBC and objectively has the best raiding content of any expansion since TBC.

Yup Blizzard ripped off Games workshop stuff big style, who in turn copied things like Starship troopers and Appleseed.

Dafuq is this shit

Wow people are still on about the epics thing? Try to do any actually decent content with the epics you have now. Just because it's purple doesn't mean it's the best any more. Seriously, epics have been easy to get in the middle to end of every expansion including The Burning Crusade, the expansion everyone considers 'teh best evar1'. The Timeless Isle is just a catch-up mechanic so alts or people who start playing in the middle of the expansion and want to raid don't have to do two additional tiers of content for months of gear grinding just to catch up and it's not even that much of a catch-up really. If you just did the Timeless Isle, even if you got lucky with burdens of eternity, you probably have an ilevel of around 500. Even if you have an ilevel of 540 you'd barely be geared enough for the final bosses of ther tier in normal raiding right now. Anyone doing actual heroic raiding is going to have an ilevel of 570+ and do several times more damage than you. People don't bother trying to do any difficult content at all and then bitch about how easy the content that isn't meant to be hard is and it gets so old.

Sorry but no, MoP is the worst expansion ever created. MoP single handedly almost destroyed WoWs sub numbers, it's the only expansion that has lost millions of subs during it's release. As for HS, it's an awesome game but Mage and Priest decks are just broken op (maybe not so much priests). I honestly can't wait wait for HS to go into open beta just to see the reactions of people who play against Mage decks.

Btw this is coming from a Blizzard fan, yes I do adore Blizzard but they do F up A LOT.

This is a shit argument considering one of the most praised games of the year(The Last of Us) is ripped whole sale from Children of Men/The Road.

Not disagreeing Blizzard's lack of originality with their universes, but if the knock against their games not being their own creations because of how much the fictional universe borrows from another, then congrats now we can shit on a shit load of the gaming industry.

You know what's funny, ND admitted for taking some ideas from the novel The Road, so your whole argument on ND stealing ideas from the book The Road is highly flawed, but again you make some stupid points here so it doesn't surprise me.

Blizzard was in talks for making the Warhammer games, then they decided to magically make the Starcraft and Warcraft IPs, which is a blatant rip off from Warhammer and Warhammer 40k, you're comparing two video game IP's to two different IP's (novel/movie). Don't get me wrong I love Blizzard still, but they are the douchebags of the gaming industry w/o even trying. Last time I checked Naughty Dog was never in talks with making a The Road game or Children of Men game.

I don't know about you but if you offered me to take on a project that you came up with and I decline it, then later on I magically start my own project with your ideas, I'm sure you would be pissed as hell.

Also completely off topic, yea I'm still pissed off at Blizzard for canning Starcraft Ghost.

Lets see. What games do valve brand as their own?

Portal? Originally created by students of digipen technological institute.

Counter strike? Originally a mod.

Left 4 dead? Originally made by turtle rock.

DOTA2? Originally a warcraft 3 mod.

Team fortress? Another mod originally.

Alien swarm? A remake of another mod.

Ricochet? Another mod originally.

So yeah I guess valve made half life, but that's pretty much it. They love to take other peoples creative ideas and re-brand them as their own and pass them off as valve games.

@Ballroompirate: So your only argument that MoP is shit is subscription numbers? Subs have been on a downward trend since Cataclysm. When Mists of Pandaria was announced there was a big negative outcry that only hurt WoW, coupled with 4.3 and Dragon Soul, the worst raid Blizzard has put out. Using declining subscription numbers to argue MoP is bad is so flawed: nothing Blizzard can do at this point will bring subscriptions back to Wrath levels.

Throne of Thunder and Siege of Orgrimmar are the best raids Blizzard has put out since Ulduar and ICC. On the whole MoP has had the best raiding content of any expansion since TBC, and few who have actually gone through it would disagree.

@Motokid6: Timeless Isle is for characters coming into 5.3 fresh. It is a catchup tool, which all expansion's final content patches have had since TBC, intended to get you geared for LFR at the minimum and into flex.

Why do you think that is? Remember to always think from a developers point of view. So you want to make a Warhammer or Warhammer 40k game, why would they do this? because they were obviously fans of the brand. They then decide against using the Warhammer brand, why would they do this?

Maybe they realised that they had a lot more freedom by making up their own IP's which were heavily inspired by the games they were originally creating, i don't know much about Warcraft for example, but i know a lot of people love the story. Maybe this is because they had the freedom to create it all themselves? I'm not saying this is the reason but people need to stop jumping in and instantly accusing people/companies/whoever of things they haven't completely thought through.

No, Wrath of the Lich King is the best WoW expansion. MoP is really nothing special, the first monthy were extremely tedious were you had to do dailies in order to buy epic gear from the MoP factions. I like WotLK the best because it heavily encouraged both 10 and 25 man raiding. In MoP its just 10 man and LFR

Flex has made LFR unnecessary, and top guilds all agree 25 is "real" raiding.

Thankfully the 10/25 debate will be elminated in WoD.

That's really not the point now is it? Regardless of what the back stories are if you're going to knock Blizzard for taking a lot of liberties with borrowing or out right stealing, then at that point you better be smart enough acknowledge that a large majority of this medium is piggybacking from stuff in Literature/Film. Regardless of they had some tie to that license or not. And admitting you did that doesn't overrule that you are still ripping off a select source material.

The game however, you know the interactive aspects of the game, the part you play however while not necessarily franchises that would make them the ID of the RTS genre, but Starcraft and Warcraft aren't carbon copies or poor man versions of any other Strategy game. Same goes for their MMO. Their fiction being unoriginal should not take away from the fact that their game design on top of being excellent isn't exactly piggybacking hard enough that they should lose credit for their own work.

Business politics shouldn't overrule that aspect of their legacy. It's a ridiculous knock.

Mists has the best raiding content since TBC. People just hate it because of the Pandas. Wrath had the most sub numbers, and it was easily one of the worst x-pacs Blizzard has ever released. Sub numbers are a terrible argument for quality.

The reason Blizzard dropped the 40K and Fantasy stuff is because GW wouldn't allow them to change up lore shit for game design purposes. It's pretty laughable when you consider what they've let Relic get away from since then.

Everyone wants to paint Blizzard as this douchebag company for stealing from GW, but no one wants to bring up how notoriously difficult GW is to work with, or how they constantly shit on their fans. It's baffling.

Only argument, are you serious? have you not seen the QQ on the forums (official WoW forum and MMO-Champion forum) on how much shyt MoP has gotten?

Let's go down the list

*Decline of subs

*Piss poor state of PvP (the worst that's it's ever been), in fact the whole pvp side of the game needs to be redone when you got God Mode healers, endless CC with barely to no DR and that's just listing a few issues.

*A craptastic Legendary chain that's designed to be the most absurd RNG system in the game that's built around months of farming stupid shyt that has NOTHING TO DO with getting the cloak (seriously I need to prove myself for weeks on getting valor?, then I need to when in two specific battlegrounds?)

*The seal/charm system, while it's gotten better over the expansion it was so ******* bad at the start of MoP and still needs to be fixed. I'll also add the loot system needs to be fixed to this since nothing is more annoying than wasting one of you seals on a item/extra roll just to get the SAME ITEM YOU HAVE.

Those are pretty minor complaints when the content is as good as it is, and a lot of that is fixable. I'll go down your list, though.

Blizzard can't control subscriber numbers. A lot of that is because people are biased against pandas (which is stupid. This game has talking dogs and cows, and pandas are what piss you off? Really?), and because of how poor Cataclysm's endgame was. The game is also old, and people are getting tired of it. The fact that the game is losing subscribers is not surprising. In terms of actual quality, the game is the best it has been since the end of Burning Crusade.

WoW PvP has never been balanced, so expecting it to be perfect is stupid. Does it need rebalancing? Sure. But if you play WoW for PvP you're playing the wrong game.

Yeah, the Legendary chain is annoying, but no one is forcing you to do it. Aside from a few minor problems, it's fine. If you're not Valor capping every week, that's your own fault. It's stupidly easy to do. The only annoying bit is the BGs, but all that takes is patience.

The seal system is fine. If anything, it was too easy to exploit initially. And once again, the loot system is fine. You run the risk of getting the same item you have every time you down a boss. The coins just give you another shot at loot. What you have already shouldn't matter. It would be far to easy to exploit if it did.

torchlight 2 is awesome diablo 3 is not.

yeh thats about it :)

The amount of derp from this post is just absurd, even coming from you. You honestly think all that shyt is minor? ok....I don't know the last time you've played WoW but I guess you love pulling shyt out of your ass.

Pvp in WoW is beyond broken, hell you can even label it as un playable and don't give me that crap no one cares about doing pvp or "if you're playing WoW to pvp you're doing it wrong" cause that's just gonna make yourself look stupid when pvp is HALF THE FING GAME. Actually you know what, I want to know why you think MoP is the best expansion since TBC, cause I really need something to laugh at.

I played WoW yesterday. Did some raiding in Siege.

Yes, I think when a game still has 7 + million subscribers, losing a a million or so is minor. It's not like there's a shortage of people to play with, especially now that they've implemented cross-realm play. Some realms are still worse than others, but that's going to be there no matter what.

The PvP is a major issue, but it doesn't really affect me as I don't PvP. It sucks if you enjoy it, though, no doubt. Blizz should stop trying to balance PvP and PvE at the same time and balance them separately.

Yes, the Legendary chain having annoying elements is minor. It doesn't severely impact the game or the expansion. You can still do top-tier content without it, save for the one World Boss. Does it suck? Yup. it is a minor thing when you consider how much content there is in Mists? I think so.

And yes, I don't see a problem with the way the coins work, for the reasons explained above. What issues did you have with them?

I like it based on the raid content, which is really all I care about. In that regard, they've stepped it up quite a bit since Cata and Wrath, which struggled to get off the ground initially.

I don't know what I did to piss you off, but let's be civil, yo.

You know they've lost like almost 3.5 million since cata right?

Blizzard trys to ignore the issues with pvp and arent even trying to balance them, hell they have people on the forums helping them do the math to try and balance (somewhat) pvp but Blizzard ignores that, hell they even acknowledged how bad pvp is but they aren't gonna do anything about it tell WoD and hope the stat squish will sort out most of the problems when they actually need to look at the absurd amount of CC in this game.

The legendary cloak chain is beyond annoying for reasons I listed, you have to do 2 BG's (win them), you have to get 3 weeks of valor cap (and btw this quest resets if you transfer servers), you have to do a world boss (1 tier ago) that no one else is doing, I've lost count on how many sigils and runes you need to get every damn chapter you complete and if it wasn't such a pain in the ass then why is the latest estimate of people actually having the cloak at 19.4%?

SoO is a decent raid I'll give you that and is one of the best raids I've done since ICC, although there were plenty of shyt raids this expansion like Mogu Vaults, Heart of Fear, Terrace and ToT which was a hit or miss.

My issue with the coins was already explained, it annoys me when you're limited 3 warforged seals a week and you use say 2 of those seals and both those times you get loot you already have, next seal you use you get nothing. That irritates the hell out of me when that happens and I'll tell you that has happened to me a lot, just all that time wasted.

I think a large part of that is how disappointed people are with Cata, as opposed to Mists.

Yeah, I think the stat squish will help with a lot of things. I'll be interested to see how it affects people's ability to do old content, though.

The BGs are the most annoying part. My server is garbage at PVP and I seriously doubt our ability to win Kotmogu, though we did pull out a clutch win in Silvershard. I mean, it is a pain, but I don't think they should just give it away. I dunno. It could stand to be a little better designed, but they'll probably do a better job in Warlords.

I actually liked Terrace quite a bit. Throne is inconsistent, but I think the best parts of Throne are better than Siege.

Yeah, it irritates me, too, but on the other hand, you don't want to give away loot. I was a hardcore raider (one of the best guilds on the server) in Burning Crusade, so I'm used to putting in the work to get nothing, but it does suck. I think they should implement a system where you won't get what you just got if you get a piece, aren't happy with it, and burn a coin, but beyond that, I don't know how to fix the system without just giving away loot.

Yup, game ideas and gameplay mechanics, as well as story plots get stolen/changed/used all the time.

And there is nothing wrong with that.

I would love to see that game release. Maybe one day, bro. Maybe one day. They still haven't ruled it out and they do bring it up an awful lot in interviews.

Funny jg4xchamp you're saying in this post that the unoriginal game world of SC does not take away the fact how polished and how intricately designed the mechanics of SC is. But when it comes to Nintendo, you seem to be bothered by the same old characters and game worlds of Mario and Zelda and think they affect the excellence of the games despite their non-reliance on story and game world.

SC and WC aren't exactly known for their stories and even their game worlds. These games do not focus on those things. They're known for being very polished RTS games. This issue of Blizzard using a lot of Warhammer 40K material is irrelevant because it does not change the fact how excellent the strategy mechanics behind their RTS games are. Had it revolved around story-driven games, the conditions would have been different, which is why ND acknowledged their inspirations with TLoU.

Nah. Main Blizzard had lots of great games with very little Blizzard North involvment

Blizzard North was responsible for D1 and D2, but D3 showed that it was terribly run studio even by Blizzard standards. D3 was restarted like 2 times in Blizz North and still didn't work, so main Blizz had to take over. Plus stuff like Hellgate and Torchlight has shown that without Blizzard those people have troubles reaching old standards. Heck, same could be said about main Blizzard propably. People joing and leave Blizzard all the time. About 20 studios were created by "ex Blizzard folk" and the main Blizzard still remains top notch. So it seems it's one of those studios where it's really more about teamwork than single designer's vision

you would have sued and lost.... Warhammer doesn't have a patent / copyrights to "marines in space".... StarCraft is FAR better than Warhammer anyway. u mad?

Official forums and MMOC forums are a complete shitpile, they will always be flooded with whiners and complainers; it's not like people who want to praise the game make topics.

Decline of subs was already addressed, it isn't an accurate indicator of an expansion's quality at all. The real drop came during Cataclysm and a big part of that was the year-long gap from ICC to Cataclysm, Dragon Soul to Mists--and the disappointment that Cataclysm was as an expansion.

PvP is nothing but a minigame in WoW, sorry. The real game is raiding. I agree that PvP has been broken for much of the expansion, but if you're really playing this game for PvP and will call MoP trash for broken PvP when the PvE content is so good, you're playing the wrong game.

I agree with you on the legendary chain, and I will say that the legendary cloak (or "crutch cloak") becomes something of a necessity if you're in a guild that's serious with progression, particuarly if you tank or heal. It's a stupid, pointless grind that is unfriendly to alts. But the legendary chain, while annoying, doesn't negate the quality of MoP's raids.

The personal loot system is nothing new. It's RNG. It's in there to prevent loot drama and loot trading in LFR and Flex. Again, if you can't handle RNG having the possibility of giving you the same item twice, you're playing the wrong game; shit like only Shaman gear dropping off two bosses in a row was what my guild sees occasionally in our 10M group, and stuff like that has been in the game since day one.

I'd like to think people assess an expansion's quality primarily on the quality of raids. MoP's raid content has been really good, Cataclysm's was mostly bad, WOTLK's was okay thanks to Ulduar and ICC, and TBC's was stellar.

Like the utter crap diablo 3 for 60$ ?! That let down ten ++ millions gamers .. It took them only 8 years in development for that disaster !! D3 is dead as we speak some hunderd public games , noone in chats , noone buying in AH , none of my friends are online since ages ago , noone cares to login .. Only hardcore fans remains and those are kinda upset as well ...

And then what .. After that upset a new expansion for 40$ ?! In Europe RoS expansion costs 40E = 55$ ?! .. When you talking about Blizzard = always about cash in. Nothing else matters anymore ... Lets be realistic here please.