lol innit. So crazy to me to be honest.
I'm a huge blizzard fan going back ~16 years and believe that they have made some of the best games of all time. Much like Shenmue, I've met a lot of great people through their games which I, after 10 years, still speak to every day. If you saw the Blizzard Logo on a box, you knew that you were going to get a great game, and a great experience but now sadly, it's almost the opposite.
I spent 10+ good years playing WoW, still play a few Starcraft 2 games a day, religiously follow the competitive scene and watch Korean Pros pretty much 24/7.
It's been a very sad few years since the Activision merger as it's just too clear that they don't care about their games, their player base, or even their workers... they just care about their margins.
Since Mike Morhaime, Chris Metzen etc left, everything just started to crumble, but really they left because they could see what was happening internally to the company.
I feel like the final straw, in terms of game development (worker issues aside), was the Warcraft 3 Remaster/remake/failure.
"It's ready when it's ready" used to be their slogan, but now, they couldn't even be further from that if they tried, hell, the game wasn't even playable, and removed features that the old game had...
I was dreading the day that they would, like Heroes of the Storm, announce that they were pulling support of Starcraft 2, but honestly it's now in better hands with ESL running the competitive scene, as they actually care about the game and the players.
Activision not only cancelled Starcraft Ghosts (an FPS game in the SC universe) but they then rejected any further RTS games as they don't make enough money in comparison to your Call of Duty 1 a year instalments (fuck those games). Due to this, all the RTS developers (and a lot of the other Devs who are not happy with Blizzard/WoW's direct) left the company to create their own studios (Frost Giant Games, Dreamhaven, Notorious Studios, Uncapped Games Studios). All these teams are looking to basically recreate the magic from the original Blizzard titles that they worked on which brings a lot of hope to those who like their older games.
With everything going on over the last few years in regards to their internal issues (sexual harassment, suicide, low pay, firing whole QA teams, being literally investigated & sued by the State of California... the list goes on), I'm surprised to see that Microsoft has chosen to acquire them, or anyone in that matter. Nintendo, Sony, Lego & Microsoft themselves already distanced themselves from them in public statements and Lego have even put their Overwatch 2 sets on hold (not that that means much as the game isn't even out yet lol).
When the news first broke, I assumed that they got it for a steal which the company was burning to the ground, but the reports say that it's for $70 Billion lol. I mean, from Microsoft's perspective, they have just grabbed an insane amount of extremely high-profile IPs, and can now do what they want with them (I love how Blizzard basically disowned Starcraft 2, and hasn't talked about it for years, and then Microsoft put it in the acquisition image <3).
Honestly, I've pretty much lost hope in Blizzard, the people who made it great have left to do their own things (which I'm very much looking forward too) and the money hungry run the company now, but if someone going to sort out the mess that remains, I have high hopes for Phil Spencer and Microsoft. Give me a Starcraft 3 and I'll be happy, also fire that shitbag of a CEO Bobby Kotick once everything is finalised