What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?
&gt; Blizzard had a long distraction with WoW, then they made Starcraft 2 followed by the MOBA Heroes of the Storm. They’re still insanely successful. Now they’re remaking their old games, recently releasing a HD remake of Starcraft 1 and are about to release a remake of Warcraft III.<p>Blizzard went off the rails by dumbing down WoW steadily over ten years, appealing to the lowest common demoninator. Modern WoW is boring, unchallenging, and appears designed to provoke the least amount of whining by a vocal but dispassionate player base.<p>If you look at a chart of subscriptions over time, it peaked with an expansion ten years ago, and has declined steadily since. This coincides with changes to the game that made it require less time, less thinking, and less skill. I imagine they felt they were broadening the appeal, but they turned off the players who made the game a blockbuster. If you removed people who still pay for it but don&#x27;t play, or people clinging to nostalgia, the numbers would tank even more.<p>I was surprised when they re-released the original game as &quot;Classic WoW&quot;. While I don&#x27;t know what the subscriber numbers look like, the servers are overflowing, and the player base is even more passionate than when it was released 15 years ago.<p>I think the same thing happened with other recent Blizzard games. They went for mass appeal in a way that turned off the players who helped build their empire. Chasing the MOBA fad didn&#x27;t work out for them. I&#x27;m glad they&#x27;re going back to their roots.<p>Maybe I&#x27;m just a crusty old gamer nostalgic for the past, but there are a lot of us out there.