[emptysongglass]

In my opinion the downfall of Blizzard started even earlier in 2004. Ever since World of Warcraft their writing and worldbuilding has stumbled off a cliff. StarCraft's storyline was fantastic and its world spectacularly gritty. The weird whirring mechano-head of the adjutants and bodily entombed dragoons are just some examples of the kooky minds working at the studio at that time.

With the cartoonish push that World of Warcraft presaged I saw the wider ambitions to appeal to everyone which washed out the magic for me. Blizzard wasn't alone in this but it broke my heart as a kid who grew up on Sabriel and The Book of the New Sun and Baldur's Gate and EverQuest to watch all those game companies lurch forward to a blank-eyed glossed future.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

> and bodily entombed dragoons

Meh. It is an undeniable direct Warhammer 40K plagiarism: before coming up with their own StarCraft universe, Blizzard tried and failed to secure rights for Warhammer 40K setting. So it is easy to see the source of their 'inspiration'.

They had many bright moments, but this one is not one they came up with themselves.

[aeturnum]

I think Starcraft and Warcraft before it are both stellar examples of inventive remixing and borrowing from existing worlds. That is very different from plagiarism.

Games Workshop does not own the copyright on nearly-dead-warriors-entombed-in-exoskeletons. Nor did they invent the idea of the nearly dead being sustained by cybernetics, or of using robotics to assist those of limited physical ability. We all are inspired by things.

It's especially odd to talk about about "Warhammer" or "Starcraft" as if they are managed by a single human, when in fact all of these worlds are written and envisioned by a multi-generational army of creative people who are all drawing on sources to come up with ideas. Are all of the employees of GW who write about dreadnoughts plagiarizing the employee who came up with the idea?

[Retric]

Starcraft copied a lot more than just that from Warhammer.

Tyranids giant biological hive mind that rapidly adapts to new environments consuming or infecting existing species to plunder their genetic advantages. Also have plenty of units that looks rather similar to their Zerg equivalents.

The basic look of space marines and Starcraft marines are completely different why they toned down the skulls and well that’s about it.

That’s fine at least they didn’t copy the ancient psionic technology using Eldar who, wait never mind.

[aeturnum]

So what you're saying is that we shouldn't respect creative works that are too similar to their inspirations and you think a good example of the creative work we should respect is...Warhammer?

"It’s all in here, the neolithic bones of our current game system. Borrowing heavily from Tolkein, you get all the standard Fantasy races, standard beasties (heck even the Balrog is in there by name), and so many others...There is no Old World, no Warhammer world, no history, just some little crazed and revolutionary rules for using units of fantasy lead miniatures to fight out epic battles."[1]

[1] https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2012/01/lore-unboxing-warham...

[Retric]

Tossing a huge range of different properties in a blender is fine, ripping off a single property is just lazy. Which sounds more original pure Harry Potter fan fiction or ER the TV show + Harry Potter + Cheers the TV show.

Draw evenly from M*A*S*H + Dresden Files + Mass Effect + Dexter and your going to end up in some strange and interesting places. Play through Starcraft 1+2 on the other hand and the story is fine if a bit bland.

[Retric]

Also, Warhammer 40k heavily diverged from the original Warhammer.

[username90]

> Tyranids giant biological hive mind that rapidly adapts to new environments consuming or infecting existing species to plunder their genetic advantages. Also have plenty of units that looks rather similar to their Zerg equivalents.

Tyranids barely existed when Starcraft got released, most of the things you talked about was created by games workshop afterwards, so likely they copied Starcraft instead.

[Retric]

Tyranids where part of the 1987 version of 40k and barely mentioned. Genestealers were first introduced in the board game Space Hulk published in 1989 and introduced into the Tyranids well before Starcraft’s release date.

1993, featured the Tyranids in the supplemental books Wargear and Codex Imperialis, and then later in their own devoted army Codex.

By comparison Starcraft 1 is from 1998 at which point Tyranids had gone through multiple revisions and had fairly close to their modern lore.

[lapsed_pacifist]

>Tyranids giant biological hive mind that rapidly adapts to new environments consuming or infecting existing species to plunder their genetic advantages.

Sounds like GW copied that from Heinlein's Starship Troopers, or maybe Enders Game.

Ditto the Space Marines.

Culture is just copying/remixing, all the way down.

[Retric]

Enders game’s alien are quite different from both they aren’t a single unified hive mind but a species of queens and mindless drones using biological technology rather than literally being the ships or having a wide range of forms, also no rapid evolution or gene stealing etc. Starship Troupers share even less they don’t even use starships, aren’t a unified hive mind, etc their both great example of sci-fi space biological armies being a fairly huge space for different ideas.

Remixing at least involves using multiple sources, my only real issue is SC both only copied from 40k and changed so little. It’s like the figured after just crossing just past the line of copyright infringement was enough and they would go no further. But hey they did the same with the original Warhammer game to make Warcraft and that worked out just fine for them.

[emptysongglass]

Like dreadnoughts? I'd argue fantasy and science fiction is all iterating over itself endlessly and there's creative ways of doing it. Plunging dragoons into a liquid bath puts dragoons at something of a cross-section of evangelion and 40k tomb-mech.

I could go on. The ghosts exhaling poison vapor with spider eyes or hydralisks vomiting buckets of saliva. Sunken colonies with their long knife-tongues; the Creep. As a whole I think Blizzard really made something special.

[learc83]

I grew up on Warcraft 2, and to me the cartoonish look of WoW was a direct continuation of the art style from that game. I was in the WoW beta. The first time I played it my initial reaction was that it looked exactly like I had stepped into Warcraft.

[emptysongglass]

I see your point with Warcraft 2 though I do think a lot of the art from then leant more to the gritty like this one [1] that shows a troll squaring off with a human.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/pJ0entX_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&...

[learc83]

The game manuals always were pretty gritty compared to the in-game art.

[astrange]

I remember looking at this in the manual as a kid and thinking the archer was about to have a bad time.

[tremon]

shows a troll squaring off with a human

An elf, rather (elven archer).

[pvg]

I think initial development/prototyping was done as an offshoot of the WC3 engine so in a sense you were stepping into Warcraft. That's not to take anything away from the great design and art direction consistency between these titles - just that it also had a practical technical component.

[cwkoss]

I agree with this. Early Blizzard games had amazing worldbuilding and great single player experiences, with good multiplayer options.

After WoW's success they seemed to try to pigeonhole all of their properties in the same direction, SC2 and D3 were quite clearly online/multiplayer first with single player as an afterthought, and the world depth felt lacking. Hearthstone's alright but feels like it has too much focus on PvP games and loot box mechanics.

[tomc1985]

Hearthstone's aesthetic reminds me of the parallel world of stuff that religious groups always make (Christian music, Christian books, etc), and I found it really offputting.

[rtkwe]

StarCraft's big success and fame came from PvP instead of CPU matches though so it's not super surprising.

[oblio]

> With the cartoonish push that World of Warcraft presaged I saw the wider ambitions to appeal to everyone which washed out the magic for me.

You're looking at it through rose tinted glasses. Blizzard has always been about a cartoonish look. That's why I like their games. Realism always falls into the "uncanny valley" territory for me.

[baud147258]

> cartoonish push that World of Warcraft

wasn't the cartoonish style already present in Warcraft 3?

[spcebar]

There's nothing cartoonist about flying sheep and giant drunken pandas.