[nobodyofnote]

I share your dismay. Even if you're someone who doesn't care about the issues that have come to light over the past year, the blatant mismanagement (dare I say running into the ground) of the once golden Blizzard portfolio has been painful as a long-time Starcraft 2 fan.

For a moment, I was truly hopeful that we might see some reinvigoration for blundered projects like the Warcraft III reforged.

Perhaps even some hope that Microsoft might breathe new life into Starcraft II, which still stands as an incredible game.

/sigh

[Someone1234]

Everything under Blizzard's portfolio feels like it has been left to rot. The only thing they seem to put effort into is their Pay-To-Win card game, Hearthstone.

Unfortunately even under new management I don't see Starcraft getting much love, the focus is now on cross-platform games and RTS games are PC only (which is a small niche compared to the overall market).

[2pEXgD0fZ5cF]

Given how ActiBlizz doesn't even want to acknowledge Starcrafts existence anymore, excluding it from Blizzcon e-sport highlights and leaving the broken ranked system unfixed for I don't even know long it's been, I believe change in company culture there would need to be pretty substantial to bring some love back to Starcraft.

[Iolaum]

Moreover I recall them saying SC2 was the final chapter on the IP.

I mean now that MS owns them maybe they can pull a Win11 :p

[indigochill]

They catapulted over the shark with the conclusion of SC2's campaign, so it wouldn't surprise me, buuut if I've learned anything in this era of reboots, it's that no IP is really dead, some of them just hibernate for a while, and promises a popular franchise is done aren't worth the electrons inconvenienced to convey it.

[curiousllama]

I'm not so sure. Microsoft recently revived their Age of Empires franchise, and has has been pretty good about supporting it as an e-sport (sponsoring tournaments & streamers, reliably re-balancing, releasing updated versions, etc.). I wouldn't be surprised if they took a long term view for the much-larger-RTS Starcraft, especially given its size relative to AoE.

[jrockway]

Wait, did they start putting effort into Hearthstone? I stopped playing a couple of years ago. To me, the bellwether is whether the game still locks up for a second right before a match starts as it synchronously produces a megabyte of logs or something.

The game never really felt that great after Ben Brode left. Battlegrounds was pretty OK though.

[ryanbrunner]

They put a lot of effort into their new game mode (which might as well be an entirely separate game from Hearthstone), but by all indications it flopped pretty hard.

There has been more activity than normal on the core game mode and Battlegrounds, although mostly focused on content (whether actual cards or cosmetics) than actual technology changes or new features.

[junon]

Yep. Overwatch is an empty husk of a game and community it once was.