Blizzard

[Roxianna]

Next: while many in the industry thought the entire market for massively multi-player games was about 300,000 people tops... Company's like Microsoft, scared by disasters like AC2 and SWG, shelved their projects...yet Blizzard kept on pursuing their vision for a great game, and history was made. Entertainment will never be the same again.

You gotta love a great success story like that!

I'd love to say a great American success story--in many ways it is. Certainly it was the American (USA and Canada) gamers that made it huge to start. However, Blizzard is owned by Vivendi, a French company.

[Abdo]

They make a few high quality games, and market them in a way that it makes lots of money for them, which makes them a powerful company, and despite that fact that they haven't made a new game that wasn't an expansion pack in a few years they still make lots of money. They know what they are capable of doing and can do it well. On top of that they know how to capitalize like true Americans, which really just brings tears to my eyes. Until they make a game with low quality I can't find any fault with them. And for all who want a new Diablo trust me it will happen, especially if SC2 is a hit.

[Sensational]

They've taken an entire franchise in a different direction (No, i'm not talking about switching genre.) just to please the mainstream gamer because the mainstream gamer has more money then the original audience.
Perhaps that's not what they intended originally, but that's what they've turned it into.
Other then that I guess they're fine... never really liked their games that much.

They've gone from artists to buisnessmen.

[Aseenus]

i think there a good company that got rich and stopped caring about making good games and started thinking of money and money alone!

[rockfish]

good gaming what more can you say

[Memoreck]

Warcraft and Starcraft is all I need.

[Vorbis]

I disagree with people who say Blizzard doesn't care any more. The problem is that the larger the team you have is the harder it is to co-ordinate everyone's efforts and retain the friendly team feeling. Lots of developers have grown too big for their boots then lost key members because of this. Unfortunately for massive games like WoW you also need a massive team so it's a hard balancing act.

While Blizzard is owned by a French company I think one of Blizzards great strengths is that they do not bow to publisher pressure and instead concentrate on great games.

You can describe the reason for Blizzards success in one word: "polish". Every one of their games has been refined over and over until the finished product was as near to perfect as possible. They really are a lesson to the gaming industry that spending a few extra months to finish a game can actually be a good financial investment .

I do think there are a lot of problems in WoW, I don't agree with all the decisions made by Blizzard and they are certainly not the only good developer out there (<3 Bioware, Valve, etc) but they are clearly one of the best.

[RedQ]

The games Blizzard makes are like James Bond movies: Smart, expensive, appealing, long lasting. As an honest company and a leader in their industry, Blizzard still has my respect.

[KyanMehwulfe]

Unsurpassed artists. Subjective styles of art and gameplay aside, they have such a polished attention to detail. From the gritty harem of Diablo II to the Dun Morogh mountains of Warcraft, that's the one thing I cannot resist in their games.

[MrSilver]

WoW could have been soooo good...

The game was destroyed by instanced PvP.

They could fix the entire game if they made the PvP objectives to actually fight the other faction in the gaming world... i.e., capture their outposts, towns, cities and have the opportunity to "win" the server by killing all of the other faction's leaders, and burning cities.

I'd go back to WoW if they created a server with this type of rule-set.