Can we ever trust a Blizzard game again?

The problems with the current state of World of Warcraft don't need to be explained for the thousandth time. Nor does anybody want to read them again. But they're there, and they aren't going to go away. The direction the game is going is intentional, a deliberate design by the people in charge. But.. what does that say for the future?




I'm going to be honest, I loved blizzard, with extra emphasis on the d. Pre-BC they would've been bar-none my favorite gaming company outside of Square. Diablo 2 is my favorite PC game, and one of my favorites all time regardless of platform. I love everything about the franchise, my life is currently just a clock counting backwards until the next bit of Diablo 3 information is released.  3 months, 12 days, 4 hours if you're curious. Anxious time is drawn out time. But in this particular case, there's a different emotion being lumped in with the anxiousness: Horror.

What could Blizzard possibly do to **** this up. The art controversy doesn't bother me, as I think its over exaggerated. Personalized drops? I kind of liked the wars tab wars to get things off the floor, but it did suck when you missed out.. so I can deal with this even if I think it takes a dimension away from group-play. But respecs, auto stat-distribution... in my D3? Retarded, the heart and soul of D2 was building character after character with different stat builds for whatever reasons your heart desired. My playtime would've been cut to pieces if I could respec whenever I wanted, especially considering I tended to take on new projects as soon as I finished a previous. But even those decisions, as much as I disagree with them, aren't gamebreaking. But who knows what's coming? Blizzard has been slowly butchering a once solid MMO. And while there have certainly been excellent additions in the past few years, their fundamental policies are shifting in a dangerous direction. Are these policies going to carry over into their other franchises? If so, what's coming?

Are we going to see badges of patriarch drop from the act bosses, so that players who don't have time to MF can earn some of the best items in the game?

Is there going to be a separate 'creep' window added to the corner of your map, so you can keep tabs on multiple things at once without ever leaving the view of your base or navigate a map?

Is Diablo going to teleport on to you a half dozen times throughout your act quests, say you amuse him, then leave without so much as a threat?

Afraid? You should be, the future is uncertain. I could offer you comfort, but it would be blind.. and in most cases an outright lie.

Zarhym: For this reason we're continuing with the philosophy that pick-up groups should have some level of success when raiding.

Ghostcrawler: Killing a healer, even in the absence of crowd control, silences or whatever, still needs to be a viable tactic at the end of the day.

And the heavens shall tremble.