Jun 26 2010

How Activision ruined CoD and now StarCraft 2

CATEGORY: Opinion/Blabbers | GAME: - other By Karar

Blizzard long time back was acquired by Activision and became "Activision Blizzard", this didn't affect gamers as much, but its implications are now coming up. Activision used to be a good reputed company till they started to get greedy last year and wanted everything subscription based. The reason which Activision has agreed is that 70% of its revenue comes from not console games but from PC games. Thanks to World of Warcraft mainly.

Last years push for Infinity Ward.Net was part of that experiment too. Taking away the server control from players and managing a "world of cod" from their end. Due to love of game, people still bought it and got a semi-usable online mode which was not tunable as per their needs and had high pings. Their hope: maybe they will release ded server support later on.. but they never did. It didnt end there, mod support was taken away so that no community free maps could be made. People would get bored of old maps and will be Forced to buy their small DLC packs for high prices.

Now Activision is considering a subscription based Call of Duty online world.. i.e. they know server code of game was never released and they have sole control of everything. If they shut it down, no one will be able to play. and thus they are going to put a price tag on playing online feature. Yup! monthly based subscription to online gaming for Call of Duty is very much an imminent future for Activision.

And now their influence is also clearly seen in upcoming StarCraft 2 release. SC2 which was heart and soul of pro RTS gaming. even after years.. its still the most played RTS game in PC tournaments; but Activision ripped out this very feature from the game.. for control: The LAN feature. The game will have no option to host your own game match with friends locally. Instead Battle.Net will become exactly like InfinityWard.Net with players not being able to host local matches without main servers interference. This gives them control over any kind of online interaction of the game. This also means that Lan Parties are not possible with this game.. which were the SC1 attraction after all these years.

Recently a rumor started that MAYBE Korea will get a Lan enabled version of StarCraft 2. So, that the pro tournaments will be possible in that part of world only. But Activision has now sent confirmation that there is no such plan. The feature will not be built in the game even for pro gaming market. The only thing they will consider is hosting some kind of private event over Battle.Net for major pro gaming seasons and this may come later on. But for now... everyone will be playing online through their servers. Which kind of means that just like PC gamers are still playing tournaments of COD4 world wide but not of MW2.. same will be applicable to SC2. Pro players will be sticking to SC1 and SC2 will only be good enough for single player mode and then some casual online play. But never for serious pro gaming.

Activision has already planned monthly subscriptions for Battle.Net country wise. These rates will vary from country to country based on their interest in the game. The more the interest, the more they will charge per month. This wont be applicable to all countries, but for some countries these monthly charges are being implemented.

So, in conclusion its pretty evident how the "Activision" branding on huge game titles is ruining their fan base. They have become a money black hole who just want to suck money without any care or love for community that made / makes these games great. Only thing I can wish is that either Activision managment change their vision, or these developers for the sake of their game brands.. stay the hell away from them.