Blizzard

This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it.

Terran marines are treated as largely expendable but efficient cannon fodder. Contrasts to GeeDub's depiction of the ultimate one-man-army super soldier.

Blizzard Entertainment is an American video game developer founded in 1991. They are well known in the gaming community for rising to fame by shamelessly ripping off a long list of things, the most pertinent to /tg being the similarity between its flagship franchises and Warhammer (40k). Note that Blizzard never did anything original ever, yet remains widely popular.

While not as skubtastic as the other things present, it still does cause tensions in /tg/ when brought up. Especially if it concerns one of their games' fluff.

Anti-Blizzard

How to prepare Blizzard-made games:

1. Slap-in copied content from several sources; change some colors, backstories, details, and personalities so they don't look like total rip-offs. For added lulz, steal some quotes from movies since it's kewl.

2. Throw in some typical tropes you'd see in every sci-fi/fantasy themed media. Sprinkle some fanboy's essence to lure in the weak and gullible.

3. Give all products a liberal amount of hype to get their selling point.

4. Hope you don't get your ass sued for the "gifted" concepts.

5. Be sure to sustain the entire thing on enough expansions to eat half of your hard-disk.

Starcarft vs. 40k/Warcraft vs. Warhammer: There's contention between the legions of GW and the hordes of Blizzard in regards to copyrights, who invented which idea first, and whether any ripping-off had in fact occurred. Facts seem to lean in the direction of no, but facts are nothing before true faith. It doesn't help that they have their own equivalent of Matt Ward and C.S Goto in the form of Richard Knaak. If you venture into these murky depths, bring something that prevents regeneration.

The Differences between the story lines of Warcraft III and StarCraft: Warcraft happens in a planet called Azeroth and another planet called Draenor while Starcraft happens IIIIINNN SPAAAAAACE! Other than that, the stories are kinda similar with only minor differences if you look closely enough.

Diablo: Diablo 1 is a pointy-clicky version of NetHack with an isomorphic graphical interface. Given that NetHack now has the same through Falcon's eye and Vulture's eye, that advantage is lessened. Since it's less difficult, prepare to suffer relentless mockery for favoring it.

Blizzard Successes that weren't rip-offs (/tg related): In 1992, they made Battle Chess for the Commodore 64 & MS-DOS, and also a Lord of the Rings RPG for the Amiga. The LotR game was supposed to be just the first book, with two sequels, but they never got around to finishing it. They did make Rock and Roll Racing for the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo, but that's /V/ shit.

TL;DR: Plagiarizing faggots with forgettable premises.

Pro-Blizzard

Blizzard in fact is known for creating few yet extremely well done and successful games, for earning a lot of money, and for creating a game-dev meme "when it's done" (which means they could literally spend a decade on the development of one game, and another decade to polish the crunch with a shitton of balance patches just for the sake of perfectionism). They are also greedy bastards with no conscience, and are thus the /v/-fag equivalent of GW (alongside pretty much all other major gamedev companies, except Valve).

Fa/tg/uys though tend to accuse Blizzard for ripping off most of Games Workshop's content. They often write long angry posts about why Blizzard are bad guys, what was stolen from their precious settings, and why Blizzard games sucks so much. This sound hilarious when you think about Games Workshop, who does steal all of its content from other settings. Blizzardfags do the exact same but in reverse orientation, though since they don't give a fuck about fluff, none of them know/care about GW.

If your ever meet raging fan, crying about plagiarism ignore the fucking troll throw oil on the fire and get a-trolling. Alternatively, keep raging about Necron Flyer Lists / Terran Hellion Drop imbalance.

TL;DR: Good crunch, meh fluff (their memorable humor is arguably the best part of it), the Tzeentch to GW's Nurgle.

Legitimately unbiased comparison

Both of the companies' products have a bevy of similarities and differences that can be factually assessed without any real bias. Beginning here is a comprehensive tiny list of the comparisons between popular topics of much Debate.

Orks vs. Orcs

While it is true that the light green skin, angry porcine face with lots of tusks, and heavyset jawlines are traits shared across the two species of Orcoids, that's about where the similarities end. While Orks are brutal, fun-loving omnicidal maniacs who love the Dakka and only momentarily hesitate to shoot something if it's sufficiently green and orky, orcs in Blizzard's universe actually fill the unique role of being good guys. For the most part, anyway. This is actually a first, as no other universe is really known for having Orcs who can be described as friendly. In fact the Orcs of Blizzard's universe are the glue of their faction, serving as the lynch-pin by which the other races come together as one Horde.

Similarly, Orkzes iz da biggest an' da strongest., with the lowly boy easily towering over your standard human. Orcs, while significantly physically imposing, are roughly the same height as average humans, and are dwarfed by their Tauren allies.

Though is should be noted, that at current state Orcs spawned a total of three BBEGs of the setting, including the Lich King himself, while most other races, except dragons and (technically) draenei, have their count on one or zero. The Orks, on the other hand, are the BBEGs.

Terran Marines vs. Space Marines

This should be somewhat obvious. Space marines, as deigned by GW, are One man armies, raised from a young age to be killing machines and then augmented to become superhuman monstrosities. Terran marines, by comparison, are pitiful. They are literally a case of the government or rebel faction finding every hick and criminal they can, slapping Power Armor on them, pumping them with drugs, handing them a gun, and telling them to Keep shooting until it stops moving. This doesn't really need much more explanation than that.

Zergs vs Tyranids

Both are a races of ravenous fast-evolving beasts under control of supreme intelligence, both use biotechnology instead of tools, most of their units are fast, deadly, fragile and numerous, and they even look almost the same. The last part is actually to GW's shame, since they all but copy-pasted Zerg appearance into Tyranids in 3-rd edition, mostly to capitalize on the Starcraft financial success (yes, they were that greedy and shameless even back then).

Secondly, while the Nids' hive mind is their collective consciousness, zergs have an actual physical entities with emotions and personalities to rule them - from the lowly Overlords, to the Cerebrates, to the Overmind itself (or Overlords - Queens - Hive Queens - The Queen of Blades after Kerrigan took over control), and with that they also get some actual character development and political struggles in their ranks - something Nids solely lack as all their only real agenda revolves around going towards that psychic light known as the Golden Throne, all the while eating everything on the way.

Zergs also do not eat worlds, like Tyranids do - only conquer and colonize them, which automatically lowers their Eldritch Unstoppable Evil level by half.

Burning Legion vs Daemons of Chaos

Both are evil demons, who came from the dimension of magic and want to destroy everything. Burning Legion, however, is everything but chaotic, and is highly organized and structured, and even after their Dark God get himself killed, they managed to keep their shit together. Moreover, unlike Chaos Daemons, who are the manifestations of emotions and magic, creatures of the Legion are mostly normal sapient (or not) biological beings, transformed through overuse of fell magic, or artificial constructs, enliven by said fell magic. Unlike Chaos Gods, who want the eternal conflict just for the sake of it (which makes sense, given they are empowered by emotions, and conflicts stimulate more emotions), Burning Legion have the clear goals, which are: 1) Gather all the magic, 2) Use it to destroy the Creation, 3) Build new, better one, 4) ???, 5) PROFIT!

Protoss vs Eldar

You fucking kidding me? OK, both are psychic race with small numbers and long lifespan, both have tech, superior to everything in their setting (save Necrons and Xel'Naga respectively), and both are quite arrogant about their superiority. And thats it. Protoss are tough as adamantium bunkers, fast as a slime, hit like every fucking one of them is armed with a tank cannon or a power fist and tend to move in in big unkillable all-destroying deathballs of doom, while Eldar are fast as hell, can be killed by a mean look and tend to zoom around in small groups at mind-blowing speed, surgically shooting/cutting down priority targets before retreating to the safety of cover. Culture-wise Protoss are closer to Tau than to Eldar, with rigid caste system and hierarchy, and highly collectivist ideology of Khal, which is actually almost the same as Tau's Greater Good. From this perspective Dark Templar are basically Farsight enclave, who told the Khal and it's Ethe... i meant Executors to fuck off and left to set their new home without that brainwashing pheromones psi-internet bullshit. Oh, wait, Tau Empire were introduced 3 years after StarCraft release... OOPS!

Today

After being purchased by the lawyer-spewing hell mouth known as Activision (Popularly known for their Call of Duty series), Blizzard is now a company enjoying some familiar sales tactics! They're selling less content with more bugs for higher prices, require their players to read shitty novels if they want to keep up with awful romance/soap opera story lines 'between' games, and their DRM practices are shutting down loyal players through the very avenues that helped make them popular in the first place (I.E.: Be online to experience the large majority (and sometimes all of it, despite the fact it doesn't need to be that way.) of your purchased product. Exemplified in Starcraft 2 and even worse in Diablo 3, which requires you to be online all the time to use.).

Welcome home, Blizzard. You and Games Workshop have always been the same company.