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.

Truth. Photoshopped by he who should not be named himself.

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 most of Games Workshop's content, quotes from assorted movies and a long list of other things. Note that Blizzard never did anything original...ever. What? You thought Warcraft and Starcraft were original? Ohh please hand yourself over to the Inquisition for a mind wipe. Fuck you Blizzard, fuck you with a chainsword.

How to create a game, the Blizzard way!

Blizzard has a very simple way of crafting a new game without spending long hours on what to throw in, here's a crash course on how to prepare a Blizzard-made game:

1.Slap-in some copied content from several sources, re-work them a little by changing some colors as well as their personalities so they wouldn't look like total rip-offs. For added lulz, rip-off some quotes from movies since it's kewl.

2.Throw in some typical fluff you'd see in every sci-fi/fantasy themed media. Claim it's an homage so nobody points out you're just not creating your own lore.

3.Sprinkle some fanboy's essence to lure the blizztards into buying their shit that will for some reason never be outdated or disliked by anyone with an IQ below 70 despite the constantly evolving gaming world or how pointlessly retarded the game is.

4.And finally give all products a liberal amount of hype to get their selling point.

5. Hope you don't get your ass sued by all the ideas and copied content you've ripped off from everyone else.

Once you've done that, be sure to sustain the entire thing on expansions! Ohh enough pointless/retarded expansions to eat half of your hard-disk's memory even with it's filled with last generation content.

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.

What you should know already

1. Back in 1992, Games Workshop asked Blizzard to make a licensed Warhammer Fantasy game, and they did.
2. For some reason They felt it wasn't a close enough representation of Warhammer, GW then refused to let them publish it.
3. Blizzard then removed every direct reference to GW intellectual property.
4. Published it in 1994, and sold a zillion copies of Warcraft.
5. And several gazillion copies of Warcraft 40,000 Starcraft.

Wait wait, what about Diablo?

Spoken like someone who hasn't grown a neckbeard yet. Diablo 1 is a pointy-clicky version of NetHack with an isomorphic graphical interface, which is probably the only improvem-- what? Falcon's Eye, and now Vulture's Eye? Nevermind.

Blizzard Successes that weren't rip-offs

(and are somewhat /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.

Blizzard FAILURES that weren't rip offs

Blackthorne. Of course, in typical Blizzard fashion, they re used their old ideas from Blackthorne for use in Warcraft. Right down to the enemy design, which was used for the Orcs and the premise of 'badass royalty in exile' for King Chin of Derpwind. Bullshit, Blackthorne played like a rip-off of Prince of Persia, but with shotguns. The story read like a cheesy fantasy film from the 1980s.

Today

After being purchased by the lawyer-spewing hell mouth known as Activision (For you non-/v/irgins, the same company that brought you the Call of Duty series. Yes, THOSE popular, overrated, industry-destroying shitpieces.) 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. As they work diligently on worsening their reputation, the leviathan company won't even realize the importance of having lots of players, encouraging friends to join in, until too few people are playing. After which they'll just stand around, swearing that hu-mans are confusing because they won't do exactly what the marketing statistics say they should.

Welcome home, Blizzard. You and Games Workshop really are the same company.