B - Blizzard (revisited)

Now at the end of the development cycle for your third expansion to WoW and Blizzard is looking pretty good.  Diablo 3 shipping any time now and 2012 expecting that Starcraft 2 expansion.  Who wouldn't wanna be Blizzard?  No one.

Oh Blizzard, you also got knocked off of the list, but BioWare laid a huge fucking egg with SWToR, so I let you keep the spot.

Blizzard made a lot of good moves and while Cataclysm may have not been the best expansion, it was one that really needed to happen.  We have closed several stories and opened up a whole lot of new storylines (and characters).  A lot of people don't like the idea of MoP and aren't into Pandas or a ninja class or an expansion without a clearly focused bad guy.  I, for one, don't give a fuck.

Blizzard has steadily produced content that was as good as or better than what everyone else was able to offer at the time.  Period.  You can hate on WoW all you want, but it is performing at a higher rate and has plenty of content for people of all level ranges.  Much of what has caused SWToR to falter in these early stages is the lack of direction that is in the game.  For a game so long in development and given so much money.... where is the quality product?  Blizzard spent 7 years getting the formula right, if you were going to copy it, why wouldn't you copy it NOW?  They seem to have gotten ahold of the blueprints from back in 2004, sadly.

There is a big year ahead.  Diablo 3 looks to be pretty good and with a lot of online control and multi-user playing I see it doing very well.  While I do not agree with the way they are selling Starcraft 2, I have to acknowledge that people love it and are desperately awaiting the expansion.  My favorite thing about Blizzard heading into 2012 is that there will be another year of a game that I can depend on to be enjoyable.  After playing for so long I have a very easy time finding something to do every single time I logon.  I enjoy that.  In the next year I hope to level most of my characters out to max level and start in on some collecting for tradeskills in MoP.