Once the most adored video game developer in the world, Blizzard Entertainment can’t seem to get out of a deep hole of controversies and disappointments, and many fans have lost hope it ever will.
Blizzard was once considered the greatest and best video game developer, known throughout the world for the pristine quality of its releases and the strong communities that formed around its games. But today, it seems to be only a shell of what it once was, and all that fans have left is fond memories of when Blizzard was the greatest game publisher on the planet.
Blizzard’s humble beginnings
Naturally, the company’s rise to fame didn’t happen overnight. It took years of a small team of developers working hard to create the best-quality games they could. They didn’t seem to care all that much about investors, shareholders, focus groups, or maximizing profits. They tried to create whatever they thought would be ‘cool’ and what fans would enjoy.
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Founded in 1991 by three college friends under the name Silicon & Synapse, the company first focused on creating game ports. But the team had a great love for the fantasy genre, and were huge fans of Tolkien’s work. Eventually they got around to developing their own titles, one of the first being ‘The Lost Vikings’ – a puzzle-platform game for the Super NES in 1993. At the time it became one of the best-selling SNES games of the year, receiving praise for its difficult puzzles, unique visual style, humor and character animations.
The company renamed itself Blizzard Entertainment and, in 1994, it released the first game in what would become its biggest franchise to date – ‘Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.’ This was the company’s first attempt at a real-time strategy game and over the years it became an icon of the genre. But aside from the gameplay it introduced an appealing fantasy world, which would later become the foundation for an entire universe, known to many as ‘World of Warcraft.’
Rise to glory: ‘Warcraft,’ ‘Diablo’ & ‘StarCraft’
The first ‘Warcraft’ game was a gigantic success and the studio soon followed it up with ‘Warcraft 2,’ which became one of the most influential RTS games of all time. Blizzard went on to launch other extremely successful franchises, such as ‘Diablo’ and ‘StarCraft,’ and every title the company released seemed to make yet another impact on the gaming world and pushed the industry forward as a whole.
Over the next decade the gaming market grew, and Blizzard was at the forefront. ‘Diablo 2’ even received a Guinness World Record as the fastest-selling computer game with over one million copies sold in the first two weeks of its release. Eventually, even people who took no particular interest in video games had heard about ‘Warcraft,’ ‘Diablo’ and ‘StarCraft.’