So? They have more money now than they did when they made all their amazing old games. They just don't make amazing games anymore. Vavle (while they have their own issues) makes better games than Blizzard now. I don't care who has more money. Small companies can make amazing stuff (Divinity: Original Sin).
Also, source? I'm not convinced that Blizzard makes less than Vavle. Blizzard is so fucking greedy.
WoW looks like shit now. Even with the texture update it doesn't pass as a modern game. Especially things like animations. How they still charge $15... I dunno.
As a WoW modder I can tell you that WoW's textures are very well made and perfect for the style that it's attempting to accomplish.
What has Valve been doing?
So you have Half Life, which was just "another" quake except it had exceptional storytelling, as well as Engine development for HL2, but they haven't touched that ball in a while.
You have TFC, which was another quake shooter, and TF2 which has, sure, revolutionized shooters back into a class system and a microtransaction system. It was sort-of successful. It's not competitive enough as it could be because of:
Counterstrike, which was a test at first iirc. Just another shooter for the times of Halo, early CoDs, Quake, Unreal, etc. And the newer games are literally the same thing just in a new engine.. and you can aim with certain guns.
Left 4 Dead, which rode on the team aspect of the zombie craze, except that team is gone and making Evolve, so you can't argue that L4D3 will be decent yet aside from it being in Source 2.
Portal, not even their own idea nor was it their game originally. So I don't give them credit even though I love the game.
DotA 2, which is literally because of Blizzard. Not their game, just they made a MOBA in Source 2, grats.
Okay so their current roster is;
CS:GO. a sequel of the past.. 3 games? Pretty much the same thing.
DotA 2, not even their game, but still a sequel.
TF2, also a sequel with nothing much past the monetizing system.
And L4D3, which is a sequel again without the original team.
The thing that's good about Valve is that they have a variety of IP that sequels are okay. But my point to many companies, looking at you iW, Blizzard, Valve, etc. Is to stop with sequels/spinoffs unless you have a really good reason to make one. By not creating new ideas you create a stagnant feeling with players. Sure I may be hitting this wall sooner than others, but I'm not having fun with Jaina Proudmoore anymore, be it Hearthstone or WoW or whatever, I've known the character for 10+ and seen her grow, but I'm an adult and want games to grow, not to be nostalgic.
Valve is good because they try not to milk things, they make sequels because of demand, or because they feel like a story is unfinished, or because the games are outdated. But they also know when to hold back the leash and wait for the proper times. But Valve is a company. They make money. They make ALOT of money through Steam. If you think that Valve has less money than Blizzard, I don't know what numbers you're looking at.
Take into account all server expenses from Vanilla day 1 to now. Sure it's way cheaper now, and they have a more positive income (especially after Hearthstone, HotS, etc), but Valve didn't require a button of MMO servers to spend millions/billions of dollars to keep them out of constant maintenance. There are countless times where Mike Morheim stated that they barely made it by with most of their games, and that they were barely digging dirt. They had passion because they wanted to do what they loved and make money. They have money sure, but they know they'll continue making money out of the same games constantly, Valve is different because they have a store. If Valve didn't rely off steam's income, they'd be in the same pot as Blizzard.
Blizzard doesn't make as good games because they cant afford such a huge office of employers to just (literally) wheel around and change projects, give up projects, and add projects on a whim (src. Valve's Employee HB). When Blizzard sits down, they're on that project for months or years and are dedicated to it. The technology they have will extend to their other games. Tech from SC2? went into D3 and obviously went into HotS. Tech from Titan? Into WoW.
Why are Blizzard games good, though? They're good because they cater to all audiences and give a good experience for what their worth. $15/mo for WoW isn't much when you have a stable income. 75% of the people (assumption) who complain about that pay is because they have no income. Are those same people aware that many of us who've played WoW had that income from allowance as a child, as we played when we were in middle, high school? Some of them College, with internships and scholarships on the line. Many people are looking at games like TERA, or ToR that went F2P. Why did they go F2P? Because they had faults. They weren't well optimized, or they delivered false promises, or any other number of reasons. Another reason? People expect WoW, but better. The problem is, they don't feel like the changes on WoW are good, so they leave, and realize that WoW is the best MMO that could be played across all computers, have an indepth story (even if I dislike it), a huge community, constant updates and reliably good content.
If I agree with you in any way, it's that their storytelling has gone to crap, and that it's facing the concept of "Lucas"ism, Chris Metzen specifically has been pulling George Lucases in their storylines and it's not resting well with many fans who enjoy(ed) the lore.
The games themselves are solid, they work, they do what they're promised, but their problems are that they're the same thing from 10 years ago.
Recalling back to my previous note, small companies make great games because they don't have money and have passion. Blizzard isn't a small company anymore, and doesn't have that much money (they do, but not much compared to others), nor passion to create new things. They've fallen into a trap that believes that people are nostalgic, and they are respectively, but they haven't learned from watching Activision and EA's developers that it's not going to last that long.
TLDR: Blizzard makes good games when they're new. But they're bad at re-doing old things, is what I'm trying to pull here. I don't like Blizzard's new plans but I disagree that they're "Bad" at games. Feels like I was jumping between the fence a few times.
wc3 1.27 
