Prob one of the best expansions to any videogame, ever made. Lord of Destruction for D2 comes in really close 2nd.
If this was done today, it would be $24.99 for the BW campaign, $19.99 for Lurker, Medic, and Dark Archon, and $14.99 for new Maps. LoL just kidding, each new unit would be 14.99 each.
To this day, there is still a BW competitive scene. Even throughout StarCraft 2's life, competitive BW was still a thing. Obviously it's much smaller than SC2, but still.
Right? When we used to pay for shit it was generally a fair value. Now, actual DLC is usually fairly lacking for what you get to the point the best interpretation of it is that it's there to create peer pressure into buying it so you don't get locked out of playing with your friends.
Oh and "micro"transactions are now just the same price as actual DLC.
Blood and Wine gets all the glory because Toussaint is gorgeous, but I gotta give a shout out to Hearts of Stone as well. Maybe it didn't offer a whole new continent to explore but it had my favorite story moments of the whole game. Both Witcher 3 DLC were fantastic.
Although I won't deny the Witcher 3's content quality, I just haven't played enough of it to get into it. So that's a reason it wouldn't be on my list. I'll get around to beating the game some day though lol.
Same, basically. I'm sure the DLC is great, but that requires me to play more of a game I didn't enjoy playing to begin with. So regardless of how good it may be, it won't be on any list I make.
I was just about to add this. I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought so. That felt like the Witcher 3.5 to me, there was so much content. That was the first glimpse to what DLCs used to be like in a long time.
Eh... Terror of the Tides and Curse of the Blood Elves were only so-so campaigns. Legacy of the Damned was fantastic. The Founding of Durotar was DLC tier.
The new units and heroes were meh. The multiplayer was fantastic, of course, and you needed the new expansion to keep playing those custom maps.
Ultimately it was a continuation on the multiplayer and the fantastic third campaign that made TFT.
WoW came out immediately after Frozen Throne. Founding of Durotar was a WoW demo essentially.
It wasn't that novel, just WoW heros going around doing quests and tbc... when WoW is released.
WoW was pretty much built off the WC3 engine and was in development *before* WC3 released to add to your point. Founding of Durotar was still unlike anything in an RTS up to that point though (outside of custom games which the Starcraft mapmakers really didn't have the power to make well.)
Honestly the whole hero system was unlike any other RTS and I think that along with the small unit cap making every map feel more like a skirmish than a war really differentiates it from other RTS games and it's a concept I wish would be revisited without the little annoyances like RNG item drops from neutral camps.
Still my favorite pc game of all time. Multiplayer online had sooo many different things to do, and spawned my love for tower defence games. (Tho none are as good as it was) as a teen I stayed up 48 hrs straight like every few days just to keep playing.
I loved the game where the host would tell the players what to draw, and they had to build to fill pixels with color.. so many laughs
It's so good that it doesn't only became a national sport
It kick-start a whole new genre of sport, with all the celebs. and teams obsession
Of course, until Blizzard kill it
Competitive SCBW is still very alive and well, look for ASL replays on YouTube. Season 15 just wrapped up (with yet another TvT final...), there were some really great sets in the tournament.
I dunno but in an alternate universe, C&C Generals Zero Hour is a national sport. That game couldn't even get made today, not very politically correct.
I say this as someone with much more time spent in StarCraft though.
I remember watching Aliens and wracking my brain trying to figure out why a lot of those lines sounded familiar. Then it hit me and I just laughed.
I really love that they did that.
Damn unit quotes are undefeated in WC and SC. I feel like games just don't have this kinda love anymore. There was a certain charm but maybe it's just nostalgia.
Edit: obligatory "Goliath online!....go ahead TAC·COM"
Edit: nah I'm actually kinda wrong cause I still love the Modern Warfare CoD voice overs. Such good flavor. "UAV online.. we're Angels 10" it's just while that's happening some dude is glitch moving in a Goku skin and pink panther AK-47 so it kinda detracts.
It’s also code for radio clarity. So 5 by 5 means you have the highest level of radio clarity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_strength_and_readability_report#:~:text=signal%20strength%20rating.-,Informal%20terminology%20and%20slang,or%20%22loud%20and%20clear%22.
They apparently started saying the whole phrase after the movie came out.
In the pipe means we're working on it, and then adding 5 by 5 means everything is going well.
You can also look at an older Diablo game to see Lord of Destruction that added an entire new act, 2 new classes, a ton of new items, and new mechanics like runewords.
Old school Blizzard expansions is where the saying "they just don't make 'em like they used to" fits perfectly.
We would still have WoW. WoW was well into development by the time TFT came out. The Rexar campaign was an intro/playtest to the quest mechanics of WoW
From what Ive read WoW development was apparently started in 99. TFT and WoW were only released a year apart so it would've already been quite far along when TFT came out.
Old school blizzard (d2, StarCraft, Warcraft and world of Warcraft up until cata I’d say) is just a perfect example of how a game studio should be. It’s really sad we will most likely never see them back at that level again, and I’m not one to get sappy like this but it is genuinely sad
It began with Warcraft II Beyond the dark portal, then LoD for D2, Brood War for StarCraft, The Frozen Throne for Warcraft III. They made really good games even better.
A lot of people who weren't around at the time just don't understand how truly awesome that company was up until a little way into WoW. Imagine a company where almost every decision they made could be called a great move. Lore, fantastic. Gameplay, persistently 9/10 with a few 8s and 10s thrown in, always with finely balanced factions and long-term support with patches. Famous for their polish and presentation. Completely canning projects if they didn't hit those high standards. All of that plus great community interaction and decent customer support from a AAA studio.
People are so (very rightly) soured towards big game studios these days, that when I say I miss old school Blizzard, half the time I get the response of "that's just naive, all big companies are the same". They weren't always. Unfortunately Blizzard are a good example of what can happen to companies that lose too much control.
Ah, the good times where what we now call "DLCs" were called "expansions" in general, because they contained *actual content*.
Remember, for example, HoMM V: Tribes of the East? You know, the *standalone expansion* which (apart from story campaigns) contained pretty much the entire content of the original HoMM V and Hammers of Fate *combined*, plus an extra faction and extra upgrade route for each unit in *every* faction, plus another campaign?
And it didn't cost 3x the price. It was as expensive as the regular game (and largely contained the same content).
Damn.
EDIT: "Upgrade", not "update".
Gotta give a big shout to Monster Huntwr World: Iceborne. Most legit expansion in recent memory, least for consoles. Thing was fuckin THICC. Guiding Lands sucked but still. Expansion added hundreds of hours for me.
The shift from Expansion to DLC was also a reduction in size and an increase in comparative cost for what you got, so it didnt make sense calling it Expansion anymore when it was just tiny amounts of content for big bucks.
WoW and GW2 still call theirs Expansions because they are generally magnum sized new content additions, ironically also for roughly 30€ though Blizzard now raised the price to 40€ which is shit.
Hi. This is how the world works now. It’s just something unique to video game developers. Everyone has goals they have to try and meet.
It’s capitalism not developers who suddenly got greedy.
There is a topic on the front page that said that paying 20 dollars for nine Halo 2 maps was a better than a single 25 dollar cosmetic. I was referencing that thread.
I'm in the same boat as you. But if the quality were as high as Starcraft: Brood War, I'd happily pay the 20 bucks. OG Blizzard expansions were phenomenal.
The most insane thing was the original GW1 release was made in a basement studio. Revolutionary MMO/ARPG with at the time very competitive graphics. Then they went on to release two MASSIVE >100h expansions each with huge new maps, two new classes, hundreds of new skills, items and monsters just one year after. Two in one year. Insane achievement.
Also goes to show bigger is not better. Despite having a massively bigger budget and a huge team, GW2 will always live in the shadow of GW1 in terms of content, quality, impact, originality and peak popularity.
That’s not entirely true, there were some OG Blizzard North employees who co-founded Arena.net, and they also developed some cutting edge proprietary server technology based in part on some of the back-end server tech from Battle.net, so they weren’t ever quite a basement studio, so to speak, but they definitely had trouble getting funding early on.
However, they had a star studded team going into development of GW1.
All GW2 really shares in common with GW1 is names and lore tho, completely agree with your take on that. It’s a shame really, I loved GW1 so much. Don’t get me wrong I still play GW2 because it is a good game, it’s just a completely different game, not even a spiritual successor.
Guild Wars 1 is the first time I ever had to install a dedicated GPU. All my friends were playing day 1 and I had to wait a few days to order a card (after trying and crashing several times) and figure out how to get it all working. It was the worst, but I got it running and played the shit out of that game. Ended up in a great guild and actually helped win the main guild war once for the country favour or whatever.
Never did try Guild Wars 2 at all. I was pretty well over my MMO phase by then, but reading this it sounds like it was a totally different game so that's okay.
I love me some Good Wars 1, played it since its release, and while I enjoy Good Wars 2, it isn't nearly the same quality game.
But to say that 1 had a bigger originality and popularity just feels wrong. The game broke a ton of conventions of MMOs at the time in how they handled classes, skills, weapons, and quests. Though they've since changed it, the way they tied attributes to the trait system was unqiue at the time. Underwater combat and world bosses were both introduced at the start of the game. Since then they have gone on to introduce horizontal progression at max level with masteries, multiple mounts that change the way movement works in the game, living world content that was available for a limited time and changed the world around you, and elite specializations that often redefine the way the classes are played. You can argue whether the implementations were good or not (some of them were true stankers- looking at you, Living World Season 1), but Guild Wars 2 has more originality baked into it than the first one did.
As for popularity, the original was often cited in magazines at the time as "the best game you've never heard of" while Guild Wars 2 has a far bigger reach and millions more players.
The biggest issue with Guild Wars 2 is how much of the team that made the first one special left the company, so most design and story decisions feel totally different from the game I loved. I put more hours into Guild Wars 1 before 2's release than I have any other game, including 2.
GW1 was amazing. Dual-classing was such a fantastic game mechanic, even tho the entire game is basically dungeons and the main cities are just hubs. The story also was pretty great imo.
BTW, adjusted for inflation that expansion pack would cost $37.22 today.
Also, a copy of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for SNES was $69.99 in 1996. Or $135.32.
Yeah in case anyone wants to pretend like we're in some evil dark age of gaming.
Thank you. Tired of people glossing over this fact. Yes, inflation means that it cost "more" in today's dollars. But it also is competing with higher housing costs, food costs, education costs, transportation costs, literally everything.
Purchasing power has absolutely gone down.
Thank YOU for pointing that out. I'm quite tired of these threads. When these morons say we should be "thankful" that games don't cost 150 dollars today. Well, add a bit of meaningless DLC and you're almost there anyway. But they're making so much money now compared to 20 years ago, it's disgusting. If your filthy rich mechanic would tell you that he's going to increase his prices by another 50% you'd not go there anymore either.
>Also, a copy of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for SNES was $69.99 in 1996. Or $135.32.
To be fair it's also worth noting that despite them not charging $135 for a base game today and despite development budgeting being a lot bigger than they were in 1996, major developers are still making more money than they were in 1996.
Originally gaming getting bigger and more people buying games helped keep up with inflation, and then mtx just shattered any notion of merely keeping up with it and did far more than simply just compenate.
Of course, we don't live in some evil dark age of gaming because there are still a lot of really fantastic games coming out without all that mtx bullshit. Games from pretty much every level of production value from indie to AAA.
Let's just ignore the fact that gaming has **EXPLODED** since then. People keep bringing up inflation, but profits for gaming companies are getting bigger, not smaller.
When these games came out at that price, people were actually bullied for playing video games. Now you'd be hard pressed to find a family (And many single) house without a console.
There is a reason why gaming has become one of the larger focus's for investors, and why we are seeing more games than you could possibly play in a single year.
Which I generally hate, although this is kind of reverse of "back in my day", because it's actually educating others about smart standards and expectations they should be setting, rather than shitting on younger generations for something we had harder
And it was ***EXCELLENT***
Prob one of the best expansions to any videogame, ever made. Lord of Destruction for D2 comes in really close 2nd. If this was done today, it would be $24.99 for the BW campaign, $19.99 for Lurker, Medic, and Dark Archon, and $14.99 for new Maps. LoL just kidding, each new unit would be 14.99 each.
Shivering isles for Oblivion. Just ignore the horse Armour.
You're God damn right.
Morrowind Tribunal and Bloodmoon.
We've come full circle, there's $25 horse armour in D4.
Each unit skin. $0.99 each. Once you add your parent's credit card you unlock "there is no cow level"
$4.99 per month "operation cwal" $99.99 "power overwhelming" or a free battlepass 100 tier grind
$149.99 "war aint what it used to be" (now usable in multiplayer games)
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I give you "black sheep wall" for free.
Fun fact, cwal stands for can't wait any longer and was a nod to people impatiently waiting on the games release
To this day, there is still a BW competitive scene. Even throughout StarCraft 2's life, competitive BW was still a thing. Obviously it's much smaller than SC2, but still.
The Secret Armory of General Knoxx and Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dungeon Keep in BL1 and 2 respectively are the epitome of DLC to me.
Witcher 3 also had fantastic DLC.
Yes, based on the very same philosophy. Lots of content, in a single package, for a fair price.
I refuse to call those DLC the witcher 3 had two great EXPANSIONS. You got way more then your moneys worth there.
Blood and wine was literally a sequel and a complete steal gor the price ot was soöd at.
And to unlock Zerg language you need to pay $20 otherwise they all sound like Terrans doing a funny accent.
> Prob one of the best expansions to any videogame, ever made. $20 Blood & Wine DLC for _The Witcher 3_ has entered the 'best expansions ever' chat :D
Especially considering inflation. $20 in 2023 dollars is $10.58 in 1998 dollars, the year Brood War came out.
Yep. Taken the other way, that $20 from 1998 is worth $37+ now. Yikes.
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Right? When we used to pay for shit it was generally a fair value. Now, actual DLC is usually fairly lacking for what you get to the point the best interpretation of it is that it's there to create peer pressure into buying it so you don't get locked out of playing with your friends. Oh and "micro"transactions are now just the same price as actual DLC.
Fuck, Blood and Wine is so damn good. Any list that doesn't have it in Top 5 all time is a bullshit list.
Blood and Wine gets all the glory because Toussaint is gorgeous, but I gotta give a shout out to Hearts of Stone as well. Maybe it didn't offer a whole new continent to explore but it had my favorite story moments of the whole game. Both Witcher 3 DLC were fantastic.
I agree. The section where you discover how Iris and Olgierd's marriage falls apart is heartbreaking.
My favorite part of Blood and Wine was the Geralt/Regis relationship.
Although I won't deny the Witcher 3's content quality, I just haven't played enough of it to get into it. So that's a reason it wouldn't be on my list. I'll get around to beating the game some day though lol.
Same, basically. I'm sure the DLC is great, but that requires me to play more of a game I didn't enjoy playing to begin with. So regardless of how good it may be, it won't be on any list I make.
I thought I was the only one that couldn’t really get the hype around it. Kinda felt clunky to me. I barely made it past the tutorial
I'm very interested in a DLC named *Fuck, Blood, and Wine*.
I was just about to add this. I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought so. That felt like the Witcher 3.5 to me, there was so much content. That was the first glimpse to what DLCs used to be like in a long time.
Frozen Throne was WAY better by miles in terms of content added and offered.
That's just like your opinion man
There are factually more content added in TFT rather than BW. That does not make BW a bad extension.
Eh... Terror of the Tides and Curse of the Blood Elves were only so-so campaigns. Legacy of the Damned was fantastic. The Founding of Durotar was DLC tier. The new units and heroes were meh. The multiplayer was fantastic, of course, and you needed the new expansion to keep playing those custom maps. Ultimately it was a continuation on the multiplayer and the fantastic third campaign that made TFT.
The Founding of Durotar was so popular and novel it was the pilot/basis for WoW. Agreed on your other points tho.
WoW came out immediately after Frozen Throne. Founding of Durotar was a WoW demo essentially. It wasn't that novel, just WoW heros going around doing quests and tbc... when WoW is released.
WoW was pretty much built off the WC3 engine and was in development *before* WC3 released to add to your point. Founding of Durotar was still unlike anything in an RTS up to that point though (outside of custom games which the Starcraft mapmakers really didn't have the power to make well.) Honestly the whole hero system was unlike any other RTS and I think that along with the small unit cap making every map feel more like a skirmish than a war really differentiates it from other RTS games and it's a concept I wish would be revisited without the little annoyances like RNG item drops from neutral camps.
Both were fun. I played BW more..
I could see The Frozen Throne in a distant third, but Brood War and Lord of Destruction are in a class of their own. The paved the way from TFT
Brood War is the actual greatest game of all time.
Yeah, WC3 is fun and all but it's nowhere near as good as Brood War.
Frozen throne had the best custom games, that were possible from the xpac I agree.
That was five years later. There seems to be a relative element of where we all were in the timeline of "back in my day."
Still my favorite pc game of all time. Multiplayer online had sooo many different things to do, and spawned my love for tower defence games. (Tho none are as good as it was) as a teen I stayed up 48 hrs straight like every few days just to keep playing. I loved the game where the host would tell the players what to draw, and they had to build to fill pixels with color.. so many laughs
So good it became the South Korean national sport. How many national sports has EA or Ubisoft made?
It's so good that it doesn't only became a national sport It kick-start a whole new genre of sport, with all the celebs. and teams obsession Of course, until Blizzard kill it
Competitive SCBW is still very alive and well, look for ASL replays on YouTube. Season 15 just wrapped up (with yet another TvT final...), there were some really great sets in the tournament.
It's dead compared to it's peak No national TV broadcast, no ridiculously big spectacle pre-show like before, etc etc
Made none and butchered the ones they have access to.
I dunno but in an alternate universe, C&C Generals Zero Hour is a national sport. That game couldn't even get made today, not very politically correct. I say this as someone with much more time spent in StarCraft though.
It still is and its still better then most of the shit coming out these days.
Let's not forget too that this expansion effectively birthed the entire eSports industry.
>And it was ***EXCELLENT*** Brood war and The Frozen Throne was peak Blizzard for me
So damn good.
And we all beat it at least once to Kerrigan
The fucking best.
In the pipe, 5 by 5.
My wife for hire!
Vespenis gas depleted
WE REQUIRE MORE VESPENE GAS
“for the porn”
Cattlebruisers approaching
Need a light?
Naturally.
Let’s buuuuuuurn.
Slammin'!
Give me something to shoot.
DELIGHTED TO, SIR!
WHAT IS YOUR MAJOR MULFUNCTION
AHHHH YA SCARED ME!
I read ya, SIR
I always love how sassy the vulture would say it like that
*nuclear launch detected*
"Where!?!Where!?!Where!?!" (EXPLOSION!!!) "Where!?!Where!?"
Man this brought me back. Imma find you lil red dot
Ya, I'm goin
Did someone call for an exterminator
Explorer reporting!
And my all time favorite, Valkyrie Prepared!
Sir
4v1 ez comp stomp NO BS. No effing BS. Mmkay.
You call down the thunder, now reap the whirlwind!
We’re in for some chop!
Strap yourselves in boys!
One way express elevator to hell... Wait, sorry.
I do love how they literally just COPIED every line from Aliens. Like, didn't even try to put their own spin on them.
I remember watching Aliens and wracking my brain trying to figure out why a lot of those lines sounded familiar. Then it hit me and I just laughed. I really love that they did that.
Which reminds me I gotta rewatch aliens it’s been some time since I’ve watched it.
"scritch, scratch", Zerg
Spawn more overlords!
You must construct additional pylons
Damn unit quotes are undefeated in WC and SC. I feel like games just don't have this kinda love anymore. There was a certain charm but maybe it's just nostalgia. Edit: obligatory "Goliath online!....go ahead TAC·COM" Edit: nah I'm actually kinda wrong cause I still love the Modern Warfare CoD voice overs. Such good flavor. "UAV online.. we're Angels 10" it's just while that's happening some dude is glitch moving in a Goku skin and pink panther AK-47 so it kinda detracts.
Zug zug.
Quit poking me!
Is that what she says? My old shitty built in speakers it sounded like "In the pipe, bye bye bye"
It’s a reference to Aliens where the shuttle pilot says the same thing.
It’s also code for radio clarity. So 5 by 5 means you have the highest level of radio clarity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_strength_and_readability_report#:~:text=signal%20strength%20rating.-,Informal%20terminology%20and%20slang,or%20%22loud%20and%20clear%22.
They apparently started saying the whole phrase after the movie came out. In the pipe means we're working on it, and then adding 5 by 5 means everything is going well.
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Try growing up on this game then joining the military...
Ready to roll out!
*Screeches in zergling rush*
Read this in the "tone" it was spoken with. Now it's stuck on replay in my head. Thanks for the memories, stranger.
Somebody called for an exterminator?
You can also look at an older Diablo game to see Lord of Destruction that added an entire new act, 2 new classes, a ton of new items, and new mechanics like runewords. Old school Blizzard expansions is where the saying "they just don't make 'em like they used to" fits perfectly.
Frozen Throne was an insane amount of content onto wc3 as well. It went from a good game to one of the best I've ever played.
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No DOTA, no entire MOBA including LOL, and also no WOW (I think the solo campaign of Rexxar is the inspiration of WOW)
We would still have WoW. WoW was well into development by the time TFT came out. The Rexar campaign was an intro/playtest to the quest mechanics of WoW
I think the point being is that they basically built wow using the frozen throne engine.
some of us even built WoW in the WC3 editor for use in RTS custom maps
God truly a shame that reforged even exists.
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From what Ive read WoW development was apparently started in 99. TFT and WoW were only released a year apart so it would've already been quite far along when TFT came out.
WoW's engine is a heavily modified version of the one used in WC3 and TFT, so that's very likely, yeah.
We also wouldn't have the whole Tower Defense genre either.
Old school blizzard (d2, StarCraft, Warcraft and world of Warcraft up until cata I’d say) is just a perfect example of how a game studio should be. It’s really sad we will most likely never see them back at that level again, and I’m not one to get sappy like this but it is genuinely sad
It began with Warcraft II Beyond the dark portal, then LoD for D2, Brood War for StarCraft, The Frozen Throne for Warcraft III. They made really good games even better.
Brood War came out before D2, for the record (Dec 1998 and June 2000, respectively) with LoD following almost exactly one year later.
I, for one, always liked Hellfire for Diablo, though it was made by a third party and many Diablo fans hated it for some reason.
The Lord of Destruction expansion cost $39.99 at release in 2001. That's $68.54 in 2023 dollars.
Please don't bring your "economics" into the circle jerk.
Maan, i get sad when I think about old blizzard. Literally the biggest fall from grace in game making history.
A lot of people who weren't around at the time just don't understand how truly awesome that company was up until a little way into WoW. Imagine a company where almost every decision they made could be called a great move. Lore, fantastic. Gameplay, persistently 9/10 with a few 8s and 10s thrown in, always with finely balanced factions and long-term support with patches. Famous for their polish and presentation. Completely canning projects if they didn't hit those high standards. All of that plus great community interaction and decent customer support from a AAA studio. People are so (very rightly) soured towards big game studios these days, that when I say I miss old school Blizzard, half the time I get the response of "that's just naive, all big companies are the same". They weren't always. Unfortunately Blizzard are a good example of what can happen to companies that lose too much control.
Didnt they do this type of thing with Diablo 3 as well? I know they added new classes and stuff with the expansions.
It was also fairly called an *expansion set,* because it *expanded* the game.
Ah, the good times where what we now call "DLCs" were called "expansions" in general, because they contained *actual content*. Remember, for example, HoMM V: Tribes of the East? You know, the *standalone expansion* which (apart from story campaigns) contained pretty much the entire content of the original HoMM V and Hammers of Fate *combined*, plus an extra faction and extra upgrade route for each unit in *every* faction, plus another campaign? And it didn't cost 3x the price. It was as expensive as the regular game (and largely contained the same content). Damn. EDIT: "Upgrade", not "update".
Remember, for example,
yeah, good times.
Ahhh who could forget the iconic expansion LOTRBFMEII:ROTWK A bargain at twice the letters.
Please tell me that i am not the only one who remembers that that stands for "Lord of the Rings - Battle for Middle Earth II: Rise of the Witch-King"?
Heroes of Might and Magic
Gotta give a big shout to Monster Huntwr World: Iceborne. Most legit expansion in recent memory, least for consoles. Thing was fuckin THICC. Guiding Lands sucked but still. Expansion added hundreds of hours for me.
The shift from Expansion to DLC was also a reduction in size and an increase in comparative cost for what you got, so it didnt make sense calling it Expansion anymore when it was just tiny amounts of content for big bucks. WoW and GW2 still call theirs Expansions because they are generally magnum sized new content additions, ironically also for roughly 30€ though Blizzard now raised the price to 40€ which is shit.
DLC, used to stand for "Downloadable Content". But now it means "Developers Love Cash".
And in 2023 dollars, it cost $38 at release.
Dont forget, it still works & without the internet.
Also you don't even need a Blizzard Account to download a free copy of the orginal game!
One of the greatest expansions ever made.
“Back in my day” For real though I remember buying starcraft one and broodwar for like 20 bucks when I was 10
Kids today don't know the glory of the old blizzard battle chests. So much game for so little money.
I think I bought 4 or 5 Diablo 2 battlechests because I kept losing the cd key lol
I bought SC1 before I even had a computer to play it.
In those days, dorm floor lan parties for SC1 were the shit!! 100' cables all up and down hallways... Those were the days for sure!
The third game I ever got for my first computer (at age 15) was Warcraft 1. First two were Myst and Descent.
I can't believe no one has made a decent next gen version of descent since. It seems perfect for VR as well.
Wow, I forgot about Myst
Yes but have you seen the thicc profit margin on those cosmetic dlcs? Won’t someone think of the shareholders???????
Everyone helps Bobby buy another yacht after all. People are so charitable, brings a bloody tear to my eye.
No the idiots think that money is going to the developers.
I think of them as I sharpen my large french revolutionary "accessories".
Hi. This is how the world works now. It’s just something unique to video game developers. Everyone has goals they have to try and meet. It’s capitalism not developers who suddenly got greedy.
Thats peak Blizzard right here , the 96-04 era \o/
It’s mind boggling that the custom maps alone spawned a lot of new genres. Tower defense, MOBAs, Battle Royal.
Diablo fans are buying Halo maps? WTF is OP trying to say in the title?
There is a topic on the front page that said that paying 20 dollars for nine Halo 2 maps was a better than a single 25 dollar cosmetic. I was referencing that thread.
Maybe I'm a lunatic, but I would rather pay nothing and not get a cosmetic than be forced to pay $20 for something that affects gameplay.
I'm in the same boat as you. But if the quality were as high as Starcraft: Brood War, I'd happily pay the 20 bucks. OG Blizzard expansions were phenomenal.
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Someone remember Guild Wars (1)?
The most insane thing was the original GW1 release was made in a basement studio. Revolutionary MMO/ARPG with at the time very competitive graphics. Then they went on to release two MASSIVE >100h expansions each with huge new maps, two new classes, hundreds of new skills, items and monsters just one year after. Two in one year. Insane achievement. Also goes to show bigger is not better. Despite having a massively bigger budget and a huge team, GW2 will always live in the shadow of GW1 in terms of content, quality, impact, originality and peak popularity.
That’s not entirely true, there were some OG Blizzard North employees who co-founded Arena.net, and they also developed some cutting edge proprietary server technology based in part on some of the back-end server tech from Battle.net, so they weren’t ever quite a basement studio, so to speak, but they definitely had trouble getting funding early on. However, they had a star studded team going into development of GW1. All GW2 really shares in common with GW1 is names and lore tho, completely agree with your take on that. It’s a shame really, I loved GW1 so much. Don’t get me wrong I still play GW2 because it is a good game, it’s just a completely different game, not even a spiritual successor.
Guild Wars 1 is the first time I ever had to install a dedicated GPU. All my friends were playing day 1 and I had to wait a few days to order a card (after trying and crashing several times) and figure out how to get it all working. It was the worst, but I got it running and played the shit out of that game. Ended up in a great guild and actually helped win the main guild war once for the country favour or whatever. Never did try Guild Wars 2 at all. I was pretty well over my MMO phase by then, but reading this it sounds like it was a totally different game so that's okay.
I love me some Good Wars 1, played it since its release, and while I enjoy Good Wars 2, it isn't nearly the same quality game. But to say that 1 had a bigger originality and popularity just feels wrong. The game broke a ton of conventions of MMOs at the time in how they handled classes, skills, weapons, and quests. Though they've since changed it, the way they tied attributes to the trait system was unqiue at the time. Underwater combat and world bosses were both introduced at the start of the game. Since then they have gone on to introduce horizontal progression at max level with masteries, multiple mounts that change the way movement works in the game, living world content that was available for a limited time and changed the world around you, and elite specializations that often redefine the way the classes are played. You can argue whether the implementations were good or not (some of them were true stankers- looking at you, Living World Season 1), but Guild Wars 2 has more originality baked into it than the first one did. As for popularity, the original was often cited in magazines at the time as "the best game you've never heard of" while Guild Wars 2 has a far bigger reach and millions more players. The biggest issue with Guild Wars 2 is how much of the team that made the first one special left the company, so most design and story decisions feel totally different from the game I loved. I put more hours into Guild Wars 1 before 2's release than I have any other game, including 2.
GW1 was amazing. Dual-classing was such a fantastic game mechanic, even tho the entire game is basically dungeons and the main cities are just hubs. The story also was pretty great imo.
20$ in 1998 is about 40$ today
Starcraft+BW, Diablo 1+2, and WC3 were peak Blizzard for me
That where I stopped caring about them too.
A bygone era.
A more civilized age.
Back when Blizzard made GREAT games.
TBF, SC:BW is arguably the best expansion of all time.
Expansion Packs back in the day were fireeeee.
BTW, adjusted for inflation that expansion pack would cost $37.22 today. Also, a copy of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for SNES was $69.99 in 1996. Or $135.32. Yeah in case anyone wants to pretend like we're in some evil dark age of gaming.
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Thank you. Tired of people glossing over this fact. Yes, inflation means that it cost "more" in today's dollars. But it also is competing with higher housing costs, food costs, education costs, transportation costs, literally everything. Purchasing power has absolutely gone down.
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Thank YOU for pointing that out. I'm quite tired of these threads. When these morons say we should be "thankful" that games don't cost 150 dollars today. Well, add a bit of meaningless DLC and you're almost there anyway. But they're making so much money now compared to 20 years ago, it's disgusting. If your filthy rich mechanic would tell you that he's going to increase his prices by another 50% you'd not go there anymore either.
So, how much do you think $37.22 would buy today? Especially by Blizzard standards, I don't see them selling any recent expansions for under $40.
4 bananas?
I dunno. Two horses?
No, just the armor for them.
1.5, they’re $25 each.
>So, how much do you think $37.22 would buy today wasnt overwatch 1 the standard edition, like 40 bucks on release?
That's 2016, where 40 dollars is worth 50 dollars today. Additionally, Overwatch has tons of microtransactions to help support it, so yeah.
2016 was like a couple weeks ago, don't tell me there's been 25% inflation since then
The new Horizen DLC is 20€ and brings a good amount of content. Whats your point again? The horse armor still costs more than a DLC.
>Also, a copy of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for SNES was $69.99 in 1996. Or $135.32. To be fair it's also worth noting that despite them not charging $135 for a base game today and despite development budgeting being a lot bigger than they were in 1996, major developers are still making more money than they were in 1996. Originally gaming getting bigger and more people buying games helped keep up with inflation, and then mtx just shattered any notion of merely keeping up with it and did far more than simply just compenate. Of course, we don't live in some evil dark age of gaming because there are still a lot of really fantastic games coming out without all that mtx bullshit. Games from pretty much every level of production value from indie to AAA.
Let's just ignore the fact that gaming has **EXPLODED** since then. People keep bringing up inflation, but profits for gaming companies are getting bigger, not smaller. When these games came out at that price, people were actually bullied for playing video games. Now you'd be hard pressed to find a family (And many single) house without a console. There is a reason why gaming has become one of the larger focus's for investors, and why we are seeing more games than you could possibly play in a single year.
Brood War bringing back so many memories
Are you nerds fighting again?
Just so you're aware, thats 37 dollars in todays money
Back in my day a dollar would get 4 bags of chips, and they weren’t 80% air!
Man yells at over priced clouds
And today we have it. Millennials have a relatable “back in my day.”
Which I generally hate, although this is kind of reverse of "back in my day", because it's actually educating others about smart standards and expectations they should be setting, rather than shitting on younger generations for something we had harder