Edit: snipped the bit about Hero's of the Storm since that was post acquisition
With the cartoonish push that World of Warcraft presaged I saw the wider ambitions to appeal to everyone which washed out the magic for me. Blizzard wasn't alone in this but it broke my heart as a kid who grew up on Sabriel and The Book of the New Sun and Baldur's Gate and EverQuest to watch all those game companies lurch forward to a blank-eyed glossed future.
Meh. It is an undeniable direct Warhammer 40K plagiarism: before coming up with their own StarCraft universe, Blizzard tried and failed to secure rights for Warhammer 40K setting. So it is easy to see the source of their 'inspiration'.
They had many bright moments, but this one is not one they came up with themselves.
Games Workshop does not own the copyright on nearly-dead-warriors-entombed-in-exoskeletons. Nor did they invent the idea of the nearly dead being sustained by cybernetics, or of using robotics to assist those of limited physical ability. We all are inspired by things.
It's especially odd to talk about about "Warhammer" or "Starcraft" as if they are managed by a single human, when in fact all of these worlds are written and envisioned by a multi-generational army of creative people who are all drawing on sources to come up with ideas. Are all of the employees of GW who write about dreadnoughts plagiarizing the employee who came up with the idea?
I could go on. The ghosts exhaling poison vapor with spider eyes or hydralisks vomiting buckets of saliva. Sunken colonies with their long knife-tongues; the Creep. As a whole I think Blizzard really made something special.
[1] https://i.imgur.com/pJ0entX_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&...
After WoW's success they seemed to try to pigeonhole all of their properties in the same direction, SC2 and D3 were quite clearly online/multiplayer first with single player as an afterthought, and the world depth felt lacking. Hearthstone's alright but feels like it has too much focus on PvP games and loot box mechanics.
You're looking at it through rose tinted glasses. Blizzard has always been about a cartoonish look. That's why I like their games. Realism always falls into the "uncanny valley" territory for me.
wasn't the cartoonish style already present in Warcraft 3?
and SL is hardly loved (it's now being compared to WoD)
WoD deserves a special place in game design hell for choosing to implement garrisons over another tier of raid content.
Have you played the last 2 World of Warcraft extensions? Or Warcraft 3: Reforged, the only "new game" they released since 2016, which is also commonly known as Warcraft 3: Refunded? [1][2]
[1] https://www.warcraft3refunded.com
[2] https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/blizzard-botched-warcraft-iii-re... (published 7 hours ago)
