Blizzard recently aired their side regarding the changes in Tychus Findlay's appearance in a Reddit post. The game developer decided to ditch Findlay's cigar to deal with the game's ratings. Meanwhile, a report claim that there has been a lack of new games developed under Blizzard, allowing "League of Legends" to reign in the gaming market.
Blizzard Entertainment addressed the gaming rating concern regarding their upcoming video game "Heroes of the Storm." The game follows a series of guidelines, given its teen ratings in different regions, that is why Blizzard decided to change the appearance of one of its characters, Tychus Findlay.
In order to avoid conflict with the gaming rules, Findlay has to lose his cigar or Blizzard could make a non-smoking version of the hero, which could mean a mountain of works for them.
"Making 2 versions means more data management, multiple duplicates of the asset (if we update an animation, it has to propagate to all versions) such as the the death ragdoll model, The facial animations, his morph into the Odin, and apply that process to every skin as well," admits the developer.
Blizzard has recently opened "Heroes of the Storm" for beta before its official release next month. The MOBA video game features different heroes from Blizzard's other hit games such as, "Warcraft", "Diablo", "StarCraft" and others. The game developer's decision to make a game combining the heroes from their other games might not do them good eventually, according to a report.
At the moment, instead of developing a new game that will feature new characters, Blizzard is sticking to game expansions as long as the gamers play it. "StarCraft" has 2 incoming expansions while "Diablo 3" is set to get another one. It is quite clear that these strategies do not even come close to Riot Games' "League of Legends."
After their planned expansions and enhancements in their game characters are done, Blizzard should take their time to develop new games that could compete steadily with other MOBA games. After all, milking their other franchises dry might not work for them in the future.
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