# What's so great about Blizzard? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [March 20, 2011, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338 "2011-03-20T07:36:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/21 "2011-03-21T06:37:22Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Didn’t they try to sneak in spyware into [Battle.net](http://Battle.net) back in the day ? I seem to remember something like that. > Fake ETA: [got it](http://attrition.org/errata/company/blizzard01.html). … ooh, no one else has commented. is this a big deal or something shrugged off and forgotten? > [@](#): > > … Finally, WoW basically destroys any other MMORPG by sheer numbers, which in turn prompts new MMORPGs to try and ape WoW in multitude of ways instead of going in their own gameplay directions. … i thought other mmorpgs are forced to try the free-to-play model, and was met with some success? > [@Gukumatz](#): > > The only critiscism I’ve heard leveled at Blizzard that I agree with is their apparent terror of approaching new IPs. i could appreciate it though, how would a failed title affect their reputation? currently i would buy their next title sight unseen, regardless of genre or medium. (like the proposed movie for example. ) > [@Chronos](#): > > Starcraft: Ghost, of course, but what was the other one? > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > There was a Warcraft adventure game in the mode of Zork way back in the 90s; they decided it sucked and scrapped the project, well into development. ya, Warcraft Adventures, though it is point and click more like the \*Longest Journey \*type of adventure games. ---
**Author:** ![ripopgome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a698b9/32.png) [@ripopgome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ripopgome)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/22 "2011-03-21T08:41:21Z")
My understanding (it’s spotty, I’ll give you that) from secondhand sources was the shady business practices just before WoW was first released – some large %age of the company was forced out / fired just before the launch, and as a result, many folks who would have earned fairly spectacular royalty checks, ended up with nothing. They essentially crippled the company, down to just the bare minimum folks to do the release, right as they went to market, sensing they had a huge hit on their hands. Once it went big, they hired up tons of ex-Blizzard folks who had previously left, luring them back with big salaries and bonuses (but, no royalties on WoW, natch). Even some of the ‘purged’ folks came back because they loved the games and peons, but certainly by then, not management. But then apparently a lot of the purged folks went off to have pretty big careers elsewhere afterward, too, so, I suppose it wasn’t all bad individually. Still a dick-move from Blizzard if I understand it all correctly. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/23 "2011-03-21T11:11:21Z")
> [@shijinn](#): > > ooh, no one else has commented. is this a big deal or something shrugged off and forgotten? Probably the latter. 10 years is forever. But I still remember, yung’uns ! Now get orf my Lawn-o-matic ™ > [@](#): > > i thought other mmorpgs are forced to try the free-to-play model, and was met with some success? I quit MMORPGs in general before that so I can’t comment (though I maintain that free to play, just like DLC, are of the nickel and diming Devil) All I know is that the MMO I expected the most, Warhammer Online, was unabashedly “WoW with DAoC-like sieges”. Unsurprisingly, my beloved DAoC guild that had migrated to WoW since then; checked in, assessed that it was just like WoW with sieges, then promptly went back to WoW. I understand: why play a WoW clone without the sprawling content, especially when you’ve already poured 5+ years of effort into your WoW toon ? And on the other hand, why play a 90% WoW clone if you’re already not playing WoW because you don’t like WoW ? Expectable result: WAR was forced to consolidate servers something like 2 months after release. I’m aware they’ve released an expansion since then (only because I translated part of it), but I’m assuming it’s dying or dead by now. As for my other love, Everquest 2, not only has it steadily creeped further and further closer to WoW over the years (discarding everything that made it distinct and competitive from it when both games launched around the same time), it’s _also_ pushing heavily towards the “hey, why don’t you pay 5 bucks for the Ultimate Sword !!?” end of the spectrum. It’s an ugly mess, and despite being extremely nostalgic a person I don’t regret canning my account one bit. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/24 "2011-03-21T13:50:20Z")
> [@BlackKnight](#): > > This level of polish is also evident in how (relatively) un-buggy their products are. Every complex piece of software has bugs, but Blizzard games tend to have significantly fewer bugs than other PC games. And those bugs tend to be smaller: it’s not “any time you click on any innkeepers, the game has a 50% probability of crashing”, more like “we have found three items which had flags set wrong so you could buy them at skill level 500 but needed slevel 515 in order to use them”. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/25 "2011-03-21T13:57:33Z")
Something for which they have received criticism is their handling of translations, but this is clearly and recognized as not the translators’ fault. These games are inherently hard to translate due to the much-greater flexibility of English than other languages; for example, in English you may have “spearbearing troll”, “spearbearer troll”, “spearhandling troll”, “troll spearhandler” and “troll spearthrower”: the appropriate translations of those to Spanish are “troll lancero”, “troll lancero”, “troll lancero”, “troll lancero” and either “troll lancero” or “troll con jabalina” - oopsies. OK, so you can make one of those a “troll alabardero” but that requires the graph to look like it’s a halberd and not a thinner kind of spear. You need translators which are as creative as your original writers or more. Telling them what the proper names will be translated as should Not Be Done. They’re the experts, you’re paying for that expertise, respect it! No. We got Forjaz (urgh!), Ventormenta (re-ugh!) and the kicker: _el rey exánime_ instead of _el rey lich_. Lich is a word which Spanish acquired decades ago, but instead of using it, The Bosses forced the use of a word which sounds like Artie Slowpoke is about to faint oh dear someone bring the salts :smack: \<— fainting smiley. (Exánime is a literal translation of soulless, but what it actually _means_ is energy/stamina-less). The code also does not allow for grammatical differences: a dwarf priest is a sacerdote enano - or a sacerdotisa enana. Different word order, gender differentiation - those are simply not allowed for in the code, the translations have been getting rammed into those forced structures for years and will continue to be so, because the people who make those decisions don’t understand that they’re forcing their translators to use “Engrish”. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/26 "2011-03-21T16:09:50Z")
> [@Palooka](#): > > WoW and SC2 both run like ass if you crank up the image quality settings. Your post makes some good points, but this misses the mark. The thing I like about WoW is that you _can_ adjust the image quality in many different ways. You can turn down things that don’t matter to you (in my case, projected texture and sunshafts) and turn up things that do (e.g., view distance and texture resolution) until it runs on your hardware. If you have really good equipment, crank everything up to max. If you have old slow equipment, turn it way down. Either way, you can still play the game. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/27 "2011-03-21T16:24:05Z")
Quoth **Kobal2** : > [@](#): > > All I know is that the MMO I expected the most, Warhammer Online, was unabashedly “WoW with DAoC-like sieges”. And whose fault is that? I’d be surprised if an MMO based on Warhammer would be much different from another MMO based on Warhammer. Well, technically, an MMO based on another game that’s based on Warhammer, but it amounts to the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/28 "2011-03-21T16:50:27Z")
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:26, topic:575338”] Your post makes some good points, but this misses the mark. The thing I like about WoW is that you _can_ adjust the image quality in many different ways. You can turn down things that don’t matter to you (in my case, projected texture and sunshafts) and turn up things that do (e.g., view distance and texture resolution) until it runs on your hardware. If you have really good equipment, crank everything up to max. If you have old slow equipment, turn it way down. Either way, you can still play the game. [/QUOTE] This was invaluable to me until I got my new computer - I was playing _World of Warcraft_ on a 15 year old computer and able to function adequately on 10 and 25 man raids - sure I had to turn down the graphics, but I was _able to play_ at that level even with a very old and outdated machine. This expands the potential playerbase and makes it more accessible to those without a lot of money to spend on high end gaming rigs. Which does have something to do with WoW’s 12 miillion subscribers. If it couldn’t run on older/ less capable machines you wouldn’t have that high a number. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/29 "2011-03-21T22:14:42Z")
Something that hadn’t occured to me earlier is that Blizzard is one of the few remaining companies (if not the only major gaming company) that still develops exclusively for the PC. (Given the trainwreck that was Starcraft for the Nintendo 64, it’s no mystery why.) A common complaint among fans of fantasy/sci-fi games these days is that companies who are cross-designing for PC and for 360/PS3 is that the games have to be “dumbed down” to be played on a control pad instead of a keyboard and mouse, and Blizzard has avoided that problem entirely. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/30 "2011-03-21T22:21:20Z")
> [@Palooka](#): > > WoW and SC2 both run like ass if you crank up the image quality settings. Certainly far worse than you’d expect from their graphics. WoW shadows would drop me from a solid 60 to under 20 on a q6600/8800 SLI setup. SC2 on ultra barely runs better than Crysis and looks far worse. Sure, you can run their games on four-year-old mid-range tech. Your 5GHz 2600K and 580 GTX SLI won’t do anything, despite barely pushing 60 fps. already debunked > [@Palooka](#): > > Other criticisms of Blizzard: > > - Starcraft in Korea. After 10 years, Blizzard got a stick in its ass and started muscling around the Starcraft leagues in Korea. Maybe you could argue it was a response to KeSPa’s aggression against GOM, but they certainly didn’t play it out to the best of everyone by demanding licensing fees. Who cares? How does that affect their actual, ya know, games? It doesn’t. > [@Palooka](#): > > - Ridiculous development cycles. Say what you will about their polish, but lots of other companies are able to release solid and innovative games in a reasonable time frame and they don’t have nearly the same vast resources of Blizzard. Their long developments are based more on strategic release windows than polish. Except before you even posted, the release dates thing was already characterized a different way, and no one I know cares if a game takes an extra year or even 2 as long as the end result is fan-freaking-tastic, which all of Blizzard’s games are. > [@Palooka](#): > > - BlizzCon. It’s $150. What a kick in the balls to their fans. QuakeCon is free and doesn’t have nearly the sponsor potential of BlizzCon. QuakeCon manages a massive tournament and insane prizes for free. Why not BlizzCon? Again, who cares? I’m not gonna travel to LA for a weekend of extra geeking and no one I know cares either. I’d rather have bragging rights in game than brag about being an übergeek in RL. > [@Palooka](#): > > - Merchandising. The amount of tacky stuff you can buy based on Blizzard’s IP is crazy. It’s shameless. It’s not Nintendo bad, but it’s at least Pixar bad. “If you don’t like it, don’t buy” isn’t a defense because it’s damaging to gaming culture. You’re supposed of design amazing experiences to get money, not hock plastic crap. Already replied to by others and I agree with them. It’s not an issue; if you don’t want the extra crap, don’t spend the extra money. > [@Palooka](#): > > - Their games, for all their lengthy development and polish, lack obvious and expected features. SC2 online replays. SC2 chat channels. SC2 LAN-esuqe touranment mode. WoW spectator mode. All promised but never delivered (except chat, which took too long and was ridiculous to exclude.) So you complain about 1 thing in WoW (being able to not play but still see what’s going on? WTF? Play or logoff; there are real players who want the slot on the server) and 3 things that haven’t made it to a game that’s barely 8 months old. Puh-leez. :rolleyes: > [@Palooka](#): > > I’m certainly not going to hate on Blizzard. You can come up with a solid list of complaints for any company and it’d probably have far more serious charges. Blizzard is a company that wants to make money foremost, and that’s obvious. They make games based on wide appeal and accessibility. They don’t take chances on anything. They squeeze out every penny. That kind of sucks. The best decision from a business perspective isn’t always the best from a gamer perspective. Not that anyone really chooses the latter. Maybe ye olde id Software. Blizzard could do better. Every other gamer I know disagrees with you: Blizzard wants to make great games first, knowing that they will make money comes second. And why shouldn’t they make money? Why shouldn’t they be rewarded for the hard work they put into finding out what people want in their games and then making those games? ---
**Author:** ![aktep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f0a364/32.png) [@aktep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aktep)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/31 "2011-03-21T22:30:41Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > The code also does not allow for grammatical differences: a dwarf priest is a sacerdote enano - or a sacerdotisa enana. Different word order, gender differentiation - those are simply not allowed for in the code, the translations have been getting rammed into those forced structures for years and will continue to be so, because the people who make those decisions don’t understand that they’re forcing their translators to use “Engrish”. They certainly leave the localization teams behind the eight-ball when they can’t even get the \* English \* right. > [@Tooltip for Blast Wave](#): > > A wave of flame radiates outward from the target location, damaging all enemies caught within the blast for 851 to 1003 Fire damage and are slowed by 70% for 3 sec. It’s like someone wrote half the tool tip, took a lunch break, then finished it without reading the first part again. ---
**Author:** ![aktep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f0a364/32.png) [@aktep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aktep)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/32 "2011-03-21T22:35:44Z")
Considering how quickly tickets sell out for BlizzCon, it’s apparent that $150 is \*\* too cheap\*\*. ---
**Author:** ![Palooka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/palooka/32/2902_2.png) [@Palooka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palooka)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2011, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/33 "2011-03-22T01:37:24Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > … I don’t know how to response to that unreadable mess of quotation tags, so I’ll just say some stuff that I think matters. I care about all of those things, for starters. I don’t think they’re all particularly egregious, but they are things that Blizzard could do better. Buddy didn’t “debunk” my high-end complaint. He didn’t even understand it. Sure it’s awesome that they optimized their games so well that you can run them on ancient tech. It sucks that they’re so poorly designed at the high-end and CPU-heavy (so they can run on Dell computers instead of gaming computers), that it’s impossible to max out setting. That’s why SC2 isn’t used in any benchmarks. Soft shadows in a 2006 game crushing 8800s in SLI? That’s a bad engine. Merchandising is childish. That’s why you don’t wear band tee-shirts to work or when you’re going to see your in-laws. That’s why Toys R Us is loaded up with Disney, Nintendo and Pixar plastic junk. Adults decorate their homes with nice things, like photographs, paintings, and pottery. Even sports merchandise is tacky and childish. All of it. Honestly though, I don’t really care if you want to fill your home with ugly plastic crud. I do care that it makes gaming look childish by association. It sucks that Blizzard is contributing to the problem. Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4 is a better game than anything Blizzard has ever made. Maybe not fully-patched Starcraft but certainly everything else. It took two years to make. Blizzard has worked on Diablo 3 for 6+ years now. That’s ridiculous. They can do better. Yes, their games are great. That doesn’t change that others do better with less. Those Starcraft 2 features should’ve been included at release, especially for how long the damn thing took. You could even add the lack of a SC2 map marketplace to the list, which is another one they promised and is vapor. No sign of them eight months later is crazy. Why are you harshing me about the WoW spectator interface if you don’t even know what it is? It was an interface to allow people to watch and record matches on the arena tournament realm. That’s why people would be spectators instead of playing. It was particularly important to the MLG circuit, which has since dropped WoW because the game is so unworkable (entirely due to Blizzard’s mismanagement of the PvP community.) Every other venue did too, for the same reason. That’s another point that could be on the list. The WoW PvP community, despite being one of the largest for any game, sure had a lot of dirt kicked in its face over the years. (By PvP I mean competitive PvP, not MMO PvP. WoW has both kinds.) Same story with the KeSPA thing. That’s cool if you don’t like watching esports in your free time, but I do and so do thousands of others. Sucks that Blizzard doesn’t cooperate with the community as well as they could. I’d rather they did great things for gaming before they made money, but that’s why I’m not a video game company CEO nor likely to be one. Not trying to say that Blizzard is a bad company, since they’re obviously one of the best. Just that they can do a lot of things better, like everyone else. Somebody said they’d only heard one criticism of Blizzard, so I figured I’d throw some more on the pile. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2011, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/34 "2011-03-22T02:40:03Z")
> [@Palooka](#): > > Merchandising is childish. That’s why you don’t wear band tee-shirts to work or when you’re going to see your in-laws. That’s why Toys R Us is loaded up with Disney, Nintendo and Pixar plastic junk. Adults decorate their homes with nice things, like photographs, paintings, and pottery. Even sports merchandise is tacky and childish. All of it. Honestly though, I don’t really care if you want to fill your home with ugly plastic crud. I do care that it makes gaming look childish by association. It sucks that Blizzard is contributing to the problem. So let me get this straight. You’re worried that merchandising is going to make your hobby of pretending to be a Dwarf Warlock riding around on a magical carpet and punching dragons in the face look childish? The mind boggles. ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2011, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/35 "2011-03-22T04:16:27Z")
> [@Palooka](#): > > I care about all of those things, for starters. I don’t think they’re all particularly egregious, but they are things that Blizzard could do better. Buddy didn’t “debunk” my high-end complaint. He didn’t even understand it. Sure it’s awesome that they optimized their games so well that you can run them on ancient tech. It sucks that they’re so poorly designed at the high-end and CPU-heavy (so they can run on Dell computers instead of gaming computers), that it’s impossible to max out setting. That’s why SC2 isn’t used in any benchmarks. Soft shadows in a 2006 game crushing 8800s in SLI? That’s a bad engine. I’m playing WoW with maxxed out Ultra high settings, at 1920x1080. Athlon 2.7, 4gb DRAM2, radeon 4850, Win 7. No problems to speak of. If your machine is getting crushed, maybe the problem’s on your end. ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2011, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/36 "2011-03-22T05:24:45Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > Except before you even posted, the release dates thing was already characterized a different way, and no one I know cares if a game takes an extra year or even 2 as long as the end result is fan-freaking-tastic, which all of Blizzard’s games are. I would rather have two 2 great games that took 4 years to make each than 1 “fan-freaking-tastic” game that took 8.\* Since 2000 Blizzard has put out Diablo II, Warcraft III, World of Warcraft, and Starcraft II. Bioware has put out Baldur’s Gate II, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect 2, and Dragon Age II. Even if some of their games were less polished or flawed, I think I’ve gotten more enjoyment out of Bioware games over the last 11 years. \*honestly, Diablo II is the last Blizzard game that I think was worthy of that superlative. ---
**Author:** ![Palooka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/palooka/32/2902_2.png) [@Palooka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palooka)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2011, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/37 "2011-03-22T14:24:03Z")
> [@Merneith](#): > > I’m playing WoW with maxxed out Ultra high settings, at 1920x1080. Athlon 2.7, 4gb DRAM2, radeon 4850, Win 7. No problems to speak of. If your machine is getting crushed, maybe the problem’s on your end. It’s possible that it’s just my system. I’m skeptical of that though, since [here](http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,689378/WoW-Wrath-of-the-Lich-King-Benchmarks-with-Ati-and-Nvidia-graphics-cards/Practice/?page=3) is a benchmark that’s consistent with what I said. It’s a better system than mine and yours. Just switching to ultra shadows destroys it too. ---
**Author:** ![aktep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f0a364/32.png) [@aktep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aktep)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2011, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/38 "2011-03-22T15:04:14Z")
> [@Palooka](#): > > It’s possible that it’s just my system. I’m skeptical of that though, since [here](http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,689378/WoW-Wrath-of-the-Lich-King-Benchmarks-with-Ati-and-Nvidia-graphics-cards/Practice/?page=3) is a benchmark that’s consistent with what I said. It’s a better system than mine and yours. Just switching to ultra shadows destroys it too. Shadows in WotLK and earlier were buggy performance killing crap. The new shadows work much better. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2011, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/39 "2011-03-22T15:28:02Z")
> [@aktep](#): > > Shadows in WotLK and earlier were buggy performance killing crap. The new shadows work much better. Just to add a data point, I’m running a Core i7 870, GTX 460, 4GB of RAM, and I have all the graphics settings cranked to Ultra (including shadows). FPS doesn’t drop below 30, even in Org. Game looks pretty damn good, too. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2011, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338/40 "2011-03-22T16:03:12Z")
> [@aktep](#): > > They certainly leave the localization teams behind the eight-ball when they can’t even get the \* English \* right. > > It’s like someone wrote half the tool tip, took a lunch break, then finished it without reading the first part again. Heh, yeah, sometimes I see tooltips like that one, or some quest texts, and wonder “does anybody in-house report these, or do they really expect _us_ to do it?” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-blizzard/575338.md?page=3)