I see, I never played EverQuest but that's interesting. I watched Blizzard move people around that should never have been moved cuz they're shit at other jobs (see: Chris Metzen).

I could kind of tell Blizzard's team was setting themselves up for failure pretty early. Mostly due to my initial worries about Ultimates and Eliminations. These are two features exist for psychological manipulation reasons. I knew they'd fuck up patches, but I still bought it thinking maybe they won't this time.

Ultimates are literally impossible to balance in this sort of game, and they heavily promote uninteresting gameplay (playing solely around ults). This feature also keeps player skill differences in check, meaning one person has less sway over the outcome of a game than they would in other games. It's important for a game to allow this to happen if you want pro scene to be interesting.

Elminations are a combination of kills and assists, meaning people are circlejerking way too heavily over nothing. This was an unfortunate side effect created from the ignorance of LoL. Often times people relate high scores to being good, but it's usually more complicated than that. During my professional days of TF2 I was a Medic / Caller. My assist/death showed only only good I was at who I chose to heal and how well I avoided death. However that information fails to represent my ability to read an enemy team, make calls, or how well my team is doing their jobs. In OW both players and commentators only care about the scores at the end, not the intricate details of high level play.

Not to mention this weird idea the industry has for "esports" is ruining competitive gaming. We were getting respect at one point, now it seems the bigger things get the more the scene devolves into typical "loser/nerd" stuff again. Blizzard is the reason I never tell anyone anymore IRL that I was a professional gamer, lol. I'm so embarrassed to be compared to their scene.

Kudos if you read that long well, it's early in the morning and I'm bored.