"Record" is a strong word considering they had created one series of games prior, and only one of those did almost anyone play because of how janky and difficult to play the rest were. Old School Blizzard had three series, six of seven of which is still a classic people play to this day (nobody plays Warcraft 1).

I really think the Witcher 3's success massively overinflated people's expectations and opinions of them. Which is one reason why CP2077 got such a mass negative reaction, over hyped expectations.