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Blizzard North Co-Founders Leave Company
Thanks to several readers for pointing out a Reuters/Yahoo story discussing the departure of four key employees from Warcraft and Diablo developers Blizzard Entertainment. The article elaborates: "In a statement, Blizzard Entertainment said Blizzard North co-founders Erich Schaefer, Max Schaefer and David Brevik, along with a fourth employee, Bill Roper, 'resigned from the company to pursue other opportunities.'" With Bill Roper often the public face of Blizzard, and the Blizzard North co-founders being the original Diablo developers, this is a big deal for Blizzard owners Vivendi, as well as gamers everywhere, especially as Blizzard "is widely seen in the games industry as one of the most attractive assets of VU Games, which has been languishing on the auction block for months."
Blizzard may soon encounter the chill of insolvency. ;-)
Do you like German cars?
Could a reason for their leaving possibly be in reaction to Blizzard's handling of the battlenet controversy? Just a thought...
Karma: Can there be a void?
.. -. - . .-. .-. --- -...
I don't play many Blizzard games... someone care to tell me what this means?
Playing Warcraft III's expansion set, Frozen Throne, I came across something in a snow-covered Undead campaign. When I killed a penguin (the symbol of Linux) I was granted a Ring of Superiority! Is this Blizzard's way of saying the path to superiority is by killing Linux?
I hope they keep their commitment to releasing solid good games. That's what they are known for.
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
How will this affect the development of Word of Warcraft? Were these guys a part of those teams?
They're over here drinking my beer. Can someone come claim them? Thanks.
Far more important that the fact that the left is the REASON that they left. Have they become dissatisfied with their corporate parent? Are they going to found a new studio (and with that number of key folks that sounds likely to me)? Are they being acquired/courted by someone else (the real challenge of companies these days is not to protect the brands, but to keep the people who make these brands)? And most importantly, does Vivendi consider their gaming assets so invaluable that they wouldn't fight to keep these folks under their wing?
When high level folks like this leave, its usually because someone is giving them money to go off and do their own thing under a different banner/console.
World of Warcraft is, in the words of babylon 5, the last, best hope for MMORPGs.
SW:G overpromised, underdelivered. AC2 was crap. Shadowsbane was buggy trash. WoW sounds and looks great and I have yet to read a bad slant on it from anyone's whos played it.
MMORPG Game developers are allowed to release complete shit and promise that it'll be fixed on the backs of the monthly fees people are forced to pay to fund the game to a fun/playable state if it ever gets there.
I hope and pray that WoW can be the game that all of us old school players have been waiting for since this drought of lousy 2nd generation games. I want WoW to be the game I can point to and say "See, that's the way you do it" and blizzard is the one company I know of that has never failed to deliver a great, fun game.
I know Roper was a lead on the management of WoW. I hope he's not leaving because of an imminent M$ buyout or something along those lines that might totally corrupt Blizzard.
Here's hoping.
Then either it's not in the gaming industry, or they never signed NCA's(Non Competition Agreement)...
Please help metamoderate.
Rumor is that they've just joined the FreeCraft project. :P
:)
Yes, I'm joking.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
Probably not.
Neither WoW or SC2 are developed by Blizzard North, but Blizzard "South" (usually just called "Blizzard"). These are two separate divisions that form Blizzard Entertainment.
Blizzard North has only done Diablo I and II so far.
Blizzard "South" has done all Warcraft and Starcraft games, and the older Rock & Roll Racing, Lost Vikings, etc.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I'm interested to see how their standards of quality hold out. Certainly, Blizzard and Blizzard North are two seperate entities, but I wonder if any titles currently under development with Blizzard North get transferred to Blizzard?
When their numbers dwindled from 50 to 8, the dwarves began to suspect Hungry.
... who's to make them sign NCA's?
I am eagerly awaiting commands from Slashdot telling me whether I should be mad at the old Blizzard or the Blizzard founders.
As for SC2, nothing should go amiss. Blizzard North only handled Diablo and Diablo II (to my knowledge).
In FreeCraft, whilst using the FreeCraft Media Project, a farm can generate "Penguins" and you can control these livestock penguins to move around the map and spy; at the cost the penguin required one farm resource point. This said, I think they are trying to imply that by killing the Freecraft Penguin Spy, they may be king of the iceberg of gaming again.
This means War! FreeWar(non-registered foreign TM) for you, Blizzard!
actually rock n roll racing and lost vikings weren't blizzard at all, they were old Interplay titles. Of course many people who once worked for interplay now work for blizzard, so that may account for it anyways.
I guess my e-mail to Blizzard about their actions against Freenet tore the company apart! I'm sure glad tech support forwarded it to the head developers...
Er...
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
1st Guy: "Aye matey?"
3rd Guy: "Come on! Follow me!"
2nd/4th Guy: "We're ready, master...I'm not ready!"
Vivendi Universal: "Help Me!"
4th Guy: "Time to Die!!!"
Vivendi Universal: "uh...oops! Forgive me!"
All 4 Guys: "Die!"
Many of blizzard's key employees left to start Arena.net. Now with Arena.net using innovative techniques to make online gaming better, Blizzard is languishing with World of Warcraft, a "me too" MMORPG. Their last few core members are now gone. Now it's just a bunch of interns and code monkeys with the rights to Blizzard's brand name.
I'm interested in seeing where these folks go. Will they join their brethren at arena.net? Will they found their own company? Will they walk off with their massive paychecks from Warcraft3 and sit in Hawaii sipping drinks with 3 digit proofs all day? Only time will tell.
Perhaps now we can hate Blizzard in peace and the guys will created another company which remains cool for a while (before it gets eaten by corporate greed)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Diablo 2 LOD users have been waiting for the much waited v1.10 patch for over a year now. That is still not out. Now these guys leave. I don't think Blizzard is going to have any talent left to release games like diablo, warcraft, etc.. In the end, they'll just get bought out /.
Max and Eric Schaefer were working on their own game, called Goblin Commander. I had read about this a month ago in a gaming magazine. The other two guys, however, I have no clue about.
What SC2? Nothing has been confirmed?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The question I think everyone is concerned about is what is going to happen to the Diablo II Lord of Destruction patch V1.10? I heard some speculation that some hire-ups ordered this promised patch cancelled and those mention resigned rather than do this!
but I haven't seen one even try to make a penguin cute yet.
Then you sure as hell haven't seen Chiyo-chan from Azumanga Daioh dressed up in a penguin costume... er.. or were you talking about _real girls_? =)
Actually, this is not a huge deal for Vivendi. When Blizzard was initially bought it was bought for its franchises, which companies can own. Though game companies act like they own employees, they know the employees can leave. Likely, when Blizzard was bought, key figures signed multi-year contracts to stay and ensure the franchise succeeded under the new ownership. Likely, the contracts are up and the key people feel they can do it again on their own, only better.
It's fairly common for key figures to leave the nest after experiencing some success; this is why exclusive contracts exist. Though usually only founders are placed under such deals. It's almost as common, however, for key game developers to start again elsewhere and flop in a large way.
Note that EA, perhaps the most successful games publisher, has been successfully buying franchises for years (Sims, C&C, etc).
if you play lost vikings on the snes, the blizzard logo appears before you enter the main menu of the game.
On the subject of these employees leaving... Well, I'll just quote Cain.... "This does not bode well..."
Heh... at least, not for Blizzard... But I'm sure their talents will be put to just as much use wherever they end up.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
invaluable means "EXTRA valuable", not "without value"
</pedantic jerk>
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Developers of the critically acclaimed DIABLO franchise announced today that they have formed [Insert name here], a new development studio located in [city, state]. The studio, which will focus on state-of-the-art multiplayer content for PC and next generation console platforms, was formed by four veteran Blizzard developers, who played various roles in the creation of DIABLO.
"[New company name] is an all-star team whose members have a solid history and reputation for developing groundbreaking titles," said [insert developer], [insert new job title] and co-founder. "With the establishment of this company, we renew our commitment to the development of fresh concepts in the online gaming arena, and we look forward to pushing the industry in new and exciting directions."
Like the template? This same one has been sucessfully used to launch every new game company and is available for use under the GPL license.
This is a good move for these guys and gamers everywhere should be very excited because when a few guys leave like this, a really cool game is around the corner. Look at Troika when they left Interplay/Black Isle. Arcanum is still a really amazing game and I can't wait for more from Troika... like The Temple of Elemental Evil (Dungeons & Dragons)
Four of their top people are moving out because they found greater opportunities... What a coincidence! Me thinks that it is more likely that not all is well in Blizzardland.
Oh well, I really don't care after they went after the bnetd project using a bogus DMCA suit. I have never bought another of their games since. Screw 'em.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Period.
Hasn't been for a long time. My guess is that Blizzard North didn't wanna do a third Diablo, or at least these gentlemen didn't want to, and VU told them that it was one of their few franchises in the black, and that they had to. Anyhow, Blizzard has yet to produce a quality in a long time. Warcraft 3 as much as people rave about it, it moved 800,000 copies, not the "millions" quoted elsewhere. To put that number in perspective GTA: VC has moved 8.5 MILLION. And to be fair to the PC market which over the last several years has floundered behind the PS2, the Sims has moved 20 million. Prior to the announcement of the frozen throne there were more people online playing Starcraft at a given time than there were playing Warcraft 3. Yes, Starcraft, several years old and covered in hackers (though the best RTS of all time) had more people playing than the six month old "brilliant" War3. As for World of Warcraft, all hype, they have yet to show anything besides a nice art style. Technically its very sub-par, and on a gameplay level at E3 they showed they do a damn fine impersonation of Everquest.
I might be in the minority here, but I find RTS games like Starcraft and Warcraft incredibly boring, now Diablo 2, I can play that for hours at a time. But why is it taking so long for them to even announce Diablo 3? This is likely what this is all about, come on, it is absolutely stupid for them to not to make a Diablo 3, (and a Starcraft 2 even though I wouldn't buy it), it would sell millions of copies, and thats just on the name alone. Now when they do make a D3, it will not be nearly as good as it would as when these guys were working for Blizzard North.
What were their reasons? I also wonder why twenty of the lead developers working on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault left an Electronic Arts funded studio to found Infinity Ward. Is it really the money, or is it something else? I have no knowledge in this field, so if anyone has any inside information or pertinent experience, please post, I'd love to hear it.
As far as the reallocation of talent goes, I had high hopes for Troika's Arcanum, seeing as how Troika consisted of several key members of the fantastic team which produced Fallout, but wound up disappointed at its lack of polish, whereas Inifinity Ward's soon-to-be-released Call of Duty looks by all means to be incredible even in its juvenile state. Maybe high-level-folk like doing things their way, for better or worse, without the interjections of a publisher seeking marketability. Once again, I'm only hypothesizing. Are there any game-developers out there willing to testify?
Blizzard so far has made very good games but there is a feeling I get like their position of making these good games is very tenuous... For example, Warcraft III and Starcraft are basically only affected by one cheat (maphack) due to the nature of the game, but instead of fixing it Blizzard basically does nothing about it...
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Blizzard "is widely seen in the games industry as one of the most attractive assets of VU Games,
Not anymore.
Nolan Bushnell, the guy who founded Atari signed a 7 year non-competition agreement with Warner when they bought out the company. While he was waiting out the agreement he founded "Pizza Time Theater" which became Chuck E. Cheese.
AUGAUUUGCGCACAUAUCUCAGCGAAUGAAAGGGAUUAA
Good luck guys. I've enjoyed both of the Diablo games and can't wait to see what you guys do next.
I use to play hockey with you guys in San Jose back in 1998. We played at the roller rink with Dave and Max and Mark was the captain. Good times. Send me an email if you get this. I like to hear what's going on with you guys. Or if anyone know them, please pass this on to them.
Gabe
Keep in mind that Blizzard experienced a similar defection about four years ago. Patrick Wyatt, Mike O'Brien, and Jeff Strain (One was a biz guy, the other two wrote battle.net and worked as leads on diablo and starcraft... if memory serves) took off to form a startup called TriForge. They then became Arena.net and finally were swallowed by NCSoft. They are now working on Guild Wars.
So, Blizzard has survived a previous walkout... they have since churned out Warcraft 3, Diablo 2, a few expansion packs, and are nearly done with WoW. Will they survive this? I believe so. I'm wondering if they will be able to come up with original content, or if it will be infected by suits who continue to pimp out the the Warcraft/Diablo franchise ad infinum.
"customer base of MMORPGs" -> "customer base of WoW". Blarg. That probably made no sense whatsoever.
... the guys at Bungie would do the same thing.
They could start developing what they wanted again, without an evil empire dictating to them.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Man, all I hope is that my Level 89 Barbarian with two Schaefer's Hammers (Shael'ed) doesn't get nerfed now when they finally release 1.10
But Maaa! Everyone else has a
There have been rumors of an EA buyout and this could possibly be the catalyst for their departure.
Blizzard employees have been leaving for a little while, quitely loosing the producer of Starcraft Ghost last year to Jaleco (the designer of Warcraft 1 & 2 had ended up there already).
What on earth is going on inside Blizzard?
(FYI, the game the above are working on at Jaleco is Goblin Commander).
I guess Roper's immediate comments regarding his departure validate many of the anti-Vivendi theories floating around.
I once heard a metaphore that I think applies to this situation: If you stand with your feet in sand, there's going to be footsteps when you leave. However, it's not until you leave that your footsteps can be erased.
For a company like Blizzard, this can mean two things:
1) They have a working learning organization that is not dependant on star players or heros. In this case, younger talent will grow to take the place of the older and the company will evolve.
2) They (like 90% of the software business) has never gotten around to create a real engineering process, and as such is dependant on specific persons. In this case, the success will follow the talent and Blizzard will be deminished by this loss.
From what I can tell about Blizzard from playing their games, I think they are closer to alternative 1. One can see a steady refinement of their game ideas from the first War Craft up to WCIII. I believe they will be affected by the loss of talent, but it increases the chances of seeing new and innovative ideas in their future games.
Taking this comment "... without an evil empire dictating to them" as a starting point, I'd love to hear people's views on the relationship between creativity/innovation and corporate capitalism. I quite deliberately distinguish between corporate, shareholder-oriented capitalism and other forms of capitalism and do it while understanding, I believe, the powerful ability corporate capitalism has to raise, well, capital.
Why is it that originals and innovators so often leave the entity they help found? It can't be easy. Is it that they are all snobs who "really don't want to work an honest buck for a living"? Is it that the corporation undervalues or devalues them as it succeeds? Is it that corporations, at least big ones, are incompatible with innovation or, at least, seeing it implemented. Or is it that innovation and creativity are themselves enumerated in some kind of different value unit which is interconverted with capital only with difficulty?
Jan Theodore Galkowski, (Oo) http://www.smalltalkidiom.net/ MySQL,PHP,ETL,SQL,MinGW C, and plucking the Web
Does that meen blizzard will go back to quality games over polygone shit like WC3?
Well since the FreeCraft story I hate Blizzard anyway..
It's been a long time since the groundbreaking days of Warcraft and Diablo, more than enough time for Blizzard to have lost its edge and gone on auto-pilot. The sad fact is that these talented guys won't be missed; the increasingly bland Blizzard line can be managed by anyone. Maybe they recognized as much...
Psst.. you haven't got a clue what you are talking about. Rock N' Roll Racing and Lost Vikings were both made by Blizzard when they were known by a different name (Silicon and Synapse). Read the company information on their website.
Interplay was only the publisher. They had nothing to do with the development.
First Blizzard Deletes 112,000 Diablo II Accounts now four key employees leave the company. :D
Maybe now Battle.net is safe for our warmongering orcs
He was also the voice the majority of humans and Orcs in both WarCraft 1 and 2. It's him narrating the intro movies as well.
"Yes, my lord." That's Bill Roper doing a British accent for you. All the now-famous Orc phrases are also him..."Tagu!"
Because of his role in the creation of the first two WarCraft games, I consider Bill Roper sort of the heart of Blizzard. To me, his leaving means the company isn't really Blizzard anymore.
"Sufferin' succotash."
The main reasons I hear for hating WarCraft 3 is that the only strategy to win now is by rushing. Everyone thought the Upkeep would get rid of rushing because of the inability to create massive armies, but because of the squad-based nature of the game, that is actually all you do--create a hero, give him a squad as quickly as you can, run around levelling him up, then rush the enemy. It's just a smaller scale of units now.
As far as I can tell, the only variations in strategy allowed in the game are such things as your building order or the variety of units you use in your squad. But the end strategy is always the same--rush your enemy with levelled up heros. As a result, games are boring and very quick as everyone rushes around to level up their heroes. It sucks.
"Sufferin' succotash."
...he was referring to his *parent* post, not *his* post!
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny
try to be accurate when knocking blizzard. i agree that 2 million isn't much anymore in terms of huge blockbusters, but it's still a good sales effort from the business side.
t ic leid=1174
my problem with blizzard is that they just dont innovate. they tack on one new feature and ship the same game. (diablo2 was diablo with a skill tree - war3 was war2 with heros)
it was not surprising to me that the team that came up with the original war3 concept (the removal of resource gathering, the focus on -keeping your units alive- rather than zerging) left shortly after the suits reassigned their priorities and then had other developers bastardize their vision.
http://www.game2extreme.com/news/article.cfm?ar
BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT® ANNOUNCES
WARCRAFT® III: THE FROZEN THRONE(TM)
IRVINE, Calif. - JANUARY 22, 2003 - Blizzard Entertainment®, a division of Vivendi Universal Games, announced today plans for Warcraft® III: The Frozen Throne(TM), the expansion set to the fastest selling PC game ever*, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos(TM). Since the game's release in July 2002, Warcraft III has now surpassed 2 million units sold worldwide. *
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Basically he says they made the decision to leave as a result of very recent events. If I understand it correctly it has to do with them not having enough influence over the direction of the company. The group have not decided exactly what they want to do, but want to continue working together in a new company. They are not bound by any non-comptetion agreements or similar.
Anybody remember Sam Lantinga? He's the main SDL coder and he was hired by Blizzard a while back. His employment there led many optimists in the Linux gaming community to speculate that he could perhaps be able to persuade Blizzard to port games to Linux (or that perhaps he was hired in the first place to do exactly that, using his experience with SDL), although Lantinga himself mentioned that that (at least initially) would be quite unlikely.
Is he still working there?
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
Just because GTA:VC sold 8.5 million and Sims sold 20 million, does not mean they're good games. Personally, I hate GTA:VC and Sims....both are boring games IMHO. Most people are buying GTA:VC because it has "violence, sex, and language"--yeah right. Ever heard of "Soldier of Fortune"? That is truly a violent game.
Anyways, Warcraft3 was 3d and tried to live up to it's successor. But no matter how hard you try, the "old skools" won't like sequels. So it has 800,000 games sold(don't know if that's really accurate though) but the game is still good w.r.t many of the reviews out there.
For some exploration of this theme in a fictional realm, read The Man who sold the moon by RA Heinlein.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Lets try this again. We are attempting to judge an entity, or its actions that may be comprised of many different people, and their actions. Primarly, we may perceive the decisions of a small number of these individuals to be the decisions of the company, and therefore personify the "company".
These people who make the decisions at the game company are the executives.
I'm sorry, did you mistaken "Blizzard" to be a 2 legged, human form that has feelings and can act good or evil, that thinks and reasons and understands? Did you have some conception that "Blizzard" was a fun person cause "Blizzard" made games?
I hope that clarifies a few things.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
Rock over London, Rock on Chicago. Wheaties: Breakfast of Champions.
Well, my question is if I should boycott their new company, as well as Blizzard? Are these guys supportive on the Blizzard/Vivendi war on open source software or are they just on the side lines? I would like to know. I haven't even thought about buying a Blizzard game since the Bnetd saga.
I know it is rather hard for them to prevent the maphack in the first place but some sort of automatic detection would help a lot. Instead they just wait fo a bunch of people to complain...
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
This is proven by the fact that the first Lineage was so popular. God, what a steaming hunk of dog shit that was!
fatty fatheads for fat-arse-dom.
Yes, children, all people at Blizzard have weight-loss problems. Get off your PC, stop eating cheetos and chocolate, and go get on your knees to pull weeds from your garden. Maybe if you're lucky, that pasty ugly girl across from your house will ask you to weed her garden (sicko).
One of them had a big rock in his forehead...
I wonder if they are going to form up, and found a new game company. I hope so. Though in my perfect world they would join up with Gas Powered games, since Chris Taylor is my other idle. And when that dream happens, the possitive influences of ex-Blizzard people will cause Mr. Taylor to make a dungeon seige that DOES NOT SUCK, and might indeed be the "diablo killer" the first was supposed to be. Doubtful.
Though, I seriously hope that they do form their own company, being that Blizzard North developed the best (IMHO) game franchise ever, and I think that with them free of the evil Vivendi vapours they have a chance. Blizzard, IMO, is turning in the wrong direction. Though I still love 'em, and their support for the fan community.
But, sadly, most "rebelions" in the industry don't work.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
"To Rush" is not synonymous with "To Attack". What you describe is an attack, not a rush. A true "Rush" would entail skipping the "run around levelling him up" phase.
What you describe sounds like fun to me. After all, if you don't want to (1) build basic units (2) improve your units (3) then attack your enemy, what do you like about RTSes, anyway?
larry
Bill Roper seemed to be overseeing the final phases of War3. Aren't these four the original D&D players that grew up in Pacific Palisades together?
What's this got to do with the question? It's the whole "evil empire" attitude that emerges from the bottom when the top is now some distant entity rather than the guy in the office at the end of the hall. I don't think "capital" has anything to do with it per se, save that it's a concern to that distant imperial capital but not a concern to the subject lands...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
No, sorry, I was confused. :-) ;-)
I of course meant SC1.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
A penguin's just a penguin.
The only thing they got in common is that they both are wearing something red. Go see an eye specialist.