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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."
No, World of Warcraft is in development down at Blizzard South (In Orange County, CA). From the last time I've visited the office it looked good, but who knows what the buyer of VUG will do to destroy a franchise house. Expect to see more fallout soon.
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!
It doesnt matter if you vilify them (for turning out an execrable piece of garbage like WC3) or laud them for turning out great games (like WC3 or Diablo) they have had a profound influence on the direction of computer gaming in the last 5 years. It is difficult to think of two games that have been more influential, and more copied in their respective genres: SC/WC for real time strategy (RTS) and Diablo for "role-playing".
Although it is tough to separate their individual contributions from those of Blizzard as a whole, they have inarguably produced highly influential games. Significantly, those games have also sold enormous volumes (basically equal in numbers to the Lara Croft series and the GTA series... i.e. several millions of copies of each release).
What is means is that the value of Blizzard just dropped a bit, although perhaps not as much as some are suggesting... a lot of their value resides in their name, their "goodwill" as it is called. And for the masses, who will never even hear of this, the name Blizzard will continue to by synonomous with outstanding games that are probably the least buggy/best supported in the industry (that is sure to get me flamed or modded down!).
It might also mean that some interesting games are in the future assuming you dont buy the theory that Bill ruined WC3. At very least, their departure is a big loss for Blizzard (again, WC3 aside) and a big gain for themselves or some other studio.
Blizzard North was originally another studio which was developing Diablo for Blizzard. Once they saw it was so good, Blizzard bought them up. Also, south is responsible for the Warcraft Franchise(s), as well as the current development of SC: Ghost.
As far as I know, Blizzard "North" only developed Diablo I and II, so this will not affect *craft at all.
The unofficial
Blizzard is in California. Noncompetes are not enforceable in this jurisdiction.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Blizzard is NOT developing Starcraft:Ghost. Don't confuse this. They are simply the publisher. The good people at Nihilistic are developing it as a third party. Though, given the quality of Nihilistic's last game, Vampire, I'm sure Starcraft:Ghost will rock.
I had a no-compete clause in a contract some years ago that specified "no similar industry within 50 miles" (aimed at their competitors across town). A lawyer later told me that even that limited NCA wasn't legal in California.
Toodles!
<pedantic>
Er, that was Lincoln, in the Emancipation Proclamation. JMS did a bit of borrowing in some of those speeches.
</pedantic>
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.