Slashdot Mirror
The State of Blizzard's Union
Gamasutra has an extensive interview with Senior Vice President Frank Pearce (one of the company's original founders), and Starcraft II producer Chris Sigaty. They discuss some elements of the the company's future. They discuss their expectations for Starcraft II, some hints of what's to come in World of Warcraft, and word that 50 people are working on the mysterious 'Team 3' game. "Pearce: Our global headcount is like, 2700. Most of that is customer service for World of Warcraft. I mean in terms of development staff... it's probably around 350. For all of Blizzard. World of Warcraft development team is about 135 people...40 for you [indicates Chris' Starcraft 2 team], 50 for ... Team 3 ... Gamasutra: Team 3? What's Team 3 working on? Pearce: Team 3 is working on something really awesome. I will totally tell you, it's really awesome ... Nope, can't give you any hints. Gamasutra: Well, as long as it's awesome."
like, i totally, like, totally, find it like, totally, like hard to read this, totally awesome article.
I bet it's Ghost II. Like totally.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Is the mystery game they are working on Diablo 3? I've heard various stories already that it has been in production for awhile, but they had to take it baack to the drawing board.
One assumes that's the Team 3 project, since it's been more or less confirmed.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
"Please be Diablo 3." * sys.maxint
Ah, I remember a while ago, we were waiting for a game announcement from Blizzard. Everyone was sure it'll be Starcraft 2 or Diablo 3. I mean, it made sense, right? They had all the fans lined up waiting for them. Instead we got World Of Warcraft.
:P Could be something else, but that's the only idea I have at the moment of completely mis-using an existing franchise. Oh, or maybe a city building game set in the world of Diablo. Sort of like Sim City except instead of a tornado, you get the gates of hell breaking open under the local church ;)
So my bet is that now we'll get something like a space flight sim set in the world of Starcraft
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"World of Warcraft 2: The Search for More Money."
The first page is where I noticed the biggest difference between Blizzard and "the other mmorpg" studios. This representative wasn't dismissing his competition or making disparaging remarks about it. He was playing nice. I figure down deep they know that these two games are not real threats to WOW... too many have been given that title only to falter.
I did appreciate his comments on developers. The job is pretty much thankless when everything is going right. Do your job right and most people don't care. Have problems creep up and your the center of some not so good attention.
It was also interesting to see how many people they "admit" to working on WOW and Starcraft 2. I assume the other is D3. 2000+ others? Most support. I can see that considering they are selling a service when it comes to the numbers WOW has.
The rule is, always talk nice about your competition. Then again when your at the top you don't have a reason to trash talk
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
How much do you wanna bet it's World of Diablo.
Y
I mean, it's probably great for someone in the industry to know, so I read it, but as a game player, I just don't care.
Blizzard lost all credibility as far as I am concerned with bnetd.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Hmm? Which others do you mean?
I must admit I haven't been reading many MMORPG studio interviews, so it's possible that I missed something. I am, however, relatively familiar with COH/COV, and I don't remember Statesman or Positron ever talking thrash about other studios. I remember very few references to other studios or games at all, and they tended to be along the lines of "well, blimey, looks like Blizzard was right and we were wrong." (E.g., in reference to the decision to hide the numbers in COH, as Statesman thought that would break suspension of disbelief. Turns out noone complained about that in WoW.)
World.
Of.
Starcraft.
Lose: misplace or fail || Loose: not bound together
I ditched wow and gone lotro. For the first time in a long duration, im having fun in a mmo. A catching story, easy come easy go playstyle, nice environment, gorgeous graphics. So such games can still be made.
Read radical news here
LOTRO has the same problem the movies had - it lacks the breadth of the books.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1885/the_state_of_blizzards_union_.php?print=1
Metalokalypse FTW
Peace sells, but who's buying?
That's how they all start. Report back to us in 6 months.
I think I'll stick with Hello Kitty Island Adventures - the online sensation!
its more than enough for a game.
Read radical news here
Or Starcraft: Ghost. That would definately fit the definition of "very awesome".
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
Some speculation over at wowinsider.com that Blizzard's Third Project is internally called "Hydra".
I think it's all a matter of taste. I don't think this is the place to get into the difference between LOTRO and WoW, but I'll just say that Blizzard has a habit of making games that are obtainable and enjoyable by a larger crowd than the games that came before it without dumbing the game down. That's a part of the key to their success. Competition from games like LOTRO will always be important as well as it reminds Blizzard and other companies that players might not share the same vision as the developers. How different would WoW be without EQ, DOAC, or SW:G? How about LOTRO without WoW? Skate without Tony Hawk's Pro Skater? Mario without Sonic?
It was about control.
The primary motivation to buy the game was to PLAY it. If you pirated it, you could still PLAY it with your friends via several methods. The difference was that you couldn't use their "official" matchmaker service. The existence of BnetD had, at most, a negligible impact on the level of piracy.
They also didn't demand the key checker; they OFFERED to use whatever keychecker Blizzard was willing to give them access to.
It was a valid fair use case, killed off by venue-shopping.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Gamasutra: Well, as long as it's awesome.
Now that's what I call hard hitting reporting! Gamasutra's not afraid to ask the tough questions.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
"We are experts in what we play, and we wanna play a more traditional sort of game, and not really casual stuff." I.E. Wow is h-core, l2p casual nubs.
I don't think he's saying that it's bad, but it's certainly not what everyone expected Blizzard's next big game to be. (I was expecting them to release StarCraft II next, myself- they had released Diablo II and WarCraft III since StarCraft came out, and we were all expecting a sequel). WoW was (and is) amazingly successful, but I don't think anyone expected Blizzard to take that route with their WarCraft Franchise.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Except Blizzard made the world persistent, slapped on a Warcraft skin and called it World of Warcraft.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.