Blizzard sells out (again)?

[Od'Dux]

Part of me just died.  

During a presentation to Wall Street today, a company representative from Vivendi reportedly said, "All Blizzard franchises will become MMOGs."

Let us hope this is not true. Since MMOs pretty much kill any continuity of a series and end the franchise, this most likely means we'll never see a StarCraft 2 or a Diablo 3.  Even if we do, it'll be a long time off or be made third-party.

[Eusis]

Admittedly, Starcraft could make for an interesting MMO, and at least it'd be a unique setting. I really don't see a big need for a Diablo MMO though, since I don't see how that'd stand out from the others all that much compared to Starcraft.

But, I'm overall annoyed at the obsession with MMOs and how they seem to be gradually eating up most of PC gaming. If some of these companies were still interested in developing offline games, it wouldn't be a biggie, but if someone like Blizzard would rather focus on constantly churning out MMOs... Well, bleh to that.

[Dade]

Part of me just died.  

During a presentation to Wall Street today, a company representative from Vivendi reportedly said, "All Blizzard franchises will become MMOGs."

Let us hope this is not true. Since MMOs pretty much kill any continuity of a series and end the franchise, this most likely means we'll never see a StarCraft 2 or a Diablo 3.  Even if we do, it'll be a long time off or be made third-party.

Word on the street is that Diablo 3 will be a Guild Wars killer....it's going to be very multiplayer based, but without being a Massive MMO (yes that's supposed to be redundant).

Oh and why do they need to make a Starcraft 2? Fuck...it's the national sport of a huge chunk of Asia.

[Eusis]

1up updates their story with Blizzard's response.

[Logick]

Actually I have a contact in Blizzard, word on the grapevine is their single player dept is getting smaller and smaller by the day.  They bought Swingin' Ape Studio which was near to them to finish Starcraft: Ghost(and become their console division).  They put the project on hold, and laid off most of the staff.  They wiped the diablo team, and moved a small percentage of them to their main studio also, and shelved their project.  Seems to me they're going the way of Origin =/

keep in mind this is all hearsay, i do know of the layoffs, but that's all.

[Eusis]

Even if they weren't laid off, it's obvious much of the talent is going elsewhere - Ready at Dawn, the studio that developed Daxter, is composed of ex-Naughty Dog and Blizzard staff, and both Hellgate London and Guild Wars have significant ex-Blizzard staff working on them, or so I keep hearing.

I really can't fault a business for sticking with what's successful, but some varity is good - it's why I'm slightly annoyed at SE focusing more on their big franchises in comparison to the 32-bit days.

[Logick]

I met the good people at Flagship a few times....the word "talent" would be stretching it ;)

[Sarcasmorator]

Blizzard's reputation notwithstanding, how exactly does a for-profit company whose business is making money sell out?

[Serene Prophet]

Haha good point Sarcas, but I agree that I am dissapointed in the MMO fad at the moment.  Even Bioware is heading there...which scares me, as they are practically the pervayers of the only decent good PC RPG's in recent years...though hopefully Obsidian will add nicely with their NWN2.

For me, I guess I miss the days of epic PC rpgs like Icewind Dale II, Badlurs Gate II, etc.  The closest weve had to those in a few years on the PC were the KOTOR games, a NWN, and KOTOR was developed for console as well.

PC Devs seem to enjoy more of the blah hack n slash of diablo and MMO for the RPG franchise than true rpgs...though what a "true" rpg is is really based on each person perspective.  

I guess..I just see more RPG elements to other games nowadays than rpg with other game elements...if that makes sense.

[Eusis]

Unlike Blizzard, Bioware churns out games at a reasonable pace - I think that they'd be about as capable as SE in churning out more great games while maintaining an MMO - seemed they opened a studio just for that anyway, so maybe it won't detract too much from Bioware's normal division.

[Sarcasmorator]

Unlike Blizzard, Bioware churns out games at a reasonable pace ...

How do you figure? Since WarCraft in 1994, Blizzard has put out 13 games and expansions and has another expansion on the way, split up between at least two development teams. Two or three games are rumored to be in development.

BioWare has put out 13 games and expansions since 1996, and two games are known to be in development. That's almost the same rate.

[Eusis]

I'm admittedly thinking more of recent games; as I recall we only had WCIII, WoW, and Expansions for both either out or upcoming, totalling four, two original games since 2002. For Bioware... In a similar time frame, we've got 4 original games, 3 already out, and 2 co-developed expansions, so that's a total of 6 games, 5 currently out.

I guess that admittedly shows they only put out a little more than Blizzard, but it still felt like there were more Bioware games. Maybe KotOR2 and NWN2 helped to exagerrate that sensation, as well as the lack of totally new titles shown for Blizzard's future.

Edit: In the above I didn't count Dragon Age - no idea when that's supposed to be out, IF it'll be out, and the same goes for SC Ghost.

[Kiem]

Lets also remember that Blizzard is owned by Vivendi...which means that even if Blizzard wanted to make more offline games and expand their franchises, if Vivendi wanted MMOs...guess what Blizzard has to make?

And Dioblo MMO is in the works...

As for Bioware, like its been said, they opened up a new studio in Austin to handle that. Which means that they'll still be working on offline titles. Mass Effects is one of them.

And for everyone who's shocked to see this MMO trend, please, you've seen this coming for some time now. In fact, I dare say we're the cause of this trend. PC gamers have been begging for online contant and playing with others. MMOs are the ultimate and extreme version of this, so when it first came out, most of us jumped at it with glee. And when a company that's out to make good games and good profit sees the sales figure for MMOs that are successful...their eyes will shine and a grin will form. And as the MMO pie gets larger and larger, more companies will want a piece of it. And, most designers see a limitless potential for innovation since the genre is so new and this draws a lot of names to MMO projects. Even I would love to work on an MMO because of the possibilities for a designer.