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The company's massively popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game has struggled in the past year, slipping to 10.2 million subscribers through the end of December. I'm not sure "struggled" is the word they were looking for there.
A ~20% decline is seemingly quite a massive hit if you ask me and would definitely warrant a few layoffs.
The company's massively popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game has struggled in the past year, slipping to 10.2 million subscribers through the end of December. I'm not sure "struggled" is the word they were looking for there.
Without Googling for statistics wasn't WoW peaking around 13mill subscribers? A ~20% decline is seemingly quite a massive hit if you ask me and would definitely warrant a few layoffs.
The company's massively popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game has struggled in the past year, slipping to 10.2 million subscribers through the end of December. I'm not sure "struggled" is the word they were looking for there.
[1] http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EdwardHunter/20090924/3179/Wo...
The interesting bit is that to make that count they really need a good operational plan with respect to their infrastructure.
I got a peek at their infrastructure early on because the company where I worked (Netapp) was trying to sell them filers for their Oracle instances which were running the game. And the game is essentially a ginormous database being updated constantly based on player actions. What we saw was a very complex (and expensive) infrastructure which was clearly built expediently. I would think that over time they would have been working to refine this to something more manageable (and cost effective).
Ultimately, there is a 'killer' persistent world infrastructure architecture for this sort of traffic. Would be a good research topic for a thesis I suspect.
Not really sure what to make of this…been a Blizzard fan since ToD, saw Blizz growing, merging, corporated, massive growth… 3 Major Projects in the Pipeline, 1 Untitled Project, and it lays off 600 people? It's a money printing machine with it's stranglehold on subscription based MMO (as opposed to freemium), I'd hate to think they're laying off people to appease the shareholders and maximize profit.
Starcraft 2 and WoW are in more of a maintenance cycle with the expansions coming out this year. Neither probably need as many developers as the new projects at this point.
The layoffs are probably due to WoW losing subscriptions over the last few years, and Diablo 3 nearing completion. The majority of the 540 non-developer positions are probably level 1 support or low level IT related positions because they don't need as much support personnel. The developer positions are most likely contract employees for Diablo 3 that aren't getting their contracts renewed.
Not really sure what to make of this…been a Blizzard fan since ToD, saw Blizz growing, merging, corporated, massive growth… 3 Major Projects in the Pipeline, 1 Untitled Project, and it lays off 600 people? It's a money printing machine with it's stranglehold on subscription based MMO (as opposed to freemium), I'd hate to think they're laying off people to appease the shareholders and maximize profit.
Technically, it's 2 major projects: Diablo 3 and the new MMO Titan. Starcraft 2 and WoW are in more of a maintenance cycle with the expansions coming out this year. Neither probably need as many developers as the new projects at this point. The layoffs are probably due to WoW losing subscriptions over the last few years, and Diablo 3 nearing completion. The majority of the 540 non-developer positions are probably lev…