31–40 of 125 posts
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Yep, hopefully now we won't have to wait a decade for a better version of Diablo.
That's what I thought, till I played Hellgate. Man that was a disappointment…
Also it sucks to hear about the lay-offs.
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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…
SC2 and WoW expansions are still major, MAJOR projects, believe me. Calling it just maintenance really does a disservice to the amount of work that goes into these things. For Blizzard, this applies doubly so. I expect that Heart of the Swarm is a bigger project that most studios can dream of, in all manners - technology, art and design, production, distribution, marketing, and all the other attendant features that g…
Patches for WoW – maybe – but expansions are huge effort!
Not to mention Blizzard aim for global simultaneous release for its games whenever it can. (Asia used to lag behind WoW's expansion up to a whole year compared to NA/Europe) Can't imagine the effort and coordination required for that task.
This seems like an appropriate enough place to put this: The Diablo 3 beta? Not that good. I put thousands of hours into D1 and D2 but have zero desire to keep playing the D3 beta. Also it sucks to hear about the lay-offs.
Personally I quite enjoyed the beta, a lot more than I enjoyed the same period of the D2 game. I'm anticipate spending many, many hours enjoying D3.
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Indeed, this could be potentially awesome for southern California tech.
I don't know how much difference 60 developers (probably not the best and brightest, as I'd expect Blizzard to hold on to those) would make. I'd be happy to be wrong, though.
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…
Testers are technically development, so some of the "60 development staff" may have been from that department, but they tend to be very overworked (I'm not sure they would consider that to be the same thing as understaffed) so unless they realized there is no way they will have new products nearing completion for a good long time I find it hard to imagine this is testers.
I'm not sure that the Diablo team really uses contracted developers rather than proper employees. It doesn't feel like the Blizzard way of doing things where developers have a very low churn and company loyalty is well rewarded.
All guesses and speculation on my part. I was shocked to see this news because it isn't something the Blizzard I know would have done except as a last resort, and it's hard to imagine the company being near any "last resort" situations—the worst case scenario right now seems to be lower profit sharing for the higher ups, and I've never seen any of those guys as in it for the money rather live of the games. I know the company line at Blizzard is that Activision has no control or say in operations. I hope that's still the case, but this move, lacking any specific details, does smell like Activision all the way.
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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…
SC2 and WoW expansions are still major, MAJOR projects, believe me. Calling it just maintenance really does a disservice to the amount of work that goes into these things. For Blizzard, this applies doubly so. I expect that Heart of the Swarm is a bigger project that most studios can dream of, in all manners - technology, art and design, production, distribution, marketing, and all the other attendant features that g…
I'm saying that compared to the new projects(D3 and Titan), the overall personnel allocation is smaller for Heart of the Swarm and Mists of Pandaria.
The development effort on those isn't on a new codebase(unlike D3 or Titan). They're adding new features and reworking game systems in the expansions(especially with the WoW expansion, where they're completely rewriting basically every class), but the overall effort required to complete those isn't nearly as much as what they need for the new MMO.
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.
So, instead they can keep the 600 people, piss off shareholders and reduce profit?
I would guess that you might see different kinds of decisions from an independent Blizzard, even if it were public (though it would also have more risks in that case).
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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.
Sure, subscriptions may have declined quite a bit, but I think it's a bit silly to call the game "struggling" considering it's position in the market.
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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.
Sure, subscriptions may have declined quite a bit, but I think it's a bit silly to call the game "struggling" considering it's position in the market.