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Is Blizzard still the same company?
I see alot of people justify things in WoW or state things about quality etc in the game based on Blizzard's past reputation. Obviously many are irrational fanbois, but there is something to the preutation of a company. Before I quit this game a had a decent amount of respect for Blizzard and thought they would not make this into another EQ. I was wrong but fine, I canceled once I realized that. However for a time I did rely on that reputation and my past experience combined with their assurances.
It seems to me though that Blizzard is no longer the same company it once was. They have lost many key people:
Flagship Studios (founded in 2003 ): David Brevik, Bill Roper, Erich Schaefer, Max Schaefer, Kenneth Williams, Dave Glenn, Peter Hu, Phil Shenk, Tyler Thompson, Matt Householder, Christian Arretche, Jason Felix, Brennan Plunkett, Charlie Lapp and Marc Tattersall.
Castaway Entertainment:
Michael Scandizzo, Stefan Scandizzo, Alan Ackerman, Rick Seis, Ted Bisson, Bruno Bowden, Peter Brevik, Michael Huang, Kelly Johnson (artist), Michio Okamura, Tom Ricket, and Fredrick Vaught.
Arena.net (founded around 2000):
Mike O'Brien,Patrick Wyatt,Jeff Strain,James Phinney,Eric Flannum, and Tommy Park
Red-5 Studios:
Mark Kern, William Petras, Taewon Yun, Harley D. Huggins II, John Burnett, Daniel Buckler, and Brian Hsu.
Hyboreal Games:
Michio Okamura, Eric Sexton, and Steven Woo .
Now Blizzard North is offically closed down. And looking that list of names we can see why; almost every single major player in Blizzard North left. I do not know what effect that had on WoW as Blizzard North mostly worked on Diablo. Either way it was a major manpower/knowledge loss.
ArenaNet and Red 5 studios both have major former-team leads from WoW and some of the best Networking minds Blizzard once had. The founders of ArenaNet designed and implemented BattleNet. Sheesh ArenaNet still run unofficial Bnet webpages(Gaile does that).
Counterpoint:
The following people are still at Blizzard
Mike Morhaime, Frank Pearce, Paul Sams, Shane Dabiri, Chris Metzen, Bob Fitch, Rob Pardo, John Lagrave, Samwise Didier, Chris Sigaty, Justin Thavirat, Matt Samia, Nick Carpenter.
Rob pardo and metzen were major players in the past. Samwise is a longtime/talented artist from many project for Blizz and other things. There are at least some of the core Blizzard people from the past there. Some of the higher ups are there too.
The much maligned Jeff Kaplan(Tigole) was most probably recruited by Rob Pardo(Ariel) via their common ties in the Fire Of Heaven Uber-leet EQ raiding guild. However if you go through and read the foh posts by Kaplan you can tell he was recruited by the time most of these people left or were very close to leaving. It is also rather strange that so many talented people left within a close span of time and they all left during the development of WoW
I personally do not think Blizzard is the same company. They are close enough to be able to produce stuff along the same lines, but they have lost so much talent and so many people whose original design idea shine through in their games but have been relegated to back-burner status in this game. It seems to me the development of WoW ripped Blizzard in half. There was massive turnover and of course a large change in design goals and priorities as those who pushed certain ideas left. In addition the loss of their best network people and just geneeral lack of manpower is still being felt, no matter how much money they may have now.
For anyone basing any idea of what WoW is based on old Blizzard games I suggest you do not do so. It is pointless and misleading. Nor should you believe what they say they will do in the future since that is based on design goals set by people who are no longer there to adovacte them, but which they commited to due to marketing. You should do what you would do with any unknown; look at their actions and notice the patterns.
Perhaps some of you disagree or know more about what core people have stayed and how it affects this game, but from everything I have been able to see; this is far from the company it once was. And this was the case even before WoW was making money.
Comments
Large companies very rarely remain the same. It doesn't happen because they want to change, but it is often out of necessity as companies try to diversiify or change course to meet market demands. Major changes in strategy often requires companies to add new staff, or cut out existing employees. There are often shifts in the board of directors as new deals are made, or outside investments come in. Heck, even founding members get booted from management all the time. I have worked for companies where new management came in and booted everyone out, in favor of bringing in their cronies.
Holding this against Blizzard is silly. The days of old are gone, and you will continue to see change at the company.
I don't hold any of this against Blizzard. I am stating that I believe there has been sufficient amounts of the changes you mentioned above that all the various people who base things in this game, no matter which issue, should stop basing things on Blizzard's past games, in fact should go so far as to ignore the marketing they posted at realease for WoW.
Whether its raider vs. non-raider or some pvp issue or whatever. Basing any of that on WC2 or Starcraft and most especially Diablo is pointless. A vast majority of the creative and technical talent of those games is no longer at Blizzard. Even looking at the marketing of the game as casual needs to be understood in this vein. Some of the lead designers left in the middle. Sure a hardcore raider is lead design now and the VP of design was a hardcore raider, but at various points people with other views were pushing in other design directions. A number of people feel decieved because of the varying design directions and the marketing of the game, but the fact is Blizzard of 2000 is simply not the same as blizzard of 2005. Its almost pointless to apply such ideas to the company.
Further things like the server problems should be understood in the context of the massive loss they have taken. You can't look at Bnet and say oh Blizzard shoulda fixed the servers by now, they pioneered important online games. The people who made Bnet are makign Guild Wars now, that is gone. And further they left at a rather in-opportune time. I'm not trying to make excuses, people just need to get over their preconceptions. The design sensibilities and the technical knowledge of 2000 is vastly different than 2005, accept that and base your decisions accordingly. Maybe Blizzard has some new hotshot network guys, I have no idea, but if you think past success shows that they could or should have fixed or anticipated the problem then you need to rethink things.
I think I have seen about 10 "Where's the WAR in WARcraft" posts on the forums in the last two weeks. These posts show exactly what I mean. Sure fine, in 1998 this may have been a point, but things have changed to much. I even agree with those posts, but they are almost pointless now. People just keep pining for something that doesn't exist anymore. They need to accept that is doesn't exist anymore and act accordingly, whatever that may be. So many people are hung up on the past and won't accept that this is the present.
I am however very curious what prompted such a mass exodus over the course of 2 years. One article mentioned that the president and various VP's of Blizzard North had problems with Vivendi which prompted their leaving.
My gut intuition is that certain key decision-makers wanted to inflate sales figures so as to attract as much investment as possible. This strategy required them to cut back salaries of key technical staff to support the aggressive marketing (while also paying their own fat executive salary). In turn, investors would then come along and dump more money into the company, and then the execs could just hire their own technical crew later, while getting rich NOW.
Why would I have this idea? Since I am in the healthcare field, I'll use an analogy by pointing to the recent closure of Kaiser's Kidney Transplant program, or University of California - Irvine's Liver Transplant program. What both of these organizations did was continue to pump up their waiting list of organ recipients, so they could show investors, "Look at all these people who want transplants in our excellent program!" In reality, they had no full-time staff to perform the transplants - they were hoping to hire them later while continuing to receive funding. The scheme wasn't revealed until patients began to die.
Why do I think this happened at Blizz? Well, until very recently, WoW had absolutely no customer service support. Until recently, The BBB gave them a grade of F in customer service. Yet, there had been very aggressive marketing tactics employed to boast heavy WoW sales volume. The key technical staff you mentioned were long gone, and the timing of their departure is very interesting.
What can we do? Hmm. Maybe we should start up our own gaming company and nab that Blizz North crew to compete with WoW. Have a couple million dollars I could borrow?
Well, you said it Morhaime, Metzen, and Pardo are still there and have been for a long time. People get replaced everyday in the software industry, the next Blizzard game might suck, but I wouldn't bet on it. So I guess we'll just have to wait until they release their next game. That was supposed to be Starcraft Ghost, but they cancelled/postponed it because it didn't meet their standards ala the Warcraft adventure game they axed.
p.s. Jeff Kaplan and Rob Pardo were members of Legacy of Steel, not Fires Of Heaven.
Too late, haven't you heard of Hellgate London? Let's just say it looks pretty good
Yes those three are still around which is partially why I put a question mark in the title. I think it would be silly to say what I have seen some say: "Blizzard is dead". There are too many of the important originals still around. Clearly alot has changed thogh, and from looking at what the games these guys are making have versus what WoW is spotty in then looking back at blizzard games you can see how some things have stayed while others seem to have, well, faded.
Just comparing GW and WoW pvp-wise shows major differences and going back to the old battle.net games you can really see the trends of what each game took from those games. Those are different games with different goals, but they really show where one group wanted to go and where the other chose to go.
Certainly if they ever make Diablo 3 it just won't be the same. It might be a good game who knows but anyone basing an idea of it on 1 or 2 is fooling themselves. But WoW is different because while many people left during its development many stayed. I think some of the ideas of past blizzard games no longer have significant representation, but some do. I think that confuses a number of fans.