Blizzard renames company to Bli$$ard

Just out of curiosity, what do you think Blizzard would be doing better or differently if it weren’t owned by Vivendi?

Blizzard would most likely buy their own country and invent their own currency which would consist of miniature golden dwarven statuettes forged in a few dozen licensed Wonka factories.

My post was slightly over exaggerated for humor purposes, which I seem fail at quite a bit. Must practice and torment readers more…

However, awhile back when a portion of Blizzard fled for NCsoft there was some speculation behind the departure and one reason that surfaced blamed the royalties Blizzard developers earned. I’ve read a bit of conjecture about Blizzard and Vivendi’s relationship the last few years that paints a bad picture against Vivendi, but I haven’t come across anything concrete.

Archived here, thanks Abalieno!

Alan Dunkin:
I’m fairly certain that the “fleeing devs” from Blizzard were not a result of them not wanting to be stuck with a huge money-making game for five years. A sizeable number of people were being let go or decided they didn’t like the direction of the game (technically or otherwise). Suffice it to say a number of companies have been snapping up the ex-employees like bears in a salmon run.

McBain:
As I hear things, a large number of devs left because they weren’t getting any royalties past 100,000 units sold.

–
As I understand it, when Vivendi bought out Blizzard, part of the buyout had a clause regarding the WoW royalties.

Again, this could be complete bullshit, but the person giving me this info is 1) pretty trustworthy, and 2) had no reason to pull this shit out of his ass. I tend to believe it, particularly given the absolutely awful patch support post-retail.

Of course, if that is still true or even was, I would want better royalties for the developers, salary raises as well since the cost of living in and around Irvine, California is flipping insane and most developers, including seniors and leads could be making more. I would also reinvest more money back into Blizzard specifically, not saying that Vivendi is not doing that, but I’m sure more resources could be invested into their premiere cash cow. The forums could definitely use an upgrade.

Do you think Blizzard would be in a better position without Vivendi?

Wow. Can Blizzard do any better? There has to be a point when these guys create a flop of a game. It could have been Warcraft Adventures, but they quickly put the brakes on that game for various reasons. I just don’t see Blizzard being able to create a game that will out sell WoW. Can you?

They are apparently still working on Starcraft: Ghost. Since it was announced, I haven’t been really excited about it. I’m pretty sure there is a game called Splinter Cell out there. Is anyone camping gamestore parking lots asking for money and food for that game? I think not. Those people are at my local street corner knocking on my window with signs reading “Strandead - Kar broke dowen. Puleze help me.” It really doesn’t help their cause being there for months at a time.

Back to Bli$$ard, I really like what the company creates. There were some murmers when they continued to postpone Starcraft and such, but it was for the best, right? (Damn, now I want to play that game again.)

Thanks for all the updates Krones. One of the few sites that actually have some refreshing content. (Instead of sites like http://www.bluesnews.com or http://www.gamegossip.com where all they seem to do is copy and paste each others stories. Of course Blues has lots of content to look at.)

So now this comes to an end. The smurfs rejoice.

Fingers of Nine

Oh… forgot to threaten to post your web addy in the general forum of World of Warcraft. Talk about increasing your web traffic. Ack!

Ninefingers

You call World of Warcraft a success of epic proportions?! Wrong, all wrong Ten Fingers, Minus One. Matrix Online was the fattest success the mmog industry has ever seen and ever will. Neo is the chosen one and there is no spork. Golly!

I do think Blizzard could have a bigger success on their hands, but in order to accomplish such a feat I would have too not be lead developer, but instead be given the moniker grandiose poobah developer. The game would be a mmorts based on the Starcraft Universe.

I love these so called video experienced gaming devices Bli$$ard creates in their underground Wonka factories. Seriously, I really do, I still remember losing my virginity to The Lost Vikings when I was a gaming hooligan running wildly in the suburbia Nintendo versus Sega street gangs over a decade ago. I still have the scars from playing with my penis and the busted controllers hanging next to poop socks on the wall too prove it.

This life time admiration I have built up over another lifetime for Bli$$ard inspired me a few days ago to set a new goal in my lifetime to become a member on the World of Warcraft development team; mascot, coffee boy, staper holder, no matter, as long as I’m a team player!

Bli$$ard only wants programmers, unfortunately for every WoW fanatic I failed my first bout with employment services, I couldn’t master the ways of 101010. fn } insert chaos theory; and thus my chiseled flabby face began to melt and I currently look like a giant mummy with no phat lewtz, but at least I don’t have to go far if I want to use the number two. For the time being I’m sticking with my former life epic quest, delevering freedom fries to random bystanders!

Hey, thanks! I think… I used to be all serious about blogging mmo news and other random thoughts I had about mmogs, and while sometimes I am still serious at times… I prefer an injected mix of tomfoolery. I enjoy my current approach, I have fun with it, and ultimately my hope is that I can enhance and fine tune my craft so that the overall format will be similar to the daily show / the onion news with some serious more constructive content thrown in as well, albeit, finding the funny each and every update has never been so easy, it should be okay, I can handle the fame and my soon to be fortune.

Your exactly right about “the others”, a lot of the fancy and gargantuan networks do a splendid job of reporting the news, but it’s normally trite and insipid, they mainly clone each other, so why not something more fucked up? This is another reason why I decided against reblogging straight up news with a few bland comments. I do need to update more. 2-4 quality updates daily would be nice, in the future I might cover more news items that I normally wouldn’t.

Hits. I’d like more hits, eventually. Not sure about hits directly from the WoW forums, I don’t think those peons could handle my unleashed verbose. I don’t mind flames, but I look stupid enough most of the time. I’d like more frequent readers, so if you think someone would like the site, whore me out, by all means.

Many years ago I announced a web comic. Okay, it was only 6 months aog, I’m unaware if you were a ganderer b ack than. The name of this comic happens to be Downtime, a fitting name for the premise the comic will be primarily similar to GUComics, mmo news based and what not. The writing isn’t the problem, it’s the fact that I can’t draw worth a shit, and every attempt at completing a comic thus far the artwork turns out as if I’m a retarded 2 month old with a broken arm. I’m still practicing, mainly on the weekends. If I can get Downtime off the ground, I’m sure my traffic will ding a few levels and you will find more foozles to duel with. I also need to redesign the blog soon!

Damn, what a longwinded over dramatic murble! I apologize.

I’m enjoying the blog as well! Thanks. I just was posing the question above because I see Blizzard as one of those game studios everyone holds up as the Chosen. They make great games, time and time again, and as someone in the industry, I know my peers and I frequently hold them up as the standard to be judged against. Their production values and attention to detail are top-notch. I don’t know the details of their deal with Vivendi, but they seem to be making great games as it stands. Could anything really enable them to make better ones?

I also have no love for the Starcraft Ghost, mostly because I’m an RTS and RPG gamer, so that genre really doesn’t appeal to me. As to the delays, I thought it was originally being outsourced to another studio and Blizzard wasn’t happy with it so they took control of the project and pulled it in to the main Blizzard fold. But I could be wrong on that, really totally wrong, so someone may want to double check my totally off-the-cuff posting.

Ghost was supposed to be co-developed by Blizz and Nihilistic Software. Announced in Sept. 2002.
http://www.nihilistic.com/pr_ghost.php

June 22nd, 2004, Blizz fires Nihilistic and hires Swinging Ape.
http://videogames.aol.com/game_news?gameID=686&articleID=245661

May 16, 2005, Blizz aquires Swinging Ape Studios.
http://www.blizzard.com/press/acquisition.shtml

It’s interesting that Nihilistic still has Ghost as a current project. Ohs Wells.