It’s been since September that I don’t spread some rumors.

Just yesterday I was writing some comments about WoW’s art on Q23 forums:

I still have the suspect that some of their best artists and animators migrated to some other companies because both the models and the animation of the characters during beta were way more polished and well planned than the updated versions.

But then, it’s just a suspect with no foundation. We’ll see what will happen with the expansion but from the few screenshots I’ve seen I wasn’t really impressed.

And, for a coincidence, this is what I read on FoH’s forums today:

Gamblor:
The exodus cost them most of their artists and the entire animation team. How the hell management allowed a situation to occur that pushed the man responsible for about 50% of the entire game’s animation and most of the other artists to leave for NCSoft is beyond me.

It’s going to be a while for the new art team, if it is even fully assembled, to get their sea legs. Keep in mind that most of Ahn Qiraj’s artwork was done by the previous team. Karazhan too. The expansion will most likely be the first place we see Art Team 2.0’s work as a complete zone.

And more:

Gamblor:
It’s harder to bribe a graphic artist than a programmer. Artsy types don’t typically thrive under a Machiavellian corporate culture. And if you’re good enough to get hired by Blizzard, there are plenty of companies you can get hired by that don’t force you to come into contact with dickheads like GFrazier.

The movie industry has a pretty good lock on most of the 3d artists who are just in it for the money.

Keep in mind this is a company that put their artists on the same work schedule as the programmers in the post launch crunch time, even though the art for BWL and AQ was done before the game launched. In order to be “fair”. If your entire division got their shit done, why the hell would you have to stick around 12 hours a day just because the programmers can’t fix offset teleport hacking (and have yet to fix that, I might add. GG removing chests and quests instead.).

When a Database goes down a normal company doesn’t force the secretaries to stay at their desks until the DBA gets his shit together. Overtime for salaried employees is a pretty good morale killer.

The first things Art Team 2.0 did that the public got to see was the T2 armor (except Bloodfang and Bullwinkle, those were Team 1.0) and look at how much the general populace bitched, and Blizzard’s whiny hurt response when given feedback on it. I’d say the art is still a sore spot in the company given their snotty responses to customer feedback on the matter.

It makes sense if you think how long the expansion is taking to release and how little they’ve shown about it. And how absolutely pretty are the new AQ armor sets (yes, I’m being sarcastic). And what happened to the weather effects?

I wish I had saved a post on the official forums where Tseric went berserk defending Blizzard after the claim that most of they key people left the building.

Fact is that I actually believe these rumors, they’ve been always consistent and even supported by official press releases announcing spawned companies. What’s left of the former Blizzard, then? Artists gone, animators gone and the two lead designers arriving when WoW was already in late development (one arrived in the middle of the final beta).

Yes, WoW is still terribly successful and, imho, it absolutely deserves this success. It is motivated. But it is also the result of solid ideas that were already there LONG ago as the foundation of the game. All I’ve seen recently (the whole PvP system and faction grind come to mind) sucked. PvP and endgame PvE. Exactly what the new team had to figure out, compared to what was already there long ago.

There are two comments from Tobold that I found rather funny:

Blizzard posted a new page outlining all the options you have once you reached level 60. Besides farming faction or raiding, they *do* recommend leveling an alt.

I am looking forward to the Burning Crusade expansion, which basically adds another 10 levels to the fun part of WoW, and pushes the unfun part further back.

So levelling an alt and pushing the unfun further back is all that Blizzard is able to offer? Seems so.

Blizzard is sitting on a success that seems to belong to someone else. They may have the rights to exploit commercially the quality work done by someone else, but they lost the control on that quality now and they are going to pay after they cashed.

The true impact of these changes will only surface entirely in the longer term. When it will be hard to remember about the causes, because we have a so short memory and believe that the name of a company is more important than the people working in it. How so terribly naive.