When you see these kinds of news the first question is: “What’s the source?”
The source isn’t available but it should be still reliable. It comes from a presentation given by Vivendi to Wall Street, so something intended for the financial analysts. Source is F13 who had someone there, I think. I quote:
“All Blizzard franchises will become MMOGs.”
They claim they have a model now to develop an MMOG in 3 years for $50 million. WoW cost 50 million euros and took 4 1/2 years.
It is not an official announce since it’s more like in the form of “hype” to feed that type of audience with speculations. But I still consider this a reliable plan they have and that they WILL pursue now. Here Blizzard doesn’t exist anymore. My guess is that Vivendi is taking over. It’s not Blizzard deciding what to do next or even organizing the workflow. This is Vivendi seeing an insane stream of money coming in and going all “OMG, MONEY HATS FOR ALL!”. Then they rush in Blizzard’s offices with a grin, “SEE WHAT WE DID? NOW WE ARE MMOGs.”
Vivendi is not only taking over at the level of decision making. They are really stepping in Blizzard’s offices and taking over at every level. Before Blizzard was just an anomaly. This studio is so strong, as I pointed out in the past, because they ARRIVED to the success after a LONG process and hard work. It’s something handcrafted, done by people passionate about their work and slowly improving. “Vivendi taking over” is instead part of that other process who made so many important devs FLEE from Blizzard. Because they saw what was going on and that Blizzard was losing its role and slowly becoming just a “puppet”. The premises that made all that possible were changing. Those who saw that, left. With WoW’s HUGE success this process was accelerated considerably and I consider this presentation as the ultimate consequence: Blizzard’s autonomy is being killed.
Before WoW Vivendi didn’t have a particular attention for Blizzard, like every other division they have under them. Blizzard was successful, but only one cog in a huge machine. After WoW everything completely changed. While Blizzard probably had still a certain amount of autonomy, after the huge success of the game they weren’t anymore “invisible” to the Vivendi guys at the high levels. And this accelerated the process. You see, when you work for someone and do a good work, it’s all ok, you receive some praises and everything continues along the same lines. But when you start to do something absolutely *amazing* then you can be sure that they won’t leave you alone. They’ll come into your office, start asking questions, and yes, starting telling you what to do next so that TOGETHER you’ll conquer the world. Because they made you. And you are their property and merit.
People don’t leave you alone doing your work if they see that everything you touch becomes gold. Blizzard is the new “King Mida”. They make money hats. And now they totally have the attention of Vivendi. And they won’t leave them alone anymore, they won’t let them do their work. Instead they WILL take over, they WILL pretend to control and pilot them.
So this is what I see: it will need a few years before this process is complete. But Vivendi is going to take over, and this sort of “invasion” will have the consequence of ruining completely and slowly erasing all the “worth” that Blizzard slowly built along the years and with their hard work. They are guilty of having drawn too much attention on them, and now they are being swept away. It happens when you overdo, when you shine too much to continue doing what you do without things changing around you.
Diablo and Starcraft MMOs weren’t announced by Blizzard. They were announced by Vivendi. Blizzard is no more.
Those games will be made. Whether Blizzard wants or not. They aren’t no long masters in their own house. And in the next few years we’ll see a bleeding fracture between Blizzard and Vivendi management, trying to preserve control.
Right now Blizzard has barely the resources to support WoW. They don’t even have two separate teams to work on the live servers and the expansion.
Whatever will happen, things won’t be anymore the same.
From Blizzard’s rep:
I believe this was a misquote. We haven’t announced any specific development plans beyond the upcoming expansion for World of Warcraft, and we don’t have any intentions to focus on only one genre or platform with our future games.
We’ll see if it “was a misquote”, or if it’s just that Blizzard hasn’t anymore the freedom to decide what to do next.
Let’s see who makes the biggest voice.