Blizzard crumbling down to pieces

It's not dying, but it is changing.

It's the idea people have of Blizzard that is losing meaning.

As someone who just cancelled his WoW account, for the 2nd time (way before BG's and then after when i saw they were useless) i can say that there are a great deal of us that were hoping that the 1.8 notes were real.

Of course they were too good to be true.

As to Blizzard dying, of course they aren't. Just from WoW alone they will be around for a long time, but the fact is the Blizzard we all know and love is no more. The Blizzard that made all these great games is already dead...actually that's not true, the Blizzard spirit is alive and kicking only it's alive at the half dozen companys that now house all of Blizzards talent.

Whats not funny and real is blizzard beeing owned by VIVENDI, what are we having for this? plain bullshit just as the new coming expansion set for wow. If you dont think so look at EA games.. shure they making lot of money but their policies suck so much, and are so marketing focused, they just think about the costumer as a bag of $$$

I think there's a general misunderstanding of what it means to be a Developer in this industry, and particularly in this genre.

Developers make games. They are part of a creation team, going from nothing to final shipped product at launch. Their tradecraft is design documents, speccing, sub-contracting, writing, managing pipelines, all that thing, and all for the joy of building something from start to finish. To finish.

MMORPGs are never finished, but they absolutely launch, and in that regard, to a traditional video game developer, they are absolutely finished. The system is in place. The features are in place. The sandbox is set for an immeasurably amount of new content to come for the foreseeable future.

Effectively, it's done. Now it just needs to expand.

Is that as compelling as giving birth to a new game? No. Maintaining and expanding a game is not as much of a birthing process as it is a maintenance one, at least to those who make the games.

Therefore, it should be assumed that the creators will move on once their creation is done. New content for an established game just isn't as interesting as a new game.

That's what I think has gone on here. And I think that because it goes on everywhere. Blizzard has not got anything on their docket at this point. They don't need to. WoW will paint their houses with cash for some time to come. Without even a hint of a new game, and in fact, without any such hint since the moment they hinted about WoW, what possible reason is there for a new game creator to stay?

It's like stand-ins in the movie industry. I certainly wouldn't want to pay Harrison Ford his hourly fee (plus the guild rate cards) just so I can have the camera crew do a light check :)

We (me and you) consider the concept of "expansion" is a different way. In fact I believe it is actually a problem for this genre.

See, I know exactly what you mean. I can understand the current situation and I know the reasons that brought to it. But this doesn't mean that I consider it the most appropriate and efficient. This is why I criticize it.

We have, fortunately, other examples nowadays. So precious because so rare and at the same time so important. I wrote more comments about this here and Dave Rickey countered them effectively. But this doesn't mean that my point of view changed.

It's not a case that Eve-Online expansions not only are massive, radical and evolutionary, but also mandatory. Included in the monthly fee (and I remember *you* agreeing with me about rising the monthly fee and integrate the expansions in it) and definitely not optional.

I don't think there's a misunderstanding, I just do not justify or accept your commonplaces. I simply would like to see better processes that could help to bring this genre nearer to its potential. And to get there many consolidated models, both in the founding, development and marketing ought to get discarded and rethought.

The development itself must evolve if these games want to go past their current limits.

From my point if view a mmorpg surely needs to launch when it has enough parts to be enjoyable but that should become the beginning of a journey, not its end. Things should start to get interesting at that point. The game shouldn't go in "maintenance mode", instead the actual development should start there. Where you can finally have a more direct relationship with the community and understand clearly where the game can go (and of course this brings back the discussion about the mudflation).

If working on a released game isn't fun it's just because of a choice that was made in the planning stage and that is surely questionable and not given.

Launches and expansions shouldn't be the end of a work and of the commitment. They should instead represent milestones along a journey that is as interesting as you want it to be.

And I already explained my point of view on authorship and devs with no responsibilities.