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Blizzard Working on ANOTHER Game? 02:24 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action / Roleplaying (10 comments)
Gamasutra was gabbing with Frank Pearce, founding member and senior vice president of product development for Blizzard, who after a few drinks, revealed the studio was working on yet another, unannounced title.

The comment came amid discussion of the company's current workforce. \"Our global headcount is 2,700,\" said Pearce, \"And most of that is customer service for World of Warcraft! In terms of development staff it's probably around 350. World of Warcraft is about 135 people, 40 for Starcraft II, 40 for team 3, our cinematics team is about 85 guys. Then there's sound and Q/A and that sort of thing.\"

When pressed for details regarding the new project, Pearce was cagey. \"Team 3 is working on something really awesome. I can't give you any hints, but it's totally awesome.\"

Diablo 3?

that would be nice, I really do miss the hack and slash action of the Diablo series!

If you miss it, get Titan's Quest and it's expansion. It's very similar and very fun.

Its about time they start churning out some titles.

Meh, they'll have some work to do if they want to run on the same grounds that Hellgate: London is going to be on.

Tyranny wrote:Meh, they'll have some work to do if they want to run on the same grounds that Hellgate: London is going to be on.

You're talking about BLizzard here. A company who hasn't made a bad game since they started. A company who actually cares what their clients think.

I have complete faith in any game they make.

CDN_Merlin wrote: You're talking about BLizzard here. A company who hasn't made a bad game since they started. A company who actually cares what their clients think.

I have complete faith in any game they make.

If you played Burning Crusade, you wouldn't say that.

Completely ruined WoW, IMO.

Actually, WOW and War 3are the only games I've not played. I won't pay to play so MMORPGs are out for me.

But you have to admit, their games all sell over 1 million each.

CDN_Merlin wrote:Actually, WOW and War 3are the only games I've not played. I won't pay to play so MMORPGs are out for me.

But you have to admit, their games all sell over 1 million each.

War 3 is a great game, you should pick it up.

MMO's, while I no longer play WoW I play FFXI Online. Its 13 bucks a month and I play it together with my GF. Even if we only turn it on 2 days a month, we see it as doing something together, no different from going out to a movie.

yeah u also come on to kick me around J

I'm hoping it is Diablo 3 since what you could do with that does qualify as \"really awesome\" from my somewhat limited imagination.

Hard to say though.

CDN_Merlin wrote:

Tyranny wrote:Meh, they'll have some work to do if they want to run on the same grounds that Hellgate: London is going to be on.

You're talking about BLizzard here. A company who hasn't made a bad game since they started. A company who actually cares what their clients think.

I have complete faith in any game they make.

lolololol!! and more lols

blizzard doesn't give a ★■◆● about its past clients, only its current ones. i was/am an involved member in the diablo 2 community and believe me, they don't give a ★■◆● about us at all. diablo 2 is screwed up and they won't fix it

Diablo 2 came out close to 10 years ago. What do you expect? Would you support games almost 10 years old? Even MS doesn't do that.

CDN_Merlin wrote:

Tyranny wrote:Meh, they'll have some work to do if they want to run on the same grounds that Hellgate: London is going to be on.

You're talking about BLizzard here. A company who hasn't made a bad game since they started. A company who actually cares what their clients think.

I have complete faith in any game they make.

Theres no doubt in my mind that whatever they're working on will be worth the wait and worth the time spent playing. Blizzard has only had a few flops in it's history (Burning Crusade & Starcraft: Ghost come to mind).

I will admit that they have the ball in their court since Hellgate: London is coming out this year and with that gives Blizzard time to study it. The only reason I made the statement was because a lot of the development members that worked on Diablo II for Blizzard are now the ones who developed Hellgate: London.

I'm still more psyched about Starcraft II atm, but we'll see what they've got up their sleeves.

I thought it was already a determined fact that Diablo 3 was in the works.... guess I was wrong. I think all RP games eventually become \"broken,\" mostly because of people's concept of what should be possible/not possible.

JMEaT wrote:

CDN_Merlin wrote: You're talking about BLizzard here. A company who hasn't made a bad game since they started. A company who actually cares what their clients think.

I have complete faith in any game they make.

If you played Burning Crusade, you wouldn't say that.

Completely ruined WoW, IMO.

agreed. Increasing the level cap and doubling the potency of items negated everything any player worked for pre-expansion.

I didn't play WoW at all tell last year, and by febuary I was 'equally geared' with my friends who had been playing it since the Beta.

I don't know anything about other MMORPGs,and wether or not this is common, but something about that didn't seem right. All of a sudden they where vendoring gear that literally took them days to aquire.

It was a smart marketing decision though.

Such is the risk you take when working your ass off to get stuff in MMORPGs. Never assume it'll be good forever.

Sirius wrote:Such is the risk you take when working your ass off to get stuff in MMORPGs. Never assume it'll be good forever.

Otherwise it will break your heart to think that some day you will quit and scrap all of that leveling, questing, crafting, and whatever else you spent days on end doing. Moral of the story: do it for enjoyment, not accomplishment.

I think my only Char. was around lvl 50 when BC came out, so I missed the 'reset.' However if another one comes I would definitly drop the game.

It's nice too say,' only play it for enjoyment', and i agree for the most part, but even the most casual of players will hit a point where they have to do un-fun things to keep moving forward.

If it's un-fun for everybody, that's usually a fair indication the designer shouldn't have put it in there, though.

It's difficult to balance a game right, that said - and of course you can't make everyone happy, especially not all the time.

I dropped WoW after a month. It got tedious and repetitive. It took me that long to get to 35th lvl and was finally able to move out of the realm I was in (level wise) only to be faced with the same BS I went through to level up the whole previous month. Endless possibilities and they threw a fresh coat of paint on the second half and said \"have fun!\". bah. Also, with the advent of Burning Crusades, it seemed like a good time to say \"enuff\".

I spent a good year and a half playing Diablo II. Went through my fair share of fun and anguish. One of my accounts had 8 Level 98 chars, but that wasn't too hard because you could PL so easily pre-1.10. Farmed and traded for some of the best gear in the game and even dabbled in using bots to farm my gear until they banned my account temporarily.

When 1.10 came out, I tried staying in the loop, but it just never seemed the same after that. After all the hard work I kept my accounts alive for nearly 3 or so years without ever playing again, just because I didn't want to lose my chars/gear incase I \"did\" go back. Anyways, when I moved and got everything situated in my new home one day I decided to check in on it and everything had finally expired.

It just proved to me how obsessed someone can become over acquiring online property and trying to hold on to it. After that it made more sense to just enjoy the time playing a game with friends and whatnot.

There are more important things in life. then I started playing City of Heroes/Villains

Where Diablo 2 has been such a hook for me is mainly in the fact that when you get a build and if necessary gear for a character that is awesome, it can become REALLY awesome. One of the gripes I've had with Guild Wars is that the time you spend playing doesn't really feel like it \"pays off\" - everything is really pretty marginal. The difference between a build that takes 20 hours to make and one that takes 500 is pretty much jack all, and you tend to get better results just with a better team.

Diablo 2 isn't perfect though. Blizzard fiddles with stuff from time to time, usually in ways that break what you've already got (even ladder resets do that to a minor degree; you can still play non-ladder, but many don't want to). Plus there are all the niggling inconveniences; lag comes and goes but can get infuriating at points, and the fact that Blizzard seems to have gone out of its way to prevent you stockpiling anything - an unrealistic expectation given people work around it anyway, and runes and gems really encourage it...

I play Titan's Quest which is similar to Diablo and it rocks. There are bugs and some rubber banding issues in the game but overall I love the game. It will keep me busy until the next Diablo type game comes from Blizzard.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/

Meh. I simply don't have anywhere near the time in my life to 'grind' in these games like others do. You really can't be compedative in wow with basic gear. And by the time I would get good gear, blizzard would make it obsolete.

/me throws in towel for mmorpgs.

Gooberman wrote:http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/

Meh. I simply don't have anywhere near the time in my life to 'grind' in these games like others do. You really can't be compedative in wow with basic gear. And by the time I would get good gear, blizzard would make it obsolete.

/me throws in towel for mmorpgs.

What a waste. This is all that they were making? Garbage.

And here i was... hoping for something new and interesting. Whatever. WoW is a tired old dog. Someone put it down.

They ruined the game with BC, I'm surprised with all the negative feedback on raising the level cap to 70, that they are raising it again to 80.

More grinding for loot. The whole reason I quit. What a waste of time...

Increasing the level cap forces people to buy the expansion if they wish to keep playing. Which is retarded since you have to pay at least $120 a year for the game with the monthly fees.

Force people to buy expansion packs if your mmorpg is free. Otherwise make the expansion not nessesary, or free.

It amazes me that Blizzard has been able to pull this stuff off.

Let me pose this question to you: if the expansion is to be optional- without better loot or a raised level cap, what's the point? You also ask for different, new content- do you have any ideas that would be fun and entertaining enough that it would keep people interested without any potential for character improvement? At the end of the day, what keeps people playing is the potential to improve their character. If you release expansions without that, people will get very little entertainment time out of them, and they will eventually leave the game out of boredom- or because they feel like there isn't any room for them to further improve. So, while raising the lvl cap and making pre-expansion loot obselete causes some to leave, I think ultimately it keeps a greater number of people playing. In a way Blizzard is in a lose-lose situation... their game probably isn't going to get many new people... now the name of the game is to keep as many people subscribed as long as possible- probably at the expense of driving some players away.

I don't think \"team 3\" would have been working on this. Remember, the WoW team was cited at over a hundred in that article; I have my doubts you'd need that many people to do maintenance.