Rumor Control On Blizzard Defections

Gamespot's weekly rumour control column discusses the rumor from back in April on Grimwell detailing a mass defection from Blizzard to NCSoft. From the article: "However, seeing how internal NCsoft studio ArenaNet was founded by a group of former Blizzard-ians--the creators of Battle.net, no less--it would come as little surprise if more WOW developers had signed up with the rising publisher." Their final verdict: "Some Blizzard developers have joined NCsoft? Not bogus. But droves? That's not so certain." This week's rumor control also discusses the raise in prices for Xbox 360 Games and the possibility of a no-frills PSP pack.

PK OK!

[sethstorm]

Seriously, that almost amounts (in some people's books) as going to the Dark Side. Not because of CoH, but the ever popular Lineage II [lineage2.com]

Icy

[MeanderingMind]

Maybe they were all getting the cold shoulder at Blizzard...

Re:Icy

[NanoGator]

"Maybe they were all getting the cold shoulder at Blizzard..."

Or the employees were tired sittin of the Frozen Throne just after lunch.

What I heard

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that Blizzard supposedly has over 500 employees total, how much damage can losing 10 or even 20 people? Heck their normal annual turnover is probably higher than that.

But I've also have heard that recruiters have recently been calling developers on the Age of Empires III and C&C teams to offer them positions at Blizzard.

Re:What I heard

[BrookHarty]

Depends if those 20 are in the same department.

If we lost 5, the entire router team would be gone at our jobs. Lets just say the company would be tits up. Now 20, and you just lost the router team, firewall team, transport team, hell, most the key people. The company could almost FOLD if this happened.

Ya, whats 10-20 people in a slim, over worked department.

Re:What I heard

[MemoryDragon]

Losing 10-20 people can be devastating, every software company has a handful of core people which keep the company afloat while the others basically do the gruntwork. If you lose that people you get a severe hit. I have seen two companies getting in serious trouble because they lost most of their core people due to management arrogance. The result in one case was the slow dead of the company. The other the burn out of the last core person in the other company until that one left also.

They're just rumors...

[BuddyJesus]

It could be that they've just been confused, but it's likely that people from Blizzard DID leave to join NCSoft. In fact, it's very likely: it's how ArenaNet formed, and maybe they've just called a few friends over for better jobs.
Or it could just be random people speculating, who knows?

Straight from the developer's mouth:

[schild]

I asked the NCSoft people right after this happened (which by the way is more than a month old). Here's the quote:

"Yes, NCsoft has opened up an office in the Orange County area. Yes, some of the staff in that office came from Blizzard. However, that group is not involved with the development of Tabula Rasa, as has been rumored."

There's nothing to see here, move along. Well, nothing to see, other than Slashdot and Gamespot being way the fuck off in left field when shit goes down in the gaming industry that doesn't involve pimping vaporware.

Things are very dreary

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people are leaving, mainly because they feel their hands were tied over WoW. Corporate refuses to put much money into the WoW project, and it frustrates us as much as the customers. When Vivendi forced the game out in November, we literally spent weeks stuck in the office because the servers were constantly crashing. Some co-workers didn't see their families for a week, sleeping on the floors and couches in the break room. Management was bitching all the time about how much money "we're" losing.

Many desks are empty now, more and more co-workers are leaving, rumor is NCSoft is promising faster release schedules, and Vivendi not breathing down our necks. The morale is awful, mainly the long cycles for each project, working 4..5 years on something takes a lot out of you, then the massive rewrites because another company came out with a feature we planned to use, or the hardware changed, it erodes you. Ghost won't be out by christmas, expect it delayed again until summer 06, and the next pipeline project isn't due out until 2008. It's expected that WoW will keep the company in enough funds to remain solvent until then. I'll probably be looking somewhere else, I pity the kids they end up hiring.

Lord British would be proud

[MemoryDragon]

indeed.....

Not Surprising...

[SirBruce]

Moving between companies is a great way to promote your career.

Consider that a huge team of people worked on WoW. Now, Blizzard is quite happy, and probably wants to keep the lead designer, producer, etc. to keep working on the live team, the next expansion, etc.

But what if you're one of the assistant designer? Well, unless Blizard decides to start making another MMOG, you're probably out of luck getting promoted to a lead design position. But other companies will have lots of MMOGs in development and need lots of lead designers. Same goes for producers, QA, writers... the list goes on and on.

Blizzard, meanwhile, will probably put a lot of the money it makes from WoW into more non-MMOG titles. Okay if that's what you want to do, but some people want to work on MMOGs specifically.

Bruce

Re:Not Surprising...

[Austerity Empowers]

In my experience engineers only want promotions for the $$$ attached to them, not responsibility. There are good reasons to leave Blizzard in spite of WoWs success, all relate to yearly take home and how your salary has grown over the past 5 years. Given the economy has sucked and is getting better, now is a good time for people to make job changes. If you got hired 2 years ago to do WoW, you probably took it up the rear. We may see lots of shift in the next couple years as a result from MANY companies.

Thi