If anybody is gonna fill the spot it’ll more than likely be John Hight
If I read correctly all of them have not been laid off .some of them have been reassigned to other projects
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well ofc it was stuck in production when for past coupel of years blizzard was focusing mainly on the DEI nonsense and not on producing quality games.
look at palworld what enourmous hit product tiny indie company could produce - and blizzard couldnt produce a simple survival game ?
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They could, Blizzard projects are never fast, Titan took years, eventually was scrapped and the assets were used to make Overwatch. The big issue with the survival game was the engine to run it on.
People act as if Blizzard having other games some how costs WoW players stuff. It was a whole separate team. Like all the other Blizzard games are.
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I think they are more trying to express that if they had not wasted so many years on the development of a particular product then resources would have been made available for other things. Like maybe we would have actually gotten Player Housing etc. So indirectly yes it does affect all games across the board.
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That’s not how it works though.
It’s a bit like saying a new Hearthstone feature costs us something In Warcraft. They aren’t related, they aren’t the same budgets, teams etc.
Could’ve budgeted differently though.
But I’m not mad about it. Done’s done. We all knew it was hell on Earth over there.
No game should be in development for 6 years without an announcement because of engine limitations. That is completely and utterly mental. The engineers and product managers should be absolutely embarassed of themselves. Such incompetence truly is a marvel to behold.
Could’ve hoped they wouldn’t fire everybody and make the game in UE5 as the team wanted, but it’s better than letting it carry on like this.
They are purging the Activision people I think. And I won’t complain about that. I’ve heard nothing good about them.
I only know what I’ve read but the system for engine change had to go through board approval and the team couldn’t really make those changes themselves. Under MS that would no longer have been needed and the Team Lead could have made the call. They were hopeful they could just go back to Unreal Engine.
For Blizzard, development has always taken a long time. It was announced in 2022 but nothing was presented at the last BlizzCon. If you think back to Diablo Immortal the mobile game, they had their embarrassing announcement at BlizzCon back in 2018 and I have no idea how many years they’d already worked on it at that point. It was released in 2022.
But at the end of the day it’s gone, doesn’t really matter what the reasons are.
The people sharing they are laid off are from all the Blizzard games.
That was insane as well. Literally half the game is just rehashed D3 assets. It was an embarassing announcement to an embarassing game.
This has actually happened once in Blizzard’s history before: Warcraft Orcs in Space was laughed out of the room, so they went back and made StarCraft.
But no, instead they doubled down on Immortal and made a fool of themselves. But hey, at least they earned some cash. Worth it, eh?
I just plain don’t know is happening but I’ve never seen anything else like it. But it’s not like no part of Blizzard knows how to produce content. I think the DF team did a tremendous job.
I don’t think anyone is ever going to forget that presentation.
I didn’t play Immortal myself but I have friends who enjoyed it. I understand the mobile market is big and it’s where Blizzard wants to get in on.
At least they made a proper Diablo eventually. I haven’t really touched it much myself. I was put off by it being too longwinded for me to get a mount. I like to explore and work my way around and I reached the level for a horse but couldn’t get one. After being sent across the map several times I lost interest.
I clearly wasn’t playing it the way they intended.
Seems not because getting the horse is quite easy. In any case, Diablo 4 was pretty fun imo until you kill the final boss. Then comes the end-game, and it is abysmal. I am not having any of that.
Then again, most games just end at that point, so I’m ok with that. Not sure the Blizzard shareholders were though…
I like to explore and complete an area completely, then move on. So when I got to the town and could ride, I couldn’t because I was meant to go on some long winded quest line through all sorts of zones. After my third town I just logged off.
I think it was locked behind storyline rather than being level dependent and I just lost interest. But I’m fully aware that’s a me thing.
I struggled to create a character that I actually liked the look of, so I gave up on Diablo 4 after completing the main story-line. I was able to make a half-decent rogue but the customisation options for the other classes left a lot to be desired, particularly when compared to Diablo 3.
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Not good, not good at all.
Because of the common belief that tech is the “golden goose” and everyone wants to work in tech or just an office job.
Instead the people that don’t have to worry are the ones in manufacturing, where machines and AI still can’t compete with a skilled professional.
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Depends on the manufacturing.
I can’t wait for AI to take over the world!
It’s over. We are screwed.
