NCSoft Stealing Blizzard Employees

[Oddmaker]

Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.com) has a rumor about NCSoft (http://www.ncsoft.com/) wooing away Blizzard (http://www.blizzard.com/) designers working on the first World of Warcraft expansion.

An ever-increasing number of sites--including QuartertoThree.com and MMhell.com--are citing the post on Grimwell, which flatly states that "NCSoft just stole a team of developers from Blizzard in Irvine, CA." According to the site, NCsoft has been wooing away Blizzard designers working on the first World of Warcraft expansion. To make jumping ship more attractive, the company has reportedly opened a new office in Irvine, so potential defectors won't have to relocate to NCsoft's US headquarters in Austin, Texas. As evidence of the defections, the conspiracy-minded point to the massive number of new job openings listed on Blizzard's own Web site--positions allegedly vacated by recently departed employees. Check the full story over at Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/06/03/news_6126948.html).

Same developers so what's going to change?

[Tricky Thumb]

I don't really care where they go as long as better MMOs come out in the future.

[A-Team]

I don't really care where they go as long as better MMOs come out in the future.
I agree. There's no need to keep employees around if they don't want to be there, so let them go do their thing somewhere else and get some guys/gals in there that want to do Blizzard "stuff".

[Heretic Machine]

This could be bad. Switching dev teams on a game like that -really- fucks shit up. Just look at UO if you need evidence of the phenomenon.

[PixelSamurai]

It already seems to me that the devs updating WoW aren't the same devs who originally made it a fun game. I could be wrong, but Blizzard's whole patching prodecure leaves a bad taste in my mouth: undocumented changes, new irritating bugs, and old, more irritating bugs left unfixed. Battlegrounds is cool but is taking forever; I hope Blizzard doesn't lose all the people who can actually make WoW better.

Other MMO's I've tried fell into this same pitfall, their patches and nerfs end up making the game less fun until they fix what they broke months later.

[Tricky Thumb]

I'm just waiting for Auto Assault right now, then Imperator and Tabula Rasa. So really if WoW goes down the drain, I'm not too concerned though I don't wish WoW players any misfortune.

[Taco]

The games out, everyone is paying and enjoying the game, this will effect it very little. You can't compare it to UO because that was a total management/ownership change. To fucking EA no less.

[Bushido]

The games out, everyone is paying and enjoying the game

We are talking about an expansion here. Lets hope they get rid of the cartoony graphix. maybe start using real artists and before you flame me, Art is subjective blah blah blah. Screw you! the art in WoW sucks balls and i dont gotta be picasso to say that.

[Taco]

I know. It's still nowhere near as important or difficult as the initial release and Blizzard of all companies has shown they can work through the departure of key employees/owners.

And I agree with you on the artwork, it's the only reason I have no interest in picking it up. Obviously that's not changing since it's probably a large selling point.

[LikeTheRazor]

Makes a lot of sense to me. Guild Wars seems more like a Blizzard game than WoW does.

[Draft]

You guys are nuts. Blizzard has some of the best artists in the business.

Seriously, "sucks balls?!" World of Warcraft's art direction is supreme. They've created a look that's beautiful, immersive, epic and uniquely "blizzard."

[Taco]

I agree, and they pulled of the style they were going for perfectly. I really dislike this style in a game like WOW. It's more of a knock on their decision in reguards to my preference, not their ability. Obviously I am in a tiny minority when you look at the numbers.

[mister_slim]

We are talking about an expansion here. Lets hope they get rid of the cartoony graphix. maybe start using real artists and before you flame me, Art is subjective blah blah blah. Screw you! the art in WoW sucks balls and i dont gotta be picasso to say that.
Picasso would probably disagree with you. Much of his art experiments with removing unnecessary detail without losing the essence of the work, so he would likely appreciate WoW art.

[Chandler]

well I guess diablo 3 is now out of the question

[Adewade]

Since they had job openings up a good half-year ago with one qualification being (paraphrased) 'enthusiastic gamer of Diablo and Diablo II', I doubt that.

[Deadend]

I am not really suprised that there are designers leaving Blizzard. I wouldnt mind MAKING a MMO, but updating and expanding one? Pssh, that is the lameness, espcially if you consider that some of those guys have spent the last few years on WoW, wanting to do something even slighty diffrent would sound good.

[Royal Fool]

We are talking about an expansion here. Lets hope they get rid of the cartoony graphix. maybe start using real artists and before you flame me, Art is subjective blah blah blah. Screw you! the art in WoW sucks balls and i dont gotta be picasso to say that.

I think I'll flame you anyway.

Your taste in "art" sucks balls and you need eye surgery/headbashing. Not to mention the fact that your brain's logic centres are malfunctioning; Blizzard won't just retexture the whole fucking game to cater to your tastes when they've created one of the most successful MMORPG in history. This success is set to continue well on into 2006, providing Blizzard can keep up their momentum.

[Oddmaker]

well I guess diablo 3 is now out of the question

Hope not :(

[bradlay]

Expansion pack? Huzzah!

Also, art is subjective but everyone knows you're a jackass, Bushido.

[WastelandDan]

This was brought up at the WoW forums a while ago and the GMs have already discredited this rumor.

[Liquidize105]

Bliizard's so-called artistic direction is nice in 2D, but in 3D everything looks not nearly as nice.

I hope they can find competent people to fill those voids. There's still the thing about starcraft2, and frankly I can't say that I hold out much hope of it being as good as the first.

This was brought up at the WoW forums a while ago and the GMs have already discredited this rumor.PR talk.

[Taco]

Not even PR talk, why would a GM be in the loop? More like rectum talking.

[Arai]

I like the style of art in WoW but there are some places where it just plain sucks. I understand that they cut down to make it work on more computers, but some places the trees are just plain crap, like 3 textures crossed over. Then again games like Everquest 2 are play dough! :)

About the actual topic at hand, I think it's cool. Someone said GW seems more like a Blizzard game and I agree. Mainly because it's more like Diablo then anything.

[KNOTE]

World of Starcraft, people. You need lots more people to make 2 AAA MMOs.

In addition, every company has attrition. Especially companies that have incredible success. If you are a mid-level designer capped out at blizzard, and you worked on WoW you can go to any other developer and get a senior/lead position. Only time you need to worry about the fate of a game is when the lead designer bails. That's when products that are good generally go down hill.

[Savok]

WoW's art is one of the major reasons to purchase it.

I just hope they're poaching what's left of the clever people and not the idiots that made WoW unplayable.

[mister_slim]

World of Starcraft, people. You need lots more people to make 2 AAA MMOs.
I'm scared for some reason. I don't know if I'm afraid for my wallet or my opinion of Blizzard.

[Mister Pie]

I really enjoyed the art in WoW. After playing Guild Wars though I have to say, I am a bit more impressed with the art in that game (personal opinion, mind you).

[Lysiander]

We are talking about an expansion here. Lets hope they get rid of the cartoony graphix. maybe start using real artists and before you flame me, Art is subjective blah blah blah. Screw you! the art in WoW sucks balls and i dont gotta be picasso to say that. There rather simply reason why Bliz went for that kind of artwork is because the warcraft artwork has allways been like this. From the very first game on, it was allways cartoonish fantasy, which, in my opinion, is a real nice difference from the same old same old "more realistic then reality" bs we see in most games.
And on a sidenote, Blizzard managed to dodge pretty much every possible complaint of grafic violence etc because noone in their right mind could claim these characters look anywhere near the real world.
Though, I admit the world can look kind of colorfull from time to time. Sometimes, less is more.

As for the job issue. I kinda wonder who'd be dumb enough to leave the WoW team. It's probably one of the very few relativly stable jobs in the gaming industry and assumably a rather rewarding one too. But if it's true, chaning teams is bad in online games. EQ went to the dogs because the good people left and left behind a mess of a source code that took the new team ages to work out.

[Rirath]

WoW's graphics are mixed for me. It looks a lot better than I thought it would, the enviroments are much more expansive than I figured, and the enemies all look very unique. There are, however, some dungeons and cave areas that just look flat out poor.

Guild Wars looks better in many places, but I also get the sense sometimes that Guild Wars is set up for "photo ops". Areas that look really good just for the sake of looking really good, but have no real purpose. Also, in WoW you can go pretty much anywhere, while in GW you can go where they allow you... makes it much easier for GW to carve out these spiffy looking landmark areas.

Which looks better? Hard to say. GW in flatout shiny, purdy graphics, WoW in graphical depth and expansiveness. Each does their own genre of game proud... I think it's a tie.

[Shifteh]

Frankly, the tech support of guild wars alone made it better for me. I have 27 emails helping me get not just guild wars, but my computer ITSELF running. When I asked for help from blizzard I got a ticket number and waited a week to hear nothing back from them.

The lack of monthly fees was, to be honest, the real kicker. It's a great game, just as in-depth as World of Warcraft, but a lot more fun. I can pickup and play for 15 minutes or two hours. With WoW I had to spend multiple hours just to do a damn instance.

[netcraazzy]

I play both Guild Wars and Wow and honestly they feel like 2 very different games. WoW has a cartoonish style but I like it, it gives the game a distinct fantasy look and feel. Some things in WoW are supposed to look funny, like the gnomes and the ogres. Blizzard has always added a good amount of "character" and humor in all their Warcraft games. Guild Wars also has very nice, more realistic looking, graphics but it has a totally different feel. Guild Wars is more serious and follows your standard RPG look and feel more closely, in my opinion it's more generic. There is one area that I think you guys have overlooked though, the GUI. I think the GUI in WoW is much better than Guild Wars.

[51|RandoM]

The GUI in WoW is easily extensible, much different than that of guild wars.

That said, you don't need much of a GUI for guildwars, unlike certain classes in WoW, where you need 600 icons available.

Doesn't really make any sense to me to directly compare the games, or the GUIs of the games. Artwork is about the only place you'd not be comparing apples to oranges, and even in the case of artwork, blizzard has to deal with situations involving a much higher number of player models than ncsoft arena.net does.

All that said, I'll probably be playing guild wars long after I've canceled my wow account. I enjoy the PvP in GW while the PvP in WoW is nothing but a frustration, a frustration on any type of WoW server, not just the PvP servers, I might add.