• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.

Blizzard cancels a project that has been in the works for 2 years

Reader mode
Nome

Nome

Designer / Self-requested ban
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,312
NYC
Masterspeed said:
What the fuck is going on over there?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
What I've picked up:

1. Hubris (I've heard from several ex-Blizzard coworkers that senior staff has absolute power)
2. Inability to adapt to modern principles of game development (for example, my friend said that they rely primarily on intuition and not on established best practices)
3. They're making too much money (same problem with Riot; there's too much money coming in so they're bad at holding people accountable)

Caveat here; I also have friends who work there and love it. If I had to guess, I'd say their problematic departments are (1) production, (2) dev management, (3) finance/top leadership, and (4) game design.
 
TheMango55

TheMango55

Banned
Nov 1, 2017
5,788
Blizzard has a record of cancelling projects that don't turn out good.

Just because it sucks that something someone worked hard on doesn't see the light of day doesn't mean it's the wrong decision.
 
Edge

Edge

A King's Landing
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
21,012
Celle, Germany
Maybe the horrible mobile Diablo got cancelled? I mean, we have June 2019 and still couldn't play it, what's going on there?
 
TheRaidenPT

TheRaidenPT

Editor-in-Chief, Hyped Pixels
Verified
Jun 11, 2018
5,945
Lisbon, Portugal
Kolx said:

Just to be clear, this could have been in full production with a lot of developers, or not far into developement. Although I get the sense it wasn't a small thing from the tweet but I might be wrong.

On the other hand:

Press sneak fuck is on the case.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


Please don't be Warcraft or Starcraft related

Edge said:
Maybe the horrible mobile Diablo got cancelled? I mean, we have June 2019 and still couldn't play it, what's going on there?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Nah it's made by an external Korean partner

jschreier said:
Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2 (or whatever they wind up being called) are very much still alive.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Jason do you know anything about what's going on with World of Warcraft, why is the team changing dramatically? Core game has gone to hell with BFA.

What's going on behind closed doors regarding development and management?
 
Sulik2

Sulik2

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
8,168
We need a thread discussing how bad management is in the video game industry, it seems to be the achilles hell if the entire sector. I hope Jason finds out what game this is.
 

Deleted member 5535

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
13,656
And? All the companies have projects cancelled all the time be it in pre or post-production. The difference is that we don't know the majority. Totally normal.
 

Deleted member 5535

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
13,656
TheRaidenPT said:
Please don't be Warcraft or Starcraft related



Nah it's made by an external Korean partner



Jason do you know anything about what's going on with World of Warcraft, why is the team changing dramatically? Core game has gone to hell with BFA.

What's going on behind closed doors regarding development and management?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Netease is chinese, not korean.
 
Cokesouls

Cokesouls

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,350
bear force one said:
Overwatch is. In what bizarre world is it some failure?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's not a failure by any means, but it feels like right now it's the single thread that's holding Blizzard together. Just look at the updates. It's just skins every time. Right now it doesn't represent the Blizzard magic which the game had so strongly going for it at launch.
 
EarthPainting

EarthPainting

Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,874
Town adjacent to Silent Hill
It's always unfortunate when it happens, but pulling the plug on projects is usually done with good reason. Sometimes a project doesn't come together, regardless of how much the people working on it believe in it, or cool it looks and sounds on paper.

Blizzard is not a company that has no qualms re-purposing concepts they still think have value in other projects anyway, so the parts worth saving have a decent shot at getting another chance.
 
Prototype Viktor

Prototype Viktor

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
11,953
Houston
Nome said:
One of my friends was working a temp job at a developer no one at Era likes, got offered her "dream job" at Blizzard, took it, spent about a month there before quitting and saying "they had no idea what they were doing", and going back to accept a full time position at the developer on one on Era likes.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
i'm trying to filter my personal bias that's not aligned with ERA what i bother to see on ERA and coming up empty on what dev that could be. So i'll just guess E....
 
Noppie

Noppie

Member
Oct 27, 2017
13,759
Cokesouls said:
It's not a failure by any means, but it feels like right now it's the single thread that's holding Blizzard together. Just look at the updates. It's just skins every time. Right now it doesn't represent the Blizzard magic which the game had so strongly going for it at launch.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You must've missed the Workshop and the new Replay System. It's not 'just skins every time', some of these systems just take more time. I will say the events this year around were very disappointing though.
 
Mantrox

Mantrox

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,907
Noppie said:
You must've missed the Workshop and the new Replay System. It's not 'just skins every time', some of these systems just take more time. I will say the events this year around were very disappointing though.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Not just the events.
The core of the competitive mode is getting very stale. Another thing i have noticed is almost nobody is talking in voice chat anymore.
I usually played from 2500 to 3500 sr, and on the very top you get what competitive used to be; people communicating, making call outs, listening to them, and trying to coordinate.

Nowadays almost every match is a free for all. No team effort whatsoever.
On my season 16 placements i didn't have a single match where people joined the chat and tried to coordinate. Not one.
When you need to counter specific comps, this gets really old really fast.

If this team of developers was indeed developing a PVE stile component for Overwatch i would blame the decision makers at the top.
PVE content always got consumed in minutes by players. And the ROI on it seemed very low.

What the game needs is serious development of tools/rulesets to encourage team play, give more choice depth to comps and punishes toxic behaviour.
 

Deleted member 888

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
14,361
Cort said:
That's an eye opener for me too, they'll have to walk a fine line and not piss anyone off who worked hard to get some of the legendary skins.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Try being FIFA. Every year a new version comes out and you have to start over with your loot box legendary players.

Your legendary skins are stuck with Overwatch 1. Time to accept that before disappointment.
 
poklane

poklane

Member
Oct 25, 2017
27,861
the Netherlands

Merex

Member
May 31, 2019
35
I just hope it wasn't another MMO that was cancelled. I really want Blizzard to make a successor to WoW :(
 
Reader mode
You must log in or register to reply here.