Secret Blizzard MMO is new IP, says Kotick

Quite old news tbh, we knew it wouldn’t be Diablo or SC like a year ago. They announced it a loooong time ago

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/05/unannounced-blizzard-mmo-to-be-a-new-ip.ars

13 May to be exact.

World of Duty.

If it’s a cyberpunk MMO i’ll give them all my money.

I could go for a steampunk MMO.

I am so tired of them saying (and hearing them say it on top of that) the same old thing all the time about this “secret” game. Like listening to a skipping record. Tell us something, or stop mentioning it.

Can I just have a Punk MMO? That would be awesome…

It took them 7 years to make an RTS, how long do you think it’ll take them to make an MMO to best their last effort (accidentally the biggest game ever)?

We won’t see this game, and the people who are working on it now, won’t see the end. But maybe, some day, our childrens’ children will perhaps enjoy that game. In surround vission holographic 3D.

@8 +100 DPS and +1000000 experience points for that

@7

That turned out to be APB and it sucked.

Call of Riflecraft.

I only play StarCraft, what’s that in vespene gas and minerals? :-p

@4 Dalaran Brilliance on your soul friend. well said.

@8 *sigh* sad but true.

After SC 2 I’m not looking forward much in to the announcement.

@14 – i guess heart of the swarm will be shown off at blizzcon but no other announcements =/

@14 I’m not even interested in Heart Of The Swarm after Wings Of Liberty that i finished.

@ 16 – shame i am

i dont play rts games at all really so SC is pretty much the only RTS that interests me and i’d like to see more.

@17 Starcraft 2 in my opinion flawed. No innovation in the gameplay, but thats ok… It’s polished, but it’s the same… Well thats ok too.

But 26 missions were so stupid, but most of all the story was the worst part in SC2 campaign. From Blizzard to expect something like this is like hearing a joke after 7-12 years.

The worst campaign from Blizzard games overall.

Multiplayer is addicting.

i’ve heard alot of people say that actually =/

i really enjoyed it so i dont a give damn

@19 Hey, want to play Multiplayer with me? If you like singleplayer campaign we can play together with BOTS

Hope we can get info about this game soon, been over 1 year since we heard about this now……

@21 Exactly. I need a new MMO to play other than Lotro. I am seriously considering the Warhammer one from THQ, since I used to play WH table top games. But, I like the lore behind the Blizzard games. Don’t get me wrong, I like high fantasy as much as the next person, but I am craving something new. Oh well. Maybe sometime before the Rapture then.

@8

Where are people getting 7 years of them developing STarcraft 2? Because they weren’t developing the engine until atleast when they were in the process of the merger with Activision, sure the art and concept were being worked on but the actual game was not. Then they announced at the World Invitation 2007.

@21 and 22

They mentioned it may be announced at Blizzcon 2010.

@23 That would be nice and all, and melt the internet to boot, but I am not holding my breath. They may release some teasers via artwork or something, but if they actually say what it is, I will probably faint. I would say we’ll hopefully get a better idea when D3 is coming instead, and then I will gnash my teeth and cry until it’s released. I really want Diablo.

I am just hoping for a release date or at least a window when D3 will be released. I would be ecstatic for the same thing for Heart of the Swarm aswell.

@23 When the game was announced they held a panel at the Blizzard World Invitational, where they said the development started in 2003, right after The Frozen Throne. It was put on hold to focus on World of Warcraft around the expansions though.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/790/790158p1.html

@26

See It was put on hold not being developed on because they had put all their man power on WoW. That is until the merger which then allowed them to make separate teams for each of their franchises.

“..another project at Blizzard that we haven’t given a lot of visibility to..”

I call BS. This line was deliberately crafted to make people think Activision isn’t completely controlling Blizzards direction.

No CEO is going to admit lack of visibility into something like that.

@28 Conspiracy theorist much?

It’s a pretty well known fact that if Activision tries to touch anything Blizzard is making, beyond “sound advice” or business models, that whole cooperation is going nuclear.

If Activision had their way, the development time spent on Starcraft would’ve been 5 years shorter, and they would’ve launched another branch to make Warcraft 4 in another 2 years.

@29

Agreed As long as Blizzard is making a profit, Activision has no reason to mess with them. No corporation is gonna mess with the ones that are practically writing their pay checks.

@30 – ahem

*points to infinity ward* =/

Activision cant do anything to them. Blizzard are their own boss, Acti dont own them like some dev studio.

i hope not, i know they are ‘mostly’ autonomous from acti but from what i hear they do have ‘some’ influence

Morhaime: “The thing is, Blizzard has been part of public entities for a very long time. There is nothing about this transaction that changes any of our philosophies or commitments to quality or how we intend to continue developing, publishing, or servicing our games. In fact I spent quite a long time talking to Bobby Kotick [Activision Chairman and CEO and now President and CEO of Activision Blizzard] and Brian Kelly [Co-chairman of Activision and now Activision Blizzard] and others, to make sure they understood Blizzard’s development philosophies, our core values, the things that we hold very important, which are very much in line with the things our players expect of us, and there was a great deal of understanding. Also, they share a lot of our philosophies about quality, and they believe, as we do, that the best way to run a business in this industry is to develop high quality games.”

http://www.1up.com/news/blizzard-president-speaks

Also during the call, Bobby Kotick talked about a “culture of thrift” in the company. But people seem to think with Blizzard, you just give them the resources they want and then step back, letting them do what they do. Are they exempt from that culture of thrift?

TT: No, and I don’t think they want to be exempt from that.

http://e3.gamespot.com/story/6266573/3ds-is-brilliant-activision-coo-

“Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime now reports directly to newly appointed chief operating officer Thomas Tippl, who in turn reports to Activision CEO Bobby Kotick.”

http://www.massively.com/2010/03/31/acti-blizz-restructuring-assigns-new-executive-to-blizzard/

there is more through here:

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=128252

Kotick wont get in the way of blizzard making their games but selling them? I think thats a different story =/

You can bet things like $25 mounts and the battle.net feature removals were acti’s fault more than blizzards

@35

Easily could have been Blizzard, afterall they are a company thus their goal is money. ANd they used that Mount as a test to see if it would sell and guess what it did so you can bet your bottom dollar they will keep doing it.

“battle.net feature removals”

Not sure what you are talking about here.

no lan
no chat at launch
no cross region play
no spawn installs
moderating maps
real ID fiasco

all that stuff people were bitching about upto launch

yea i admit it could be blizzard but lets also not look past the obvious moustache twirling villain here

Guess its easier to just point the finger at the obvious bad guy and ignore the cute little girl with pigtails, that always does good. *rolls eyes*

@37 You’re suggesting that someone whose sole purpose is to sell games, is consciously sabotaging them to hurt the players? Are you bat shit?

There’s no doubt what so ever, that Infinity Ward were in charge of doing away with dedicated servers, just as Treyarch are in charge of keeping them in. Just as Blizzard are completely in charge, as to how their games get played on the internet.

Unless it’s part of a business model, Activision has no say in the creation of content, except for judging that content based on whether their investments are sound.

Suits handle money, geeks handle code. Neither truly understands the other.

Seriously, you Kotick fanatics live in such a fantasy world. Read fewer comic books.

“Unless it’s part of a business model, Activision has no say in the creation of content, except for judging that content based on whether their investments are sound.”

and what about all the battle.net monetisation talk? it seems to fit nicely with the removal of some features like lan or cross region play

and the dedicated server thing in mw2 also makes sense to not allow free extra content and then sell dlc

@40

Blizz stated they will be putting cross region play in future patch. THe Lan thing is because they want you to use their system.

Any theories you create will of course support the “facts”

“Blizz stated they will be putting cross region play in future patch.”

ok i admit i didnt know that

but still even if activision doesnt interfere directly they surely do indirectly. they still answer to the same shareholders and those interviews i linked to even stated that blizzard still works under their same ideals of the “culture of thrift”

“You’re suggesting that someone whose sole purpose is to sell games, is consciously sabotaging them to hurt the players?”

well i wouldn’t say sabotage but publishers can dictate the direction of content to some extent. activsion themselves changed black lotus to be a a true crime game and changed the female lead to be male cos apparently female leads dont sell =/

@40 The LAN thing could be true, but then again, how many people actually use LAN these days? I know like 10 hardcore gamers are gonna scream “I DO, I DO!” at me, but seriously, those guys are badly outnumbered.

It’s dead tech imo. And I think dedicated servers should be, as well.

The internet is moving extremely fast these days, it makes those kinds of solutions close to irrelevant.

Why couldn’t you have sold the DLC for Modern Warfare or World At War, when EA are offering DLC for their games, and snuffing the modding community at the same time? They don’t seem to be having problems?

The matchmaker for MW2 wasn’t about servers or DLC. It was about improving the tech, and taking advantage of the private internet.

“We are not thrifty in the areas where the consumer sees the value, which is in the game development.” TT

“That’s why we added 300 headcount to Blizzard’s development team, 900 headcount to the customer service team, 300 headcount around the Call of Duty franchise. There are many areas where we are making massive investments to improve the gamer experience, and then there are areas where we think it’s not worth it. So we don’t have a company gym, cafeteria, and valet parking. Because the gamer doesn’t care about that. They don’t see value in any of that.” TT

Should of read more me thinks?

“We’ve had the same office since forever, and we just replaced the duct tape on the carpet because it became a trip hazard down the stairs. And that took five years to get done. ”

yea it sounds like their tight asses more than anything. Loads more devs have perks like that which can make great places to work at. EA has them and their damn thrifty too, insomniac has stuff like that and their considered one of the best devs to work at. It can make a difference whereas the ex IW folk said acti made their lives oppressive.

“Why couldn’t you have sold the DLC for Modern Warfare or World At War”

DLC for both those games were sponsored by intel or nvidia i think tho and that why they were free. If it weren’t for that i wouldnt be surprised if it wasnt released. ALOT of publishers do skimp on PC DLC after all tho its been better in the past year.

@45 Yeah, that may have been why they were free, but my point was, they could have sold it with a game that had dedicated servers, so that obviously had nothing to do with it.

You’re reading a lot into those other statements. A creative industry that doesn’t cater to creative people, simply doesn’t get the creative people it needs. That’s pretty self-evident.

ok maybe your right and i’m looking too much into this =/

but i still think activision is potentially at fault with alot of the fuckups some of their ip have had lately:

MW2 was garbage i thought in comparison to MW1 but activision did apparently put them under tight deadlines according to the IW employees

plus kotick has talked ALOT about monetising battle.net; seems to fit to me when i hear about features getting removed

@47 Why was it garbage, though? Fair enough that you think so, but I mean, most people disagree. Myself included. I think it’s great.

I totally agree that 2 years shouldn’t be the benchmark for games development. They should take the time they need (within financial reason) but games are a multi-multi-billion dollar industry. MW2 earned more than twice as much as The Dark Knight in it’s opening week.

Sadly, that ridiculous ammount of money means an awful lot of power to people who’ve never even touched a game.

i never cared about spec ops and i have NEVER liked CoD MP (in all fairness btw i dont play mp that much at all) so that just leaves the SP.

The SP i thought was just crap. It was like a michael bay movie with a dreadful story with no direction and it made no sense and had holes you could drive a truck through, it was a big step down from MW1. Given that i am personally a big preponent of story in games when the first had a good enough but effective plot to step down to that crap just pissed me off so much. That is also the same reason i hate Resistance 2 compared to R1 by comparisons sake.

Now i’m just burned out on the franchise, its milked and every other fps (of which there are too many nowadays imo) copies it to one degree or another.

@49 Well it’s a spec ops-centric game with a multiplayer focus :p

I don’t disagree with you on the campaign, though. The plot was ridiculous. It did have some awesome cinematic moments, though (the prison, the sniping level, the airfield). I can understand why they took the lean(ing) function out of the multiplayer – so people would be aggressive – but I really missed it in the campaign. Major annoyance for me.

But it’s nice to see one of you guys actually argueing his case in a sensible way. Much respect.