Blizzard North founding members and Bil Roper leave the company

[az]

Blizzard North co-founders Schaefer, Schaefer, Brevik, and Bill Roper (responsible for the Diablo Series) are leaving Blizzard. Roper said in a telephone interview at gamespot that they left becaus Vivendi Universal (who want to sell their games division anyway) left them too little artistic freedom. The four will start a new gaming development studio.

According to Blizzard, this will have no ill effect on the development of World of Warcraft.

I wish them the best of luck, and hope to see another brilliant game from them in the future

AZ

[Technoid]

Why am I'm not surpriced

[Ajax]

I wouldn't mind if they got to work on some new games.

[Drizzt]

I wouldn't mind if the go to cultivate potatoes...

[Jammrock]

Lots of good games have come from key people leaving big game studios. Unfortunately, because they are they are no longer with a large studio the games often go unoticed

Hopefully they'll make a futuristic, sci-fi Diablo-style of game. That would be WAY cool, IMO.

Jammrock

[Byock]

I think this would be a good thing. In it's day, Diablo 1 was untouchable. Nothing came close to the addictive game play. Diablo 2 had alot of hype, but I was disappointed with it. Maybe they can come up with something original again.

[Technoid]

I always thought Diablo 1 was too claustrophobic

[Gurm]

There have been a lot of key players leaving the big companies that acquired their smaller companies. (Sid Meier, etc.)

Of course, there have also been a lot of cases of key players releasing utter drek because the big companies want it. (Black & White, etc.)

- Gurm

[Jessterw]

Well hopefully they won't pull a Romero -- doubt they will given how Blizzard started out.

I've not really been impressed with anything coming out of Blizzard as of late anyhow, at least not since the first releases of Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft.

[Gurm]

Warcraft 2 was amazing. Starcraft as well.

Everything since has been... err... less than stellar.

- Gurm

[Byock]

I agree. StarCraft is still one of, if not the best RTS out there, IMO. I still play it. SC2? Come on Blizzard, get your act together.

[az]

Diablo 1 was absolutely great (Hellfire add-on, developed by sierra, was crap), Starcraft is still great (SC Brood War is still good, too), Warcraft 2 single player was great in its day (Dark Portal too), Warcraft 3 single player was great, too, but the graphics and engine were not clear enough - one of the reasons SC was and is still as great as it is is the great 2D graphics (besides the absolutely amazing balance). Diablo 2 and LoD were disappointing, but it's hard to point at a single reason why.

AZ

[Jessterw]

I always thought Diablo 2 was too little too late. It didn't improve drastically upon the first, and what it did improve on was almost old news by the time it was released.

Partly I think it was another case of too much promised, too little actually produced. Remember all the multiplayer/clan features it was going to have?


Starcraft was and is just an all around great game that balanced all the different aspects better than most games of any genre do. Sad to think that those games were, what it seems, the pinnacle of Blizzard's abilities).

[Technoid]

D2 felt like a warmed over D1 with larger lvl's

[Ajax]

Now I'm in the mood to play some StarCraft.