Joystiq

Blizzard has 4,700 employees across 11 cities

Ben Gilbert — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:30:00 EST

Blizzard Entertainment is kind of a big deal -- you already knew that. But did you know that the studio is such a big deal that it spans "4,700 employees across 11 cities?" That's a lot of people! And while many of said employees are saddled with customer support roles, a whopping 750 are assigned to product development, which spans WoW, StarCraft, Diablo, and the still-unannounced "Project Titan" MMO (not to mention anything else Blizzard has cooking behind-the-scenes).

Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce discussed the astounding statistic during a panel at DICE last week, using the numbers to put context behind his company's lack of preparedness when launching World of Warcraft way back in aught four. "I don't think we had any idea what we were getting ourselves into," Pearce admitted, as reported by industry trade site Gamasutra. "We had to stop shipping boxes to stores." Resultantly, the company now makes "more aggressive" predictions for its various launches, and has its many hundreds of support employees at the ready for said launches.

Blizzard has 4,700 employees across 11 cities originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Blizzard pro-cannibalism: Diablo 3 could eat into World of Warcraft audience

Christopher Grant — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 10:55:00 EST

While Blizzard cofounder Frank Pearce is unexpectedly bullish on EA's prospects with its Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO - and of course Blizz's own next-gen, untitled "Titan" MMO - he sees another potential product that could cannibalize his massive World of Warcraft audience. "I think even a shorter-term concern is whether or not we might see cannibalization of WoW players from Diablo 3 when we launch it, because it's a similar type of experience," Pearce told Gamasutra. "Not exactly similar, but it's that RPG feel."

While Diablo 3 currently has no release date - it's possible it may not make it out this year - Pearce said "it's better we cannibalize them ourselves than let someone else do that, because if we cannibalize them ourselves, they're still a Blizzard customer." And that, ladies and gentlemen, is maybe the only kind of cannibalism that we can endorse.

Blizzard pro-cannibalism: Diablo 3 could eat into World of Warcraft audience originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 21 Mar 2011 10:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Blizzard surprisingly hopeful for The Old Republic's success

Mike Schramm — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 01:32:00 EST

EA Games' Frank Gibeau was less-than-complimentary to Blizzard's World of Warcraft this past week, saying that the older game "feels more like doing a shopping list at times" than EA and Bioware's upcoming The Old Republic title. But Blizzard's Frank Pearce is a little nicer to his competitor, saying in an interview that he'd love to see another popular MMO arrive. "This is a game that has an opportunity to grow the MMO market if done right," he said, "and therefore is very important to the industry as a whole, not just EA."

Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime was similarly excited by the prospect of a quality Bioware MMO and its effect on the market. "From our perspective, we hope they make an enjoyable game because they're going to bring in a lot of new players to the MMO genre," he's quoted as saying.

These guys make an MMO about war? Where's that blood, the fury, that boisterous arrogance? There's just one answer: Morhaime and Pearce must both play Alliance.

Blizzard surprisingly hopeful for The Old Republic's success originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 19 Mar 2011 01:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Blizzard: StarCraft 2 'marketplace' still coming

JC Fletcher — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 16:00:00 EST

During BlizzCon 2009, Blizzard revealed plans to put a shopping interface inside StarCraft 2, which would allow players to purchase user-created maps, with revenue shared between Blizzard and the creator. The game came out in July 2010, sans marketplace, and that feature is still missing.

During an interview with MTV Multiplayer, Blizzard's Frank Pearce asserted that the feature is still on the way. "But it's not necessarily something we have a specific timeline for," he said, "which is unfortunate because one of the things that we've found is, especially from our learnings from World of WarCraft, is that these audiences that play these games are very, very passionate and want to experience lots and lots of content. With the StarCraft 2 client and the StarCraft 2 map editor and the Battle.net platform, it creates an opportunity for the community to serve itself with content, if the mechanisms are there."

To be fair, if it did have a timeline, it would be a Blizzard timeline, and therefore could only be specific to the year. Approximately.

Blizzard: StarCraft 2 'marketplace' still coming originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 17 Mar 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Blizzard confirms 'Titan' as 'next-gen MMO'

JC Fletcher — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:55:00 EST

In an interview with Destructoid, World of Warcraft producer Frank Pearce finally confirmed "Titan" as at least a codename for Blizzard's new MMO project. "The media is not supposed to know anything about [Titan]," Pearce said with a smile. "It's our next-gen MMO, and we've only started talking about it in a limited fashion because we wanna leverage the fact that we're working on something like that for the purpose of recruiting, getting some of the best talent in the industry on that project." Does "we made WoW" not work well enough for recruiting developers?

The name "Titan" most recently appeared on an alleged Blizzard release schedule that had supposedly leaked, but Blizzard has declined to verify its authenticity. These documents also contained details about two additional WoW expansions, as well as expansions for Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2.

Blizzard confirms 'Titan' as 'next-gen MMO' originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Blizzard: DRM a 'losing battle' for developers

JC Fletcher — Thu, 27 May 2010 09:45:00 EST

Ubisoft is the latest company to attach DRM to its PC games in an effort to curb piracy -- an initiative that has had basically the opposite of its intended effect in keeping out people who bought the games. Blizzard's Frank Pearce told VideoGamer that it's not the strategy Blizzard intends to implement in StarCraft II, with the company opting instead for a compelling Battle.net that will make people want to stay online in single-player, rather than requiring it. It's still a form of DRM, requiring online authentication, but it's also meant to serve other, gameplay-enhancing purposes.

"If we've done our job right and implemented Battle.net in a great way," the StarCraft II producer said, "people will want to be connected while they're playing the single player campaign so they can stay connected to their friends on Battle.net and earn the achievements on Battle.net."

Pearce called DRM "a losing battle for us," noting that the group of people who want to crack DRM is always "larger than our development teams." Pearce said "We need our development teams focused on content and cool features, not anti-piracy technology" -- something with which those of us patiently waiting for StarCraft II will agree.

Blizzard: DRM a 'losing battle' for developers originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 27 May 2010 09:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Blizzard: More growth ahead for WoW

Mike Schramm — Wed, 26 May 2010 09:51:00 EST

VG247 met up with Blizzard Executive Vice President Frank Pearce in London to talk about StarCraft 2 and World of Warcraft. While it appears that WoW reached its peak with 11.5 million players, Pearce disagrees. "I don't think 11.5 million is a peak, necessarily," he says, "but there are certain things that we need to do and need to do well in order to see it go further." Those things include finally launching the Wrath of the Lich King expansion in China and bringing players back with the upcoming Cataclysm expansion in the US.

And while some have guessed that the release of StarCraft 2 might make a dent in WoW's player base, Pearce says he expects the opposite: StarCraft's Real ID social network system works across both games, and it may "potentially have a strong enough connection so that [someone playing StarCraft] may get a message from someone in WoW saying, 'Hey, come on over, we need a last person to fill our raid.'"

Blizzard: More growth ahead for WoW originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 26 May 2010 09:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Interview: Blizzard's Frank Pearce on Warcraft milestones

Kevin Kelly — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:00:00 EST

Blizzard's Frank Pearce has been with the company since co-founding it in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse, along with Michael Morhaime and Allen Adham. Today, he's the senior vice president and serves as the executive producer of World of Warcraft, which probably includes the duty of swimming in pools filled with gold coins, a la Scrooge McDuck.

We talked to Frank about the milestones that Warcraft recently hit: 15 years for Warcraft and five for World of Warcraft, and how those games have changed the company. Read on beyond the break for the details and find out what he thinks the developer has failed at, why another company might be able to do it better and when you can expect a Blizzard theme park to open.

Gallery: Blizzard Warcraft 5 & 15 Year Anniversary Images

Continue reading Interview: Blizzard's Frank Pearce on Warcraft milestones

Interview: Blizzard's Frank Pearce on Warcraft milestones originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Listen to Blizzard's "Universe Behind World of Warcraft" keynote from Austin GDC

Kevin Kelly — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:20:00 EST

If you're wondering what the internal goings-on at Blizzard consist of, grab yourself something to eat and kick back. We've got the entire hour-long keynote speech at the Austin Game Developer's Conference down below. Blizzard's J. Allen Brack and Frank Pearce were on-hand to walk a slightly hungover crowd through the way they make things work and how their teams are organized.

Click below for the full audio, or for those of you on the go, download it here.

Listen to Blizzard's "Universe Behind World of Warcraft" keynote from Austin GDC originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A look at Blizzard's canceled squad-based sci-fi RPG: Nomad

Kevin Kelly — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:20:00 EST

At this morning's Austin Game Developer's Conference keynote, J. Allen Brack and Frank Pearce of Blizzard took the stage to talk about the inner workings of Blizzard. Most of what they covered was stats and trvia. Did you know the Blizzard bug team is currently tracking over 179,484 bugs? Now you do. There are 7,650 quests in WoW since Wrath of the Lich King! Consider yourself informed.

Some of the trivia was actually pretty interesting, like the fact that when Blizzard releases a patch, almost half of that data is audio. Pearce also mentioned that BlizzCon is operated "at a substantial loss for Blizzard," but the value is that it's a huge marketing/PR opportunity for them. Considering how many tickets they sell (in only eight minutes), that's around $3.5 million that's written off. Plus whatever Blizzard spends above and beyond that. No wonder Blizzard employees have to buy their own tickets.

However, the most interesting part of the keynote was when they briefly spoke about Nomad, the canceled squad-based sci-fi game. Ten years ago, Blizzard put a lot of work in on the game, but eventually looked at it and said "Is this really the game we want to be working on right now? The answer ended up being "no," and the team went on to start work on World of Warcraft. Here we are ten years later with WoW going strong, and no Nomad in sight.

They'd mentioned this canceled game, along with a slew of others, at last year's DICE summit, but without any other information. Sadly, the only thing they had to show were pieces of concept art, including some by "The Bourbon Cowboy," Chris Metzen. The art itself isn't that exciting (the best one is above and there's a couple more in the gallery below), but the words "squad-based sci-fi RPG" are exciting. Could this be Blizzard's next game? Possibly mutated into MMO form? Who knows when we'll find out, since one of the stats they flashed onscreen this morning was "Number of Unannounced MMOs: 1."

Gallery: Nomad

A look at Blizzard's canceled squad-based sci-fi RPG: Nomad originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Blizzard considering World of Warcraft app for cell phones

Justin McElroy — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:25:00 EST

Filed under: PC, MMO, Mobile

The one problem with World of Warcraft (besides all other facets of your life disintegrating like a tomato in time-lapse footage) is that you can't play it on the go (no, this guy doesn't count). Though a new app being spit-balled at Blizzard won't fix that problem, it may just make traveling a tad bit more bearable.

MTV got the scoop during a sit-down with Frank Pearce, co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, in which he talked about a mobile division working within the company. "I don't think we're looking at it as something like, 'We're going to make mobile games,'" he said. "We want to look at the mobile devices as something we can use to enhance the experience of our existing games." To that end, Pearce mentions the possibility of an app that would let mobile users monitor their auctions or read their in-game mail while on the go.

It's still in the brainstorming stages, but it's probably enough to start getting fans excited. What would you like to see in a WoW mobile app?

Blizzard considering World of Warcraft app for cell phones originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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