Vivendi: Blizzard Franchises to Become MMOGs
So, many of you may have read some news stories about Vivendi planning to make all Blizzard franchises, or at the very least Starcraft and Diablo in addition to their Warcraft franchise, into MMOGs. This was allegedly announced at a public presentation to various Wall Street types. I was not actually at the presentation, but subsequent to the story I did provide copies of a select portion of the slides from the presentation that could be construed as evidence for such a strategy on the part of Vivendi, despite Blizzard’s denials.
My take on it is this: Vivendi certainly WANTS to make MMOGs out of their Blizzard franchises, and while Blizzard may not be working on anything else right now, that could all change with a phone call from Vivendi to Blizzard, regardless of what Blizzard says. Anyway, subsequent to the story breaking, Blizzard has asked various sites who have posted the slides to take them down, citing copyright concerns. I want to make it clear that the material was obtained lawfully by me, that no confidentiality was violated, and that such usage by the media is also protected under the doctrine of fair use. The presentation is on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and is made available freely to EVERYONE. So if you want to see the ENTIRE PRESENTATION yourself, including the slides relevant to Blizzard, simply go here. And shame on Blizzard for trying to bully the media.
Tags: blizzard, diablo, Meta, News, starcraft, vivendi, warcraft
August 16th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
I read the presentation (as linked above). The slides are not conclusive that Vivendi is “Planning” to make all the franchises into MMOGs. They were simply listing them to investors as potential, saying they could. Of course, they could. But Blizzard has already stated that their MMOG that is currently in design, and has been for a while now, is in a fourth universe.
Thinking about it, Diablo and Starcraft would both suffer into translation from their current form into a MMOG. Starcraft because it’s inherently about groups rather than heroes, and would be a bit tough to make fun and entertaining. Diablo because it has, since it’s creation, had heroes who were always much more powerful than all NPCs. Diablo allowed the player to slay twenty or so enemies at a time, something that isn’t yet possible on a MMOG simply because of technical and UI constraints.