Torchlight vs. Diablo, Grief of Blizzard Elites in Commercial Society

Torchlight vs. Diablo, Grief of Blizzard Elites in Commercial Society By Jeff

Dreamlike Blizzard

Players commonly believe that whatever Blizzard produces is certainly a high quality product. Yet how many secrets on earth are behind this sentence…Maybe most players are praising the magnificence and brilliance of WOW, even a lot of game developers are imitating various designs of WOW, whereas, for some veteran players, Blizzard is no longer the former one!

The hot Torchlight leads players to pay attention to Diablo III and Blizzard again. In ARPG world and reality, what is being performed? Is there any pure happiness from games in this unmoral commercial society?

Commercial acquisition resulted in success

Blizzard was a small studio called Silicon&Synapse at first, except some simple chess games, it didn’t make any product. After a series of renaming and acquisition actions, Blizzard was purchased by Davidson&Associates in 1994 and began to gain both fame and wealth since its new title Warcraft that simulated Dune achieved a success in E3. Later, Blizzard released Warcraft 2 which was successful again.

Blizzard purchased California-based Condor in 1996 and renamed it Blizzard North that is well-known in ARPG industry later. Diablo, developed by Blizzard North pushed Blizzard to the peak. Diablo is a single-player game and can be also played on Blizzard’s latest online server battle.net. 750 thousand copies were sold out in the world that year.

Blizzard’s Masterpieces

In 2000, Blizzard North released Diablo II and total 2.5 million copies were sold out around the world. Diablo II: Lord of Destruction was published in June 2001. As the two products won several prizes, Blizzard North gained the highest fame that could never be matched until now. Diablo series created all basic ARPG models: HP and MP supplies, random map, random equipment, compound and socket and so on. Those modes are applied in the following ARPGs and even online games.

Blizzard’s breaking up

Blizzard benefited from acquisition but also came a cropper on that. Being purchased by Vivendi, Blizzard was reduced to a tool for making money instead of an independent game company, which was denounced by tons of industry insiders. By the way, Sierra, the owner of CS is another victim of Vivendi.

Before long, Partrick Wyatt, Vice President of R&D department, Jeff Strain, lead programmer of WOW and Mike O’Brien, lead programmer of Warcraft III left Blizzard one after another as a result of being unsatisfied with Vivendi’s acquisition. Unsurprisingly, Vivendi got into trouble after crazy expansion in 2002 and got into debt 31 billion, and it even planned to sell the game department. In 2004, 80 percent of the Vivendi Universal Entertainment branch was sold to GE, forming NBC Universal, with VU retaining a 20 percent stake.

Bill, we miss you!

On June 30th, 2003, well-known Bill Roper, the chief producer of Warcraft 2, Starcraft, Diablo and Diablo II, Vice President of Blizzard North and Director of Blizzard Entertainment departed from Blizzard together with three giants of Blizzard North: David Brevik, Erich Schaefer and Max Schaefer. This is called Four Gentlemen Incident among the game industry. Their departure directly caused the shutdown of Blizzard North. Though Warcraft III: Frozen Throne came into the market the next day and achieved great success, Diablo III that was in the charge of Blizzard North was delayed again and again.

Three Giants of Blizzard North

Vivendi began to cut down a large number of employees in 2004, of which, 350 belonged to Sierra. As CS2 codes were pilfered, the company suffered a loss of nearly US$ 50 million. NBC shareholder took little interest in games, so Vivendi once intended to sell Blizzard at a low price. At this crucial moment, World of Warcraft which was also in the charge of Bill Roper, helped Blizzard overcome difficulties. However, without Blizzard North, Blizzard Entertainment couldn’t release any game until the latter half of 2007. Some experienced WOWers may feel that the World of Warcraft with the level cap of 60 is completely different from its later expansion pack: The Burning Crusade.