14 DAY TRIAL // Blizzard once had Bill Roper & friends on the team, when developing WoW. Stuff happened, the Blizzard North boys started feeling insecure and left to form their own studio, calling it Flagship Studios. You've surely heard of it, they're currently developing their first title, Hellgate: London. Today, courtesy of VoodooExtreme, the team's real reasons of parting with Blizzard have been revealed.
Bill Roper: "Our original intention back in 2003 was not to leave Blizzard. We wanted some level of participation and direct communication with Vivendi's home office in order to offer our insight, knowledge and desires as to their plans at the time in terms of a possible sale or IPO of the games unit. The level of uncertainty back then made it extremely difficult to plan for our futures, as well as the futures of our team members.
And with no long-term compensation or employment contracts in place, we wanted to be able to interact directly with the people making the key decisions that could drastically affect our lives and workplace. In the end, Vivendi chose not to make that opportunity available and accepted our resignations over the matter.
The next day, David Brevik, Erich Schaefer, Max Schaefer and I started Flagship Studios."
Nice story, but some of you probably knew most of it. There are many rumors surrounding the team's moving on to form their own studio. But did anyone hear Blizzard cry? No, and that's because WoW makes up for any project that might have also surfaced in the meanwhile. Does Diablo III ring a bell...? Plus, StartCraft II is probably coming along nicely as well so, although Bill Roper and team were doing a hell of a job over at Blizzad, the company failed to meet their requirements, which I'm sure weren't so exaggerated. See what money does to people?