Re:Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers
by NickPollard on Wednesday February 29, 2012 @04:01PM
(#3649687)
Oh sure, the new MMO will definitely be their biggest current project, and D3 is a little bigger than HotS, but probably not by as much as you think.
In fact, when you've got a game as big as WoW, making sure that everything you add plays well with all the existing pieces is a mammoth undertaking - it would probably be easier if it was a new game! As you pointed out, these aren't simple 'Here's 4 new areas with some new enemy models expansions, these are major reworkings of large game features.
Although I've never worked on an expansion, from all the games I have worked on those kinds of things are definitely not simple.
I'm saying that compared to the new projects(D3 and Titan), the overall personnel allocation is smaller for Heart of the Swarm and Mists of Pandaria.
The development effort on those isn't on a new codebase(unlike D3 or Titan). They're adding new features and reworking game systems in the expansions(especially with the WoW expansion, where they're completely rewriting basically every class), but the overall effort required to complete those isn't nearly as much as what they need for the new MMO.