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by NickPollard 5230 days ago
SC2 and WoW expansions are still major, MAJOR projects, believe me. Calling it just maintenance really does a disservice to the amount of work that goes into these things. For Blizzard, this applies doubly so. I expect that Heart of the Swarm is a bigger project that most studios can dream of, in all manners - technology, art and design, production, distribution, marketing, and all the other attendant features that go with modern game development.
2 comments
justjimmy 5230 days ago
Not to mention the sick cinematics that Blizzard is renowned for. Definitely not 'maintenance' work.

Patches for WoW – maybe – but expansions are huge effort!

Not to mention Blizzard aim for global simultaneous release for its games whenever it can. (Asia used to lag behind WoW's expansion up to a whole year compared to NA/Europe) Can't imagine the effort and coordination required for that task.

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cube13 5230 days ago
I'm not arguing that the WoW and SC2 expansions not major projects.

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.

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NickPollard 5230 days ago
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.

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