This year, Blizzard has two major missions.

One is that all of its games will be updated, including movies, and the second phase of updates.

The second is that two new games have entered the development stage, Diablo 3 and Hearthstone!

Yes, you read that right, these are these two games that Blizzard is about to develop.

The Diablo series, needless to say, as a classic RPG game, Diablo comes with a large group of fans, especially Diablo 2, which can be called a classic among the classics, even after 20 years of release, there are still a large number of loyal players. On the contrary, Diablo 3, once it was released in the original time and space, it was infamous. It may indeed be Diablo 2 Zhuyu in front, leaving too deep an impression, so that before Diablo 3 came out, players were full of expectations, but after it came out, the performance was not up to par, which hurt the player's heart.

In fact, if you really want to talk about it, you can't blame Blizzard for this, after all, the team that developed Dark back then is long gone.

Diablo is said to be a game of Blizzard, but in fact, to be precise, it is a game company called Vulture that developed Diablo.

The world only knows about Blizzard, but few people know that Blizzard in the North was founded in 1993 as a vulture company founded by the Scarford brothers, Marcos Scarfor, Eric Scarfor, and David Breivik. At the 1994 Chicago Consumer Electronics Show, the three young founders of Vulture met Alan Adhan, one of the co-founders of Blizzard, although Blizzard was just a new signboard at the time, the company had already been established for 3 years and was already a well-known development studio. During the exchange, the Vulture founders were surprised to find that they were strikingly consistent with Alan Adhan's game philosophy, so they exchanged phone numbers to ask questions about the game's development process in the future.

A few months later, David Breivik called Alan Adhan, and the concept they had been envisioning for months was met with a cold reception, no publisher willing to spend a penny on the idea, and Blizzard was the last straw for them. So, in January 1995, Blizzard and Vulture formally reached a production agreement, with Vulture taking full responsibility for the development of a new game, and Blizzard providing Vulture with $300,000 in development funding and advice. At Blizzard's suggestion, what was originally conceived as a clay-style turn-based game was gradually transformed into a real-time combat game with a gothic style, and this became known as Diablo.

At the end of the game's development, Vulture and Blizzard, who had already formed mutual trust and admiration at work, officially married, and in March 1996, Vulture officially joined Blizzard, and with the successful release of "Diablo", Northern Blizzard became an instant hit. But few people know that after the marriage, Northern Blizzard has maintained an independent posture, and the reputation of "Diablo" allows them to enjoy the privilege and influence independent of Blizzard headquarters, with their own work sites and independent research and development rights, and Blizzard headquarters mainly handles quality inspection, marketing, public relations, technical and customer service support, Battle.net construction and other matters for them, and does not interfere too much in their development work.

In this partnership, which is both independent and close, many of the employees' talents are exploited to the fullest – and it is at this time that Bill Roper, known as one of the Big Four, began to emerge. Bill Roper, a truck driver with a passion for games and music, joins Blizzard as a contract worker, and after becoming a tester, Bill communicates with Blizzard's still vulture North Blizzard as an executive producer. In the process, Bill developed a close relationship with the Scarford brothers and others, and his personal abilities were shown to the fullest, and during the development of Diablo 2, Bill became the game's chief executive producer, and for this reason he was affectionately known as the Father of Darkness.

Blizzard of the North, which started with Diablo, continues its game development plan step by step, but the forces of reality interfere with this process in unexpected ways. Long before the vulture marriage, Blizzard had changed hands several times, and was finally acquired by Prestige Global. In 2003, Prestige Global, which had fallen into a serious financial crisis due to its frenzied expansion, announced that it was going to sell its game division, including Blizzard, much to the uneasiness of Northern Blizzard's executives, who had been developing PC games. In order to ensure the right to speak for themselves and the product, the three founders of Northern Blizzard and Bill Roper tried to negotiate with Vivendi by resigning, but what they didn't expect was that Vivendi agreed to their resignation without hesitation - on June 30, 2003, Bill and others, known as the Big Four, officially left Blizzard.

After that, Northern Blizzard's independence basically collapsed, employees continued to resign, and the original development work was abruptly halted until 2005, when the studio was officially banned, and Northern Blizzard did not have any products. This is also the hidden danger left by the former cooperation model, because the independence of Northern Blizzard is too strong, so strong that the headquarters can't even restrain a few leaders of Northern Blizzard. Once there is a discord in concept, or a difference in will, people can just leave, although it will be very sad to leave the company they founded, but for Blizzard, the actions of these people are tantamount to taking a salary from the bottom of the kettle, and directly put the IP of Diablo completely on the flames.

A few months later, the flagship studio was established, and in addition to the Big Four, five other members of the former Northern Blizzard joined in. The fledgling flagship studio was so ambitious that it soon launched its own website to recruit staff, and with the excellent connections he had built up as a spokesman for Blizzard, Bill Roper was always in the best news positions. Players are extremely interested in this newly formed studio, and any news about a new game can get them excited. At E3 2005, the game was finally revealed, and Hellgate: London, a postmodern post-apocalyptic game that blends the ARPG concept with the FPS experience, tells the story of the war between the Templars and demons.

Unfortunately, the high expectations from the outside world and the internal desire to create another game product that can "start a school" have led the flagship studio to set too many work plans.

The flagship studio is an indie game developer founded by a few founders who don't have a strong backing behind them to support them at any cost, but they do more work based on their work experience than they did during Blizzard. In addition to its goal of making a game that surpasses Diablo, the flagship studio has also undertaken a number of additional work projects – creating a single-player mode, support for the Vista system, and support for 17 Chinese languages. In addition, while developing the game, they also had to establish an online service mechanism.

From a purely game development point of view, it's like trying to make an RPG, an FPS, and an MMO in the same room.

In addition, the flagship studio also established Ping0 as a joint venture with Hanguang Software to be responsible for game operations and customer service projects, which not only distracted the focus of the game development program, but also invested a lot of additional money and resources. Compared to the freedom, money, resources, and development time that the development team had at Blizzard, the nascent flagship studio had neither a well-developed game engine nor a solid process system, and everything had to be built from scratch, which was undoubtedly fantastic.

If the flagship studio is given enough time and support, perhaps this group of veterans of the game industry will once again create dreams and miracles.

But there are often no ifs, and the power of reality has once again demonstrated its power. In 2007, under pressure from both the economy and publishers, the stand-alone version of "Hell's Gate: London" was rushed to the market. Due to the lack of development completion, the single entertainment mode and the many bugs, the game only sold less than 2 million units, and caused criticism from many players. What's even more embarrassing is that Hanguang Software, which has been giving freedom to the flagship studio, was also acquired by T3 Entertainment, and the scene of not being able to control its own destiny a few years ago reappeared, and this time, the appetite of the new "boss" was even more greedy.

The South Korean software that changed hands interrupted the funding of the flagship studio and issued a statement that it owned both of the studio's games.

Before it could turn around and get the flagship really on track, the fuel had already run out.

In July 2008, the Big Four paid the last month's salary to all employees with their own savings, and the flagship studio officially announced its closure.

From the former Big Four of Northern Blizzard to the later losers, the speed of transformation of several people is something that no one could have predicted in advance.

In addition to handing over two titles that they had invested five years and a huge investment in, the top management of the flagship studio had to accept that the carefully selected team members and countless hard-earned engine tools and processes were in vain.

The Scarford brothers took a group of old departments that had followed them for many years to join forces with Travis Badley, a dark iron fan and designer and programmer of "Dark Epic", to form a rune studio and quickly launched "Torchlight" based on "Dark Epic", and the sales performance was not bad; After resigning, he was eventually acquired by Disney Entertainment, and in 2012 he officially began to serve as vice president of Disney Interactive in charge of product development.

Then another five years passed, and the former Big Four of Northern Blizzard and the founders of flagship studios have found their new directions. But for many, their names have always been tied to Blizzard and Diablo, players can throw out "these old guys are always eating from the old names" without investigation, and the media is happy to chase the attacks of the old and new generations of dark designers, especially the impulsive remarks like "f*ck that loser", and it seems that there is nothing else to follow these veterans of the game industry.

Are they pathetic? Pathetic. Is it hateful? Not necessarily hateful. Pathetic? I don't know.

In fact, if we could turn the angle a little and project our vision on other producers or teams who are also reputable, we can also taste some bitterness - Richard Garrett, the father of UO, has been unable to achieve anything since he joined NCsoft, and finally fell to the bottom due to the complete failure of "The Veil", and even had to start a months-long labor lawsuit with the owner. The rock painting statue created by the members of Westwood Studio has taken a big stumble on two online games, Mytheon and UN End, after releasing two tepid RTS games with the aura of the past. The experience of success has given them far more media exposure than other practitioners, which will give them more opportunities, but also carry more pressure, and these "stars" who have been praised by the media and players in the cloud may fall and fall to pieces at any time due to these pressures.

For gamers who are interested in starting a career with their own portal, the experience of the Big Four of Blizzard in the North is undoubtedly a lesson worth recording - when chasing idealism, pay attention to the ladder of reality under your feet, and when the conditions are insufficient and you want to have both, the end is often to fall into the air at both ends and leave nothing behind. Because this is a realistic environment where most participants only win and lose based on results, as a chaser of entertainment mode, players often disdain to understand and understand the underlying reasons behind the ending, and just blindly conceit to label people differently, touting or criticizing them according to their own preferences, without the slightest hesitation.

The Big Four is a good example, and Blizzard is a good example in China. When the game number is called, players will praise you as much as possible, and all kinds of fleshy words will make you want to praise people to the sky. But you don't fail tenderly, players only accept success and reject failure.

Often the end of failure is to be pointed out by thousands of people. The players who can't call you dad one second want to be your grandfather the next second, and the status changes so fast that there is no need for any excess. The Big Four have been scolded, and Blizzard headquarters has also been scolded, and they are no less than them. So this time, Blizzard was ready to start the research and development of Diablo 3, and the first second when the plan was placed on the table, Zhou Fangyuan decided to invite the former Northern Blizzard Big Four back. When he acquired Blizzard, the Big Four hadn't left yet, but when they left later, they didn't say hello to him, he didn't know anything, so he was so stupid to "let go" the other party to leave, and when he realized the problem later, it was too late.

Now that Blizzard in the North has existed in name only, the remaining employees have all been accepted by the headquarters, but even so, Blizzard still has a shortage of staff. After all, developing an RPG and a CCG game at the same time is not something that any company can do, and it is necessary to update the previous game, and also to shoot a movie, and the work plan in the media is not only a movie, but even the first TV series is ready to start filming this year...... Let's put it this way, Blizzard was really busy, so much so that when Zhou Fangyuan came to Blizzard's headquarters, Mike was too busy to sit down with him and chat for a while.