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Blizzard is open to outsourcing the Warcraft IP to another studio to create games in different genres

Draugoth

Gold Member
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John Hight, general manager of the Warcraft franchise, recently commented to IGN that "it would certainly be interesting" to make new Warcraft films. However, he says that Blizzard has no interest in becoming a film production company, which means that it would need to find the right studio to handle the project.

Commenting on partnering with other studios to produce new games in the Wacraft franchise, the director also doesn't rule out the idea, but it would take someone who really understood the IP's proposal and was capable of creating a genre that Blizzard doesn't specialize in:

“Certainly open to people who really get it and have a cool idea about how to express Warcraft and if we feel like aesthetically they're going to be able to hit the bar,” he said. “…I think if we found the right partner, found the right situation, I think especially if they have a proficiency in a game genre that we really don't, I think that'd be the ideal partner for us to work with and we're open to that, but that's relatively new. I'm open to it because I want to have Warcraft out there a little more than it is now, and I also don't want to have us grow so fast that we're no longer able to serve the audiences we have. But I think there's some benefit in leveraging other companies that share our love for it, have a really cool idea, share our belief in quality and have the ability to execute on it. But now that's probably a pretty small list, right?”
 
A singleplayer saga about Varian, Thrall, or Arthas would be dope. I am thinking about something similar like the Respawn's SW Jedi style.
 

RSLAEV

Member
This might have been before Shadowlands but now the story and characters are all trash. All the rough edges have been smoothed, and all the sexy women have been turned to fruit. Why would I want more of this?
 

Ivan

Member
Warcraft action rpg on a modern engine would be awesome. Such a great potential. This is the part of the acquisition I actually like, something might happen with warcraft.

I would die for a true warcraft rts or even warcraft 2 remaster with some quality of life improvements.

I loved everything that leaked back in the day about Lord of the clans point n click game too.

Warcraft is huge, they can make anything, just don't make shit.

If MS was cool enough, they could bring back all the people from original blizzard who made it one of the best studios in the world.
 
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Sounds cool. But forget Warcraft do Star Craft Ghost instead please.

But if it has to be Warcraft then it would be fun to see someone build an Warcraft MMO with an engine from this decade.
 
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CamHostage

Member
This would have gone down well in the 90's, let Capcom do a 2D side scroller beat-em up like D&D.

That's what this response feels like, a 2000's-era concept of an IP holder finding developers to make cool games in their brands. For complicated business reasons (some senseless, in ways you'd think businesses would pivot back but didn't,) it died recently and publishers rarely trust partner developers (or rarely pay partner developers, which is probably a big reason of why it's gone...)

As mentioned twice above while I was typing this, Starcraft Ghost was one of those cases where external studio Nihilistic Software was allowed to work with a successful IP. Starcraft Ghost is also a prime example of why this will probably never happen with a Blizzard product, as they just historically don't let anybody in. (For SG Ghost, the game was said to be far into production, then Blizzard canceled that version, got a different studio Swingin' Ape to work on it, bought that company to bring it in-house, worked on it more, and never released it.)

 
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Arsic

Loves his juicy stink trail scent
Didn’t they do this with Diablo 2R? It was so successful they hired on the studio after.

It CAN work but no one out there would be a good team to do a new Warcraft or StarCraft RTS except the folks who run age of empires 2 DE.

Let them make a Warcraft 3 reforged or a SC3. They get it.
 

Kacho

Member
I would love to see a full on Open World Warcraft RPG. Give it to Larian! 🧐😁🙏
As much as I’d love that, they don’t sound interested in working on IP they don’t own. I wonder if enough money could convince them otherwise.
 

Mortisfacio

Member
As much as I’d love that, they don’t sound interested in working on IP they don’t own. I wonder if enough money could convince them otherwise.

Larian would be cool, but for me if they ever were to touch the Warcraft IP it'd have to be because their hearts and passion were in it, not just money. Otherwise I think we just end up with a mid experience.
 

Bkdk

Member
Likely good business decision at this point, blizzard is nothing special anymore and they can easily find game devs with similar capabilities everywhere across the world with much lower wages and willing to work 60 hours a week.
 

Puscifer

Member
Hear me out: Warcraft Total War


I mean it worked wonders to resurrect Warhammer RTS after they basically turned into action games


It's not a bad plan, but they need to be very careful who they work with.
There's only one real answer to this
 
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RJMacready73

Simps for Amouranth
Just gimme a gritty witcher3 open world game set on one half of a continent and pull a story from your massive lore base, then gradually expand it out with DLCs
 
Some ten+ years ago, I would have thought a Warcraft RPG based, basically copied from the MMO might have been interesting. Remove the MM part, make it single player, optionally keep the O with a limited coop oppurtunity. Maybe add a bit more story. Don't know shit about WoW, maybe it has plenty.
Or the other way around for Skyrim and Witcher. I don't understand why these games are not either developed in two parallel forks simultaneously or just one flexible game that allows any number of players to enjoy them. Why target online OR single players and not just both? It certainly needs some extra thought, to design and scale difficulty and arenas approriately but with anyway rising costs in mind, a little extra mile might offer a significant sale increase oppurtunity?
 

ElRenoRaven

Member
You know. I love the Warcraft universe. I have to say I've always wanted some sort of action game or action RPG set in the Warcraft universe. Imagine visiting places you see in or haven't seen yet in up close and with insane graphics. Think something akin to Fable in style of game. I'm talking OG Fable.
 
Why would anyone waste their time making a game using the boring, vanilla fantasy past its sell-by date of Warcraft instead of doing their own thing?
 

Red5

Member
Give it to Relic to make a Warcraft 4, Dawn of War 1 style. And yes I do realize Relic made the trash DOW 3 but they make far better RTS than Blizzard these days.
 

CuNi

Member
The issue with the Warcraft IP is, you cannot make a game that is set in the future since the Story is still going on in WoW.
They could make retellings of older WoW Add-ons, like make an RTS game for WotLK or something like that, or more story oriented Single-player games to tell the stories that happened concurrent to what the "champions" were doing.
But besides that, because of the existence of WoW, every dev will be severely limited in what they can do with the IP.
 
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