Russell Brower Leaving Blizzard

[Lahis]

Who cares if you doubt it? You can doubt all you like, the facts are in their earnings calls, which are free for everyone to examine.

Just how can be the game be "most profitable ever" if the team is bigger than ever and the subs are way below half of its biggest ever number? That plainly is more expenses and less income than when it was in the peak, so where does the money come from?

[Tupolew519]

we bid you farewell russel.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Just how can be the game be "most profitable ever" if the team is bigger than ever and the subs are way below half of its biggest ever number? That is plainly more expenses and less income, so where does the money come from?

From subs, services, physical items, WoW tokens (whom can now be bought for ingame gold and converted to Battle.net Balance, not just sub time), box sales.

Earnings calls are public (and highly illegal to forge), curious minds can simply examine them.

[Pull My Finger]

Considering all music is now mostly made digitally with applications from pre recorded high quality sound sampling it makes sense they would down size the sound team. I have seen and heard amazing music that just one or 2 people can make. It is shitty but it is the nature of progress and automation.

Not true for huge projects like WoW. Most of modern day WoW soundtrack is performed and recorded live and only bolstered with high quality sample library mockup parts and synths. Low and mid budget projects rely on highly skilled people who are able to mock up pieces with sample libraries that sound fairly convincing to the layman's ears, but big budget productions - with good reason - still use real orchestras and performers in the final production.

Either way, this has no bearing on needing - or not needing - a guy like Brower. You can have the best commercially available, or custom-produced virtual instruments on earth - they're just high-quality sounds, they won't compose any music for you. Further, Brower wasn't "just" the composer - he was actually the lead of all things audio at Blizzard. Like an art director in the music department. He was largely responsible for the artistic direction, cohesion, quality insurance and overall organisation of all audio contributors and assets.

Giving up in-house art teams and leads is generally much more cost-effective, but product quality and identity almost always take a huge blow as a consequence, so I'm not sure if this was wise of Blizzard. They always had absolutely exceptional audio, probably the very best in the industry. Another company who employs inhouse audio in many of their studios - and it really shows - is Ubisoft. Not exactly encouraging to see a company like Blizzard apparently cutting corners here.

[rybat117]

He didn't leave Blizzard, he was laid off. I have no idea what sound decentralization means though, if the music was the one thing that always stayed good about WoW I don't know why they would want to mess it up.

[Lahis]

From subs, services, physical items, WoW tokens, box sales.

Subs are less than half of their peak, which also correlates to box sales: way less than on the peak.

Guess it's true then that their unwillingness to address realm imbalances is to drive up transfer numbers.

[Queen of Hamsters]

He didn't leave Blizzard, he was laid off. I have no idea what sound decentralization means though, if the music was the one thing that always stayed good about WoW I don't know why they would want to mess it up.

"The one thing that always stayed good about WoW" =/= People having different opinions on what constitutes good music. Plenty of WoW music has been deemed rubbish depending on whom one asks.

Besides, changing things =/= "messing it up". Much like Hans Zimmer ain't the only good movie composer, Russel Brower ain't the only good game music composer.

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Subs are less than half of their peak, which also correlates to box sales: way less than on the peak.

Guess it's true then that their unwillingness to address realm imbalances is to drive up transfer numbers.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, I'm merely stating facts about the profitable state of the game. A source of revenue pulling close to 1 billion USD on a bad year, and over 1 billion USD on good years, is not exactly something to scoff at.

And you seem to focus on 1 aspect. Character transfers are, like subs, not the only source of income. I've for example not paid real money for character services in 4 years.

[Video Games]

Did they seriously just lay off the only good part about legion?

[Queen of Hamsters]

Did they seriously just lay off the only good part about legion?

This is a hilarious statement considering how many people seem to be playing without any sound.

I also get the feeling that if they'd laid off the person designing the login screen, the sentiment would've been the same.

[Paulosio]

Subs are less than half of their peak, which also correlates to box sales: way less than on the peak.

Guess it's true then that their unwillingness to address realm imbalances is to drive up transfer numbers.

Lots of people play with wow tokens.... wow tokens that someone else has to buy for real money at 50% more cost than a monthly sub. That off sets some of the lost subs.

[Video Games]

Lots of people play with wow tokens.... wow tokens that someone else has to buy for real money at 50% more cost than a monthly sub. That off sets some of the lost subs.

I too enjoy cutting my game enjoyment in half. Oh wait, I don't.

[Constraint]

You started playing in vanilla mainly because of the music? I find this to be quite a sensational exaggeration.

In all honesty, it's no exaggeration for some. I played with one of those trial accounts that you used to get when you bought pre-paid time that a friend gave me, and the music in the Night Elf starting area, grabbed the living shit out of me. I still love that song, doubt I'll ever forget it.

It's certainly one of the main reasons why I started playing with my own account in Vanilla.

[Leyre]

If he's the guy that made the alliance garrison music, i'll cry, if not, i dont care, always played wow with external music

[Echocho]

It seems he loves what he does but something clashed with the developers which led to him having to leave.

[ls-]

Just how can be the game be "most profitable ever" if the team is bigger than ever and the subs are way below half of its biggest ever number? That is plainly more expenses and less income, so where does the money come from?

Tokens, mounts, services, stuff for OTHER Blizz games, etc. Everything can be bought w/ WoW token.

In NA each purchased WoW token earns them extra $5, someone else has to buy it for $20, you redeem it for $15.

People are much more eager to purchase stuff from Blizz store if they pay w/ B.net balance, in their minds they pay w/ in-game gold and not w/ RL currency.

For instance, I'd never pay €150 w/ RL money to transfer my chars to another realm, I didn't really need to do so, my prev realm was okay-ish, but I play AH a lot and I had enough gold to do so. So I bought 12 tokens (someone bought from Blizz for €20), redeemed them for €156 (12 * €13) and I spent €150 for B.net balance. Blizz got a nice bonus of €84 (12 * €7) just because I chose to pay for stuff w/ "gold".

People also redeem tokens for game time

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BTW, fun fact, people here are saying that they started playing in Vanilla because they liked the music. Vanilla was the only time in WoW history when Blizz actually didn't use live orchestra to record the soundtrack. Everything was synthesised.

[Vira87]

Did he compose the Anduin theme ?

[Kellorion]

I strongly suspect that Blizzard will come to regret this. Brower has been the shaping force driving much of the music coming out of Blizzard for a very long time now.

He'll be fine. It won't be long before you see his name popping up as music composer for major movies.

Blizzard? Hard to say. They have a very talented team but Brower was more or less the leader of that team. I think it's a mistake myself.

2 things Blizz has never ever fucked up: Cinematics and Music. Until Today!

[Anjerith]

The amount of chance that anyone here knew who this guy was numbering over ... I don't know --- 10% of the community --- is unlikely. However, I enjoy the BLIZZARD IS DYING comments just the same.

Keep up the good work being negative, unintelligent and basically just yourselves, MMOC community.

[Simca]

Sounds likely they split the sound department out into team-based cells instead of one big central department.

He probably left because he wasn't able to have a new position where he could contribute to every game at once. By being a freelance artist for Blizzard, he can still do that.

[Heladys]

Is he the guy who did those goofy blizzard raps on Youtube? If so, dude's certainly a talented improviser (even if I hate rap), and I don't think anyone's ever had a bad word to say about the sound & music in the game so kudos to him. He'll do fine anywhere.