Notorious Studios - New Video Game Studio Founded by Former WoW Developers

Originally Posted by The Stormbringer

You got a problem with indie games, bruv?

Some of my favorite games are indie, brav :P

But they're clearly banking on Blizzard fame to get things going, when they don't have the manpower to do anything other than a very small project. Can an MMORPG designer transition to indie that easily? Eh.

Originally Posted by Ealyssa

Yay for another empty studio announcing nothing, so fresh and different.

basically this, this is like 5th time I see announcement of NOTHING made by FORMER BLIZZARD WORKERS

Originally Posted by FAILoZOFF

basically this, this is like 5th time I see announcement of NOTHING made by FORMER BLIZZARD WORKERS

i mean do you want them to just.....provide you with a alpha or something right now? This is an early stage, so the only thing we can expect is something in the next 3-4 years.

Maybe before building worlds build a logo that doesn't look like it was designed by a vocational school graphic design major dropout.

Originally Posted by gaaara

i mean do you want them to just.....provide you with a alpha or something right now? This is an early stage, so the only thing we can expect is something in the next 3-4 years.

I mean it's not unreasonable to expect some stated project. If you don't have a game in mind why even start a studio?

Originally Posted by oplawlz

I mean it's not unreasonable to expect some stated project. If you don't have a game in mind why even start a studio?

They are after funding presumably.

Let's see what they churn out in 5-8 years. Most likely it will be shit but I am always ready to be surprised.

Originally Posted by Steelangel

This guy designed ... Shadow Priest revamp for SL?

Yeah SP SL revamp is very good.
Too bad he was also involved in the priest class design in the previous 5 expacs when SP has been unenjoyable to varying degrees. Voidform was really inexcusable and it lasted multiple expacs.

If they put out a quality game or more then great. Until then they are just another ex-WoW dev among the plenty that haven't done much. Maybe once they release something in a few years, I'll recall their name.

So, how many studios are there now from former Blizz devs? Why don't they make one big studio and work together?

Their biggest investor is Riot, who are going to want their money back ASAP. Whatever it is will be rushed out the door and they're hoping their "ex WoW Dev" tag will boost sales, despite them being the worst of the worst. Obviously Ghostcrawler will be a part of it since he was hinting at a Riot mmo awhile back.

i wonder which of those where abusers just trying to escape the lawsuit

another fake startup to just milk investors - no indie studia has release anything worthwhile in last decade - they exist solely to milk investors and sell "investors packages" for dozens of thouands of dollars to naive people

Originally Posted by Postmasters

I know I do... I bought a really good card game only for it to randomly turn into an ARG about how fucking hitler used a magic computer code to trap people's souls in video games that satan gave him.

I kinda hate indie devs atm.

....that literally just sounds like the plot to Persona 2

Koraku already throwing shade at the studio.
https://kotaku.com/former-world-of-w...y-f-1847945629

So the guy who pumps gas at the BP station is responsible for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill... that's the same logic being used in this thread to taint this new project. Its silly.

It seems like we, as gamers who care enough about gaming to read forums and sites like MMO-Champion, should be excited about something new in the gaming world, rather than perpetuating drama and assigning it to people who most likely had zero to do with Blizzard's recent failings.

People act like Blizzard has always been evil. They forget how much they loved WoW for much of the past 16 years.

I don't know why everything has to be so binary. You can dislike some of the acts of Blizzard and at the same time still like them as a game developer - that's perfectly ok despite what some people may tell you in these forums. Its not an either/or situation.

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Originally Posted by Kumorii

Koraku already throwing shade at the studio.
https://kotaku.com/former-world-of-w...y-f-1847945629

That article is ridiculous. They are a start-up. They only have 11 employees. They were all previously friends. There is nothing illegal or immoral about that.

There is zero evidence that Notorious Studios has been unfair to women or even had any applicants yet, men or women. So to paint them with the sins of Blizzard at this stage is simply a shameful attempt to increase clicks.

Originally Posted by Hawg

That article is ridiculous. They are a start-up. They only have 11 employees. They were all previously friends. There is nothing illegal or immoral about that.

There is zero evidence that Notorious Studios has been unfair to women or even had any applicants yet, men or women. So to paint them with the sins of Blizzard at this stage is simply a shameful attempt to increase clicks.

Oh I agree.... It's kind of hilarious if it wasn't so detrimental. They "hire" a dog as a joke and kotaku makes a article about discrimination.

Originally Posted by OrangeJuice

Their biggest investor is Riot, who are going to want their money back ASAP. Whatever it is will be rushed out the door and they're hoping their "ex WoW Dev" tag will boost sales, despite them being the worst of the worst. Obviously Ghostcrawler will be a part of it since he was hinting at a Riot mmo awhile back.

Riot is invested into a lot more studios, but they especially favor studios of former Blizzard employees, they're also invested in Frostgiant studios.

Frankly, it seems more like an attempt to not only make money off investing into studios but also to damage Blizzard on a front they're now extremely vulnerable: their Employees.
Even if they don't join Riot, leaving Blizzard is good enough for them, because it seems like Riot wants to pave the way for their new MMO to surpass WoW, which is naturally easier when Blizzard suffers from brain drain.

However, GC is likely not involved, i doubt he has any calls to make in which Studio Riot invests money in.

sorry but you got ALOT to prove before i buy into anything.

Originally Posted by exochaft

As with starting up any business, it can take to get established and get a product out... a lot of time in some cases. I've helped my wife start a few businesses, and some of them have failed, but the current one is starting to take off after about 2 years. If you expand such tendencies towards the gaming industry, which would require much larger teams of people and more complex products on top of longer turnaround times from concept-to-product, 5-10 years before something comes out or even gets announced publicly isn't out of the realm of ordinary. If you consider a company like Blizz with an already-established pipeline, funding, workforce, etc., their turn-around time for a new concept-to-market IP is likely 4-5 years (assuming nothing goes wrong)... not having all that pre-established infrastructure and funding in place just makes the process take longer.

Re: Bonfire Studios

Agreed but after a number of years there hasn't been even so much as an announcement (or a direction). There's more on their site about the Bonfire Book Club than there is about what they're doing. See for yourself.

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Originally Posted by crusadernero

maybe they dont bother rushing anything? Why would they? Do they even need to?

Depends on how strong their venture funding is. In most cases you don't have all that long to fool around and blue-sky projects.

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Originally Posted by Kumorii

Koraku already throwing shade at the studio.
https://kotaku.com/former-world-of-w...y-f-1847945629

Yeah, if current employees were primarily guild members in WoW, this is a textbook example of hiring 'bros'. We'll see if it works out. It's a little-bit tone deaf. There was another game studio that opened recently—the name escapes me—and their picture that went along with their 'Hello World' announcement had them all standing on a flight of stairs. All white, all male. I mean if it works for them that's really what matters but it's going to be noticed.

Hehe, I was reading an article about this today, the main focus of the article was the fact that no woman except the dog is part of the team

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Originally Posted by MoanaLisa

[U]



Yeah, if current employees were primarily guild members in WoW, this is a textbook example of hiring 'bros'. We'll see if it works out. It's a little-bit tone deaf. There was another game studio that opened recently—the name escapes me—and their picture that went along with their 'Hello World' announcement had them all standing on a flight of stairs. All white, all male. I mean if it works for them that's really what matters but it's going to be noticed.

Notice what? only people like you seem to see problems here, what does the colour or gender of the team matter so much?