Blizzard-anställda har i åratal försökt skapa ett nytt realtidsstrategispel

Förr var realtidsstrategi (RTS) Blizzards i särklass viktigaste genre, men efter World of Warcraft, Overwatch och Hearthstone är deras produktion mycket bredare, samtidigt som de anklagats för att försumma sina rötter. Men tydligen har designers och kreativa hjärnor internt försökt skapa ett nytt RTS-spel i åratal - utan framgång.

Jason Schreier deltog nyligen i en AMA på Reddit baserad på hans kommande bok om Blizzard och avslöjade att Tim Morten, production director på Starcraft II, i åtskilliga år efter lanseringen av spelets tre delar försökte få till stånd ett nytt RTS-projekt, inklusive Warcraft 4.

"So, okay. StarCraft II did pretty well but it didn't meet the company's lofty expectations, and each entry in the trilogy did worse than the last. Production director Tim Morten led a plan to release new content packs in the form of Nova Covert Ops (which I thought ruled) but that didn't sell gangbusters either. Then SC2 went free to play and again did well, but not Overwatch or Hearthstone well. Morten and his team tried for years to kick off a new RTS, making all sorts of pitches and prototypes, from Warcraft 4 to even, wildly, a Call of Duty RTS pitch. (He was desperate.) But there was no appetite among Blizzard's executive team for a new RTS game. They held out hope that if WC3 Reforged was a massive success it might help open the doors for a WC4, but Reforged turned out to be a debacle — the company's first bad game and a blemish in Blizzard's history. So in 2020, Morten and some of his team left to form Frost Giant (and recently released Stormgate). Maybe under Xbox there's room for a small team to work on an RTS and release it on Game Pass or something, but these days, who knows."

Enligt Schreier lämnade Morten och resten av hans gäng Blizzard år 2020 och har precis lanserat sitt eget RTS-spel, Stormgate.