I had decided not to post news about the “All Blizzard franchises will become MMOs” rumor even when I skeptically read it at major Game Networks; because strangely every single network would link to F13 blog rather than do their own news coverage.  When you get only one source for such a BIG News, something is usually non-kosher. To me sounded fake.  Trust me, with a news of such magnitude and impact, Vivendi and/or Blizzard would invite big guns in the media such as New York Times, GamesIndustry.biz, CVG to publish the news rather than make a closed-doors announcement … specially if there is no official Press Release at blizzard.com

Now that Blizzard is denying the rumor—that is news and may serve clarify to the fans that have seen this rumor go wide and beyond.

To those who have been under a rock, yesterday every single major gaming network posted that Vivendi told Wall Street representatives that Blizzard franchises would follow the MMO model: World of Diablo and World of Starcraft and that they have a development model to create MMOGs for $50 million in under three years.  Someone at the official forums brought the topic, to which Blizzard Representatives answered the following:

Drysc: “I believe this was a misquote. We haven’t announced any specific development plans beyond the upcoming expansion for World of Warcraft, and we don’t have any intentions to focus on only one genre or platform with our future games.”

EnoYls (Rob Pardo): “Nothing in that rumor is true in regards to Blizzard. If I had to guess, there was some confusion between what Vivendi has planned for its its game division versus what Blizzard has planned. While Blizzard is owned by Vivendi, their game division operates seperately from Blizzard”

Now what was then told to Wall Street to initiate the rumor?  The Cesspit, aware of the rumors and finding out the source, kindly have shown screenshots of the charts and slide-presentation shared to Wall Street – intended for financial analysts.  The last image shows a table demonstrating the Franchise potential of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo, separating them in two categories:

  • Dark Blue: Launched
  • Light Blue: Potential

It is this graphic which stirred the rumor.  Starcraft and Diablo are highlighted in Light Blue on the MMOs column and Console column.  Again, this was meant as a Wall Street Financial Analysis, and not as an official announcement that all franchises would follow the MMO model.

At most, speculatively, it could be interpreted as a potential to be developed as an MMO and a Console game respectively and/or simultaneously. Far from an official announcement to fuel a rumor. [Digg] [Wowbreak]

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