Check the full interview on Bloomberg
Three Teams in Concert
Blizzard previously made several pushes to hired more developers in order to expand their current teams, but as reported by Bloomberg, they now have infrastructure in place to work on two expansions at the same time from their offices in Irvine and Boston (previously the Spellbreak studio Proletariat), while a live team continues to develop patches for the current ongoing game.
This means three teams working on three separate expansions at the same time: the live team, which is dedicated to providing three more content updates before the end of Dragonflight (presumably on an eight-week schedule), a team developing The War Within (11.0), and another working on World of Warcraft: Midnight (12.0) all in parallel with one another. Bloomberg further cites an expanded roster of assistant game directors, who have been given more responsibility over staff and the authority to make key development decisions.
The live team handles content patches for World of Warcraft, which typically arrive every couple of months, while the other two teams are working on the next two expansions, which they refer to as 11 and 12.
“We’re doing things right now on 12 that under normal timeframe we would not be doing,” Hight said.
How Fast is too Fast?
These ambitious plans promise to deliver on the faster content cycle that Blizzard has been promoting for several years now, but exactly how fast can we expect them to come? In a separate interview at BlizzCon 2023, Associate Design Director Maria Hamilton said the goal was to conclude the Worldsoul Saga before 2030, which would suggest a faster than two-year cycle, after The War Within releases toward the end of next year.
“We don’t want to rush people to the next expansion,” Hight said. “But we also don’t want to drag things out longer than necessary.”
“We’re building these foundations, and it’s already working,” Longdale said. “The team worked incredibly hard, and it’s paying off.”
