Ex-Blizzard employee leaks everything on 4Chan

There was an information leak about Blizzard a couple weeks ago, and it never really got a lot of coverage. We at Esportsportal felt the need to go back and have a look at it. Before we begin, there’s no way to verify the accuracy of this story, so take it with a pinch of salt. A person who claims to be an ex-Blizzard employee posted on 4Chan recently, and in that post he leaked a lot of inside-information about Blizzard and all their current, upcoming titles.

4chan post, is this real?? from r/Blizzard

Here are some of the most interesting bits in his post:

• He states that the working environment and mood across the whole company is very bad.
• Almost all of Blizzard’s popular games are dying or are dead already.
• The entire company is focusing on Esports and they don’t mind sacrificing their casual audience.
• Anyone who hasn’t worked at Blizzard for at least 15 years got a non-negotiable pay cut or they could just leave. All this is because Activision wants to save money.
• The employees haven’t been given any leaves, whatever the circumstance may be. Employees are sleeping under their desks. A graphic artist has been put on paid leave as he was caught self-harming in his break.

Overwatch 2:

• Overwatch 2 is in the making now. The game is going to be just like Left 4 Dead but with the addition of robots.
• Overwatch 2 will have a couch co-op feature as it was very popular with Diablo III.
• Loot boxes will be replaced with direct time-locked purchases in a weekly rotation selection and strict seasonal “Buy it or its gone” sales.
• The game is set before and after the “Winston Home Invasion”. The memes about Overwatch being entirely a backstory was strongly taken to heart.
• Tracer’s girlfriend will die, and over time she will learn to heal after developing a romance with Widowmaker who has her own journey as the Talon brainwashing wears off.
• The McRee age plot hole is being retconned into him being one of 3 clones of soldier 76 in a metal gear solid reference. One of the clones is found murdered as a “story seed” for future content.
• Reaper is Gay.
• A third faction is being added to Overwatch 2. The leader of this faction is a “Techromancer” that brings the dead to life using nanites. Her Ultimate ability brings back dead players as bots to attack their own team for the remainder of their respawn time.
• There won’t be a massive game engine upgrade because a Nintendo Switch version is also in the works.

World of Warcraft:

• Nobody is allowed to mention Final Fantasy XIV in the office premises.
• Loot boxes were planned to be in the game but after Belgium, they were hastily reworked into an in-game reward coming in 8.2 or later.
• Level Squish is being tested for patch 9.0.
• The next expansion lowers the cap to 60 and level scales everything like the Elder Scrolls Online.
• World of Warcraft classic is going to dictate who is in charge of 10.0. If the money says one team is clearly more profitable, they’ll get the reigns.
• BC and Wrath servers are in the works as part of the “classic trilogy”.
• World of Warcraft has dipped below 1 million subscribers and Final Fantasy XIV just announced that they finally broke 1 million subscribers at E3.

Diablo 4:

• Diablo 4 went into sudden urgent production after the reaction to Diablo immortal. Reaction from the shareholders, not the consumers. The consumers’ opinions mean literally nothing to Blizzard.
• Diablo 4 is going to be a first-person shooter in the Overwatch engine. Diablo 4 is an absolute mess and they intend to “replace the vacuum in the ecosystem left by Destiny”. Blizzard essentially wants to release the “First Fantasy Looter Shooter”.
• The development of the game is not going well. Gameplay wise the developers can’t get the loot to drop properly and Anthem’s public response has terrified them.
• There will be 3 classes at launch and 5 classes are planned as part of paid seasonal content updates.
• Diablo 4 involves siding with the demons, as after a millennium of peace, the angels are now an authoritarian, all controlling regime who once again want to purge sanctuary.
• The tagline for this game is being workshopped as “Let out your inner demons” as the ult mechanic from Overwatch is basically a demonic-themed power up for each character.
• The final boss is a holy/light infused angel Diablo called Diabael Primus.
• The ending cutscene shows that all 4 games have been a setup. Diablo was a good guy all along finding the strongest Nephelim to prepare for an invasion from “The Void”.
• The game is expected to launch in spring 2021 on Project Scarlett, PS5, Blizzard’s battle.net and Activision’s upcoming subscription based game streaming service.

Hearthstone:

• The new project lead is not very popular with the team. There are lots of butting heads at the roundtable meetings.
• The user drop-off is staggering. No Blizzard game in history has fallen off this fast or this far.
• There’s lots of worries about loot box bills counting hearthstone packs as gambling. Rumblings in the halls that there is an experimental “buy dust, pay more to get more and save more” system with legendaries now exclusive to paid adventures.
• Hearthstone did not turn out as the Esport they wanted it to be.
• There were plans for a hearthstone VR but it has been mothballed.

Starcraft:

• Real Time Strategy as a genre is considered dead now. They tried to make it an Esport but it’s just not Brood War.
• A shooter was also planned to have a story with a live service element.
• Tycus Findlay survived the end of Wings of Liberty after Raynor shot him and left him in the Zerg Hive.
• Taken and partially rebuilt as a cyborg by “The Composer”, a shadowy beneficiary, Findlay led a 4 man black ops mission during the events of Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void.
• The planned ending of the retail campaign had Tycus in Raynors Bar, years after the end with a new enemy from outside the galaxy invading en masse -something comparable to Halo 4’s Prometheans, but more Geigeresque and codenamed “The Boilersuit Men.” Findlay’s communicator would show the composer’s sigil and end with a voice-over of “hell, its about damn time” to lead into the first season of paid expansion DLC.
• There were planned RPG elements such as upgrading more like a cyborg at the cost of humanity and losing dialogue options or integrating Zerg bioweapons into your suit which came with its own AI companion.
• The game is dead after the last paid season pass box for Starcraft 2 flopped, and Diablo 4 got heavily pushed as a looter shooter instead.

All this does not sound good for Blizzard Entertainment. And to be honest, I am not surprised if any of is true. But again, we will have to wait and see if any of this leaked info turns out to be true.