Ex-Blizzard Developers Reveal Net Strategy

Last March, three senior developers at Blizzard left unannounced projects there to found the Triforge development studio in Seattle. Today, Triforge announced that it will develop its upcoming game with direct Internet distribution in mind. The company has also changed its name to Arena.net to reflect its focus on building a multiplayer community center and its new shift to Internet game distribution.

"We believe the name change to Arena.net, with its image of gamers battling against each other in an online forum, makes it very clear that we're spending all our energies to create a great multiplayer experience," said Arena.net co-founder Patrick Wyatt.

While Arena.net's first game is still in early development - it's currently scheduled for release after Christmas 2001 - the company is laying the groundwork for its online strategy now. Arena.net expects the initial download to be a respectable 30 to 50MB, but the additional content will be streamed over the Internet as necessary, making the paying download an evolutionary process. By avoiding retail publishing, Arena.net expects that gamers will enjoy a noticeable price savings and have a game that can be continuously extended and updated.

Arena.net has also announced that Dr. Brett Vickers, formerly a professor of computer science at Rutgers University, and Josh Davidson, who managed several game projects at the Microsoft Game Division, will join Arena.net's early concept team. The founding members of Arena.net - Pat Wyatt, Mike O'Brien, and Jeff Strain - were responsible for key Blizzard projects such as the first Battle.net, the Starcraft map editor, and the Warcraft III 3D engine.

Judging from these latest shifts and the team's Battle.net experience, it is obvious that Arena.net's first release will have a heavy focus on competitive online play. Unfortunately, there are few details available at this early date.