Three veterans of Blizzard and Blizzard North spoke at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, and among their talks was a heated one about Diablo 3. But the trio also talked more generally about Blizzard, and one of the topics that came up was the closure of the much-loved Blizzard North.

Blizzard North was originally founded as an independent studio by Diablo creator David Brevik and was one of the few studios that could effectively work with Blizzard in an era when most outside projects were cancelled. 2005. The decision to close the studio in August continues to haunt some to this day, even though Blizzard absorbed much of its key talent and began developing more Diablo games.

The closure came up during the panel discussion, and Jay Wilson talked about when "they" closed Blizzard North, with Uelmen doing music and sound design and Jay Wilson becoming the lead designer for Diablo 3 in various roles.

"By the way, 'they' closed," Uelmen said. "According to Wikipedia, Vivendi or the French made the decision: ...... Don't believe the business history you read on the internet, business history is always stupid and wrong, it only takes 5 minutes to find out who owns what.

Wellman further explained the reality he saw. [The French did not close their studios in 2005. WoW was making more money than the CIA selling crack in 1988, and [Blizzard co-founder and president] Mike Morhaime, who I liked, had all the money and influence in that situation." How it was handled might not have been inappropriate behavior. It may have been the right decision at the time."

Matt Householder, a former Blizzard producer, added with a bit of a chuckle, "We at Blizzard North called ourselves 'BN' and Blizzard South 'BS.'"

"Ah, the unkind [term] that Blizzard headquarters has for Blizzard North," Jay Wilson laughed.

Near the end of the panel discussion, a question was asked about an even bigger event in Blizzard's history: the impact of the Activision acquisition and the creation of Activision Blizzard. This question was answered by Jay Wilson, who was present at the time.

"Activision's impact on Blizzard was like a frog in a boiling pot. 'Early on it felt like nothing. Then, as the business model for the product progressed, it got bigger and bigger. ...... New products, products that were profitable, were under enormous pressure to produce......

"Like Heroes of the Storm: they were just crushed in meetings with Activision, always talking about revenue and how to get more out of it...... Diablo 3 wasn't affected much because we had a very solid premium box model."

The surprising fact and result, or one of them, was that Activision had a very clear idea of the one product that could make the big bucks. Wilson was ready to move on from Blizzard, but he had been there since the early stages of integration, and certain projects kept being raised.

"Before I left, there was a lot of talk about Immortal. 'They were talking about Immortal, but it hadn't really started. They wanted a free-to-play 'Diablo' very badly: ...... And I didn't (laughs). Of course, by that time I had moved away from 'Diablo' ......"

The larger impact, according to Wilson, was that many of the great senior leads who had built Blizzard began to peel away, outraged by this different approach. And with them, certain attitudes changed.

"[Activision] had a huge impact on all of these business models, in my opinion, because a lot of the upper management people who left were unhappy with all of it," Wilson said. 'I don't think they made those products better. There are many bad things about Blizzard, and many great things. But the best one is ...... When I was at Blizzard, they had a saying, 'We always want to be the guy in the white hat.'

"So if we're going to charge players something, of course we're going to charge them. So that was in direct conflict with a lot of (Activision's) thinking."

The full panel talk can be viewed above, and you can read what Wilson had to say about the "Diablo 3" auction house and why it wasn't as easy to remove as you might think.