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That doesn't do much to argue for Hartgraves' claims, and they would be forgotten by now if not for the fact that he also said ''Starcraft II'' was under production long before it was officially announced. He also made several predictions about ''World of Warcraft'' in the same email, and most of them turned out to be accurate.
Hartgraves' Diablo III comments were echoed, or backed up, by a pointless obscure post<sup>[[#References|3]]</sup> GamingSteve.com, on February 3, 2006.
<blockquote>
I don't want to get any of my friends at Blizzard in trouble, so from instead of mentioning "Diablo III" let's call this theoretical game "Beelzebub 3" and instead of "Blizzard" let's call them "Snowstorm".
In the end, Vivendi chose not to make that opportunity available and accepted our resignations over the matter. But going forward, we look at this as a great new opportunity to start all over again doing something we love. Life threw us a curve but, to use a baseball analogy, we're aiming to drive it out of the park.
</blockquote>
Another major issue various of the Big Four have cited was that they wanted to get back to making games, rather than running a business. There were nearly 50 employees at Blizzard North in early 2003, and due to Blizzard's organization scheme and parent company, communication was difficult and the company heads had to spend far more time than they wanted to spend on management, company business, and other administrative tasks. Bill Roper elaborated on this to IGN<sup>[[#References|8]]</sup> on October 22, 2003, when talking about their plans with Flagship:
<blockquote>
We want to keep the company a lot smaller. When we left Blizzard North was up to two teams and was part of Blizzard overall. That was a lot of people to interact with and maintain ties with. We ended up getting in to much more management and much less making games. We want to get back to (as close as we can) spending all day every day making games, not figuring out how to keep 50 or 100 or 200 people all happy and working together. That's one of the bigger changes.
=Blizzard Job Openings=
Over the years there have been numerous job openings posted on Blizzard's Jobs Page that strongly hint at a connection to Diablo III. One was so obvious it made Gamespot's Rumor Control page<sup>[[#References|6]]</sup> on February 11, 2005.
<blockquote>
'''RUMOR:''' Blizzard is hiring developers for Diablo III.
==2007: Third Ongoing Projects Confirmed==
On July 13, 2007, Blizzard VP of Product Development Frank Pearce spoke to Gamasutra about the company's third team and their unannounced project.<sup>[[#References|9]]</sup>
<blockquote>
"Our global headcount is 2,700," said Pearce, "And most of that is customer service for World of Warcraft! In terms of development staff it’s probably around 350. World of Warcraft is about 135 people, 40 for Starcraft II, 40 for team 3, our cinematics team is about 85 guys. Then there’s sound and Q/A and that sort of thing."
==2007: Diablo Franchise will be continued==
In a video interview with IGN posted on August 5, 2007, Blizzard VP of Business Operations Paul Sams spoke about the future of their various gaming franchises, including Diablo:<sup>[[#References|10]]</sup>
<blockquote>
"Diablo ... well, it is obviously a very important franchise to us. And I would say, that as with Starcraft and Warcraft, we will certainly get back to it at some point. We are focusing currently on World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King and content associated with World of Warcraft and Starcraft II. We do have some other things in development, and we are not ready to talking about it yet, but what I can say is that we do love that franchise. And its something that we will get to revisit at some point."
