https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-01-22-vicarious-visions-merged-into-blizzard
Vicarious Visions studio will take over maintenance, patches, etc. of blizzard classic games. I’ve seen many negative comments about it, but I find it good news that they assigned a whole new studio of 200+ people just to take care of this games and hopefully treat them how they deserve. This studio answers directly to blizzard CEO, J. Allen Brack. Let’s see how they do.
Huh? From what I heard, this studio will be responsible for D2 Remake. Where does it say anything about maintaining SC2?
As far I know they will be doing what the other team was doing, but not sure about the specifics, for example, heroes of the storm still has a dedicated team. With sc2 I don’t know how they will do the things, but probably they don’t have a dedicated team for sc2 the news are ‘‘old’’ since the changes were done months ago when they announced that they would stop doing big stuff.I assume this studio only will do maintenance work for sc2., some blizz devs will gather info from pros to make the last four/five patches this year and the next one and that will be for sc2.
From what I understand they will eventually handle all or most classic games. SC2, SC:R, W3 etc, not only SC2. At least that seems to be the idea. W3 being the most critical right now, still no ladder.
Still no team ladder on BW:Remastered either. Which had been promised for years.
Sounds like gg, sc2 is on systems, till updates stop completely in 2-3 years
W3 is still getting balance patched so I dont know why most assume that they’ll stop with sc2, those are just baseless claims. There is a whole studio now dedicated to this games, this are good news.
The article doesn’t specify what VV is going to be doing specifically. It even makes a point to not specify what they’re doing.
There is another article on Bloomberg that alludes to VV joining the Bliz D4 team to make D2R, but thats about it. (The author of the Bloomberg article is known to be a bit of a drama starter/click baiter, so take the article with a grain of salt.)
As for SC2, back when Bliz announced the end of development, they also stated that they will continue doing season rolls and necessary balance fixes moving forward. We just don’t know who will being doing the rolls and balancing. But because there’s a separation of duties when it comes to a franchise’s teams, it’s possible it will be the same team that’s currently doing it. In other words, the dissolution of SC2’s development team doesn’t explitily mean that balance, QA/bug fixing, technical support, etc teams were also elimitated.
It explain the delay. For why protoss is un nerfed.
Not yet but it seems to be the idea. This studio was used for Tony Hawk and Crash Bandicoot remakes, so is to assume they want them to eventually handle all their classic games since is now merged with blizzard.
We should know the answer this year if we see improvement and changes in the direction of their classic games.
Yeah, it definitely could be where it’s going now that SC2 is essentially in the same state as the classic games.
I don’t know what to think of this. At one hand, someone will care about SC2’s maintenance (which we already knew), but what about SC2’s team ? Getting dissolved in order to develop a new game, or just being fired doesn’t quite mean the same for them. Nor for Blizz future. 
Balans will be good I tell you, new team will be even more knowledgable or they will listen to forum posters… (pretending I care anymore)
They sure as hell can’t do a worse job than Blizzard’s internal balance team who has been absurdly biased for the last year or so.
So I welcome our new overlords!
It is probably why the balance patch is so late. Protoss really is just out of control on the ladder. 42% of GM is crazy and it’s a wonder that there wasn’t a patch but now we know why.
I wonder if the balance’s teams mismanagement of sc2 affected the decision to give SC2 to this new studio. I mean they’ve let Protoss run rampant in GM for over a year now and keep using Serral as cover for the bad design.
They need to stop worrying about tournaments and start making the game fun to play! Protoss is just ruining the ladder experience. People only care about Serral because the game isn’t fun and he’s a convenient thing to complain about.
But the teams are barely doing anything. That’s why it is assumed they were eliminated. The vacation/no custom game haha FU thing a couple weeks ago was both inexcusable and unforgiveable. I think a lot of people uninstalled at that point.
Hmm, we should’ve known some would use the opportunity to trashtalk the devs regarding balance. Yet, according to Aligulac, PvZ and TvZ are within 1% from a perfect 50%, and PvT is within 2%. It’s not that bad at all, and been considerably worse in the past, so it’s unlikely balance is behind Activision’s decision regarding Bli²’s workforce.
Same for the servers issues during Christmas, moving a team on something else is a long term decision, so it’s completely improbable a recent event like this has anything to do with its motives. Maybe it was the transition period though ?
What’s more likely is that financial whereabouts are the ultimate motives of an enterprise’s decision ; and that either human resources were deemed too costly, either they were reallocated onto another project with more payback potential. Nothing to do with the 10 years old perceived imbalances some do invariably whine about.
But hey, if trashtalking the team who’s maintained your game for years while they can’t answer back anymore is the best you can come-up with ; sure, go on with the toxicity. 
The main cause was probably w3 reforged, that gives all the reasons you need to restructure the whole division. The solution of a completely independent studio that can handle all the games problems was always the best for me, so you dont have to bother other teams working on current projects.
SC:R also had many online issues and features promised that were never delivered plus the Art in some things could use a rework.
As for SC2, sure you can argue balance has been fine, but the design could use some fresh and creative new take for all the races, I have my doubts they would dare.
Worth to mention again this studio was merged, so is now an extention of blizzard.
They are not gonna touch anything, devs said long ago that they would stop doing big changes, they said at the infamous announcement some months ago that they are gonna support the game but not in the same way, when they wrote that, the changes were already done, so what we have now its what we will have in the future.
That blizzard post clearly says they’ll stop “producing additional for-purchase content” but they will keep doing balance changes.