A new Orange County-based independent game development team called Notorious Studios was unveiled yesterday. It was founded by nine former Blizzard veterans, including Chris Kaleiki (former Systems and Class Designer on World of Warcraft for 13 years, Designer of the Monk Class and the PvP Talent System), Cole Eastburn (former Senior Visual Development Artist on World of Warcraft at Blizzard for 14 years), Colin Volrath (former Senior II Level Designer at Blizzard on World of Warcraft), Cort Keefer (former Gameplay Engineer at Blizzard on World of Warcraft), Doug Frazer (former Senior Gameplay Engineer on World of Warcraft at Blizzard), Eric Braddock (former Senior Artist on World of Warcraft at Blizzard), Jason Kanagaratnam (former Senior Gameplay Engineer on World of Warcraft at Blizzard), Robert Moodey (former Senior Gameplay Engineer at Blizzard), and Alex O'Konski (former Senior Server Engineer on Overwatch at Blizzard).
Notorious Studios is named after Kaleiki's long-standing guild. In a brief video presentation, he also hinted at the kind of game the studio is making, which unsurprisingly sounds a lot like an MMO.
It's a bit early to talk about exactly what the project is but some of the key elements of the game stem from our shared passions as a team which include core RPG fantasy, multiplayer gameplay, and great combat. We believe the power of games is to bring people together, in fact our studio name Notorious comes from our gaming guild of over 17 years, also called Notorious. My guild, like perhaps many of yours, has become an integral part of my gaming life and so whether it's just you and a couple friends on Discord or a larger community like a guild, know that we believe in the power of games to bring people together unlike any other medium.
Notorious Studios already received some funding from Riot Games, 1 UP Ventures, and Galaxy Interactive. It'll clearly be a long while before we get any concrete information and assets on the game itself, but we'll keep an eye out and report whenever that happens.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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