In a recent press release, Blizzard has announced that it will be laying off 600 employees worldwide. More information on the layoffs is included after the jump.
Though Blizzard has explicitly stated that World of Warcraft development team is unaffected by the staff reduction, it does admit that around 60 of the employees who are losing their jobs come from game development teams. The remaining 90% will come from other departments, with rumors indicating that the customer service department is amongst those that have been hit hardest.
As only a fraction of the development staff at Blizzard will be directly affected by this restructuring, the company has indicated it does not expect the move to influence its release schedule.