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NYT on World of Warcraft
The New York Times (registration required) has a piece on Blizzard's World of Warcraft, discussing the game's popularity and high sales. The article also examines the design processes that go into the game, and the artistic outlook of the WoW live team. From the article: "From around a dark, windowless room, nine young men peered into the unfinished virtual interior of Karazhan, a haunted tower set in a forlorn mountain pass that will open later this year. 'As you can see, the architecture is a little ornate, a little Gothicky,' said Aaron Keller, a 29-year-old designer, gesturing to the 3-D model on the computer screen before him. 'We're thinking about turning these arches into horse heads.'
And to beat the inevitable rush of complaints, the Hardware issues are much improved over release. When speaking about the World of Warcraft everyone seems to have selective memory. There hasn't been a majorly anticipated MMORPG launch in the history of internet gaming that didn't have bottlenecks.
What have they done that they are good again?
They released World of Warcraft.
Just because someone decided to use the software for that purpose doesn't mean that the sole intention of the developers of the software was to pirate games. Give me a break. I've used it to play StarCraft games with a legitimately purchsed copy, so don't try and say that it was soley for pirates. I guess nobody remembers the times when the chances of getting a decent game on the actual battlenet servers was crappy at best. That is why it was written and used.
I haven't purchased or played a Blizzard game since and I own all of their titles previous to the incident. They lost a lot of repect from me that day.
While it would be unfair to say Blizzard's art department doesn't receive enough acclaim, I think they deserve every ounce of good press and more besides, Blizzard is one of the few developpers out there that uses the quality of their art to act as a central element of their game engines. While the game does sport some noteworthy techical specifcations (pixel shaded post-processing, dynamic distance polymorphic (no pun entended) LOD, and some very sharp specular lighting effects) it is far and beyond their unique art style that makes it such a beautiful game. And style needs no hardware requirements, only taste =)
"You directly helped Blizzard with balance issues in Warcraft 3? I thought you designed the game......"
No way man, I had no hand in designing it. I just pointed out a ton of imbalances, and was rewarded with Blizzard friend status from my frequent feedback. It was barely a game at beginning of beta, just a bunch of units with semi-random statistics. Its fun for me when a game doesn't choose to balance their game because I can find imbalances like no other. I was winning close to 100% of my games at start and as things became more balanced and everyone started learning strats, my winning % dropped down to like 85%. I definately would like to design games though, or do more beta testing. I like to be in the development process because I think thats where all the fun is. Once a game's strategies are known by all, the game either becomes paper rock scissors, a twitch fest or a fun psychological battle of wits. I think a psychological game is the best, but they're hard to achieve.
God spoke to me.
But most of you guys whine and moan on here before logging off to go play WoW on an MS Machine that you paid for with W's tax cut.
Hey Hey Hey...
I play WoW on a Mac.
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."