Slashdot Mirror
Ask Blizzard Employees About Things That Matter
In just a few days, some of us will be making the trek to this year's Blizzcon event in Anaheim, CA. In addition to the interesting announcements, sneak peeks, and other distractions, we will be sitting down with several Blizzard employees to answer any questions you might have. So far we have scheduled some time with Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II; Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft; Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer on Diablo III; and Paul Sams, Blizzard COO. Please address your questions to one (or several) of these candidates and try to keep them civil and on topic. Questions about Diablo III's art style will most likely be omitted since we have limited time and that dead horse has already been beaten into submission. The usual Slashdot interview rules apply, but beyond that, the sky is the limit.
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: How does your team balance class, race & profession specific traits? I have seen the new trees for the expansion & I naturally have some concerns. But how do you measure when something is 'unfair?' Do you measure in game reports, analyze logs, play them yourselves? What is your strategy?
To Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II: How do you balance races, units, health, damage, effects, et cetera?
My work here is dung.
Owned by an evil company?
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: Do you feel that Blizzard's dominance hurts other MMORPGs? Do you see yourself in direct competition with the other studios & products? Do you ever play these games to see what has been reused or what is new? Do you ever feel like another MMO has extended from World of Warcraft? Do you owe any credit to previous MMOs that have influenced your creations?
My work here is dung.
I want to know what the answer is to life, the (warcraft)universe and everything.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
To Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer on Diablo III: Where do you find inspiration for designing Diablo III? Even though I was young, I was always impressed with the darkness and feel to Diablo I & II. Do you turn to novels? Fantasy artwork? Your own imagination? What are your influences?
My work here is dung.
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: What has been the most disastrous or disheartening experience in your time as game director for World of Warcraft? Duping, gold, farmers, MMOGlider, barrens chat, server failures, what?
My work here is dung.
To Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II: We discussed Warcraft III being played on a table top a while ago. Do you see this technology taking off in the near future? Are you planning to do any testing with your manipulation of units to see if this will be a possibility for gamers? Do you think this will ever be commonplace?
My work here is dung.
To Paul Sams, Blizzard COO: What is the hardest thing in managing the operations of what is arguably the largest MMO? At 10,000,000 subscribers, what are your number one concerns? What challenges do you face in an average day?
My work here is dung.
To Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II: Are you planning on a population cap in Starcraft II? I assume this is true and it has been something that annoyed me, even if it is a soft cap. I understand that building the perfect army is more desirable than meat grinding a thousand of the same unit but what is the function of a population cap? I understand machines used to have severely limited resources so it was necessary but what about now?
My work here is dung.
To Paul Sams, Blizzard COO: Has Blizzard achieved Six Sigma? Is this even important in creating MMO software? If so, how do you apply it exactly?
My work here is dung.
To Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer on Diablo III: How do you determine the enclosing size of a world or level/map for a game? I have played many games and those that have an 'open' feel to the world seem to possess more possibilities for me. Games where I could go out and get completely lost were much more exciting than a game like Warcraft or Diablo II. How do you determine whether you go with a 'closed and finite world' vs an 'open seemingly boundless world?'
Are there any books or resources you recommend that discuss/explain game world design?
My work here is dung.
This is towards Chris Sigaty: With the addition of MBS(Multiple Building Selection) and auto split (Mining workers) do you think that a lot of the hardcore fans (including myself) will feel that the game has been made too easy for people to play? What new things have you added to Starcraft 2 to compensate for making everything easier to do to appease the hardcore fans? I understand that you are trying to reach a broader audience but it was the little things like splitting the workers at the beginning and macroing through your unit production buildings manually, turning collision detection off on your (probes, scvs or drones) etc ... that made Starcraft such a good game it was easy to learn and it is near impossible to master, I've been playing since it came out and I'm still learning tricks to help win games.
GL HF!
For Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer on Diablo III: what mice do those at Blizzard use for Diablo III? Some industrial, made of titanium, super-reliable mouse with smooth right and left clicking action? Or do you run through mice like an Amazon through Tal Rasha's Tomb?
Will Diablo III introduce any new mousing techniques, like perhaps middle clicking, or triple left clicking? How about support for right and left mouse wheel clicking available on logitech and microsoft mice?
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
This is directed at Paul Sams:
A few years ago my account was banned for botting through parts of the game that are terribly tedious. I am not admitting or denying guilt regarding this, but I do have two questions for someone in your position:
1) Can you unban accounts
and
2) Can you unban mine?
On a side note, (this might be more for Jeffrey Kaplan) make things less tedious! ;)
Thanks in advance!
-MobileMrX
This will never happen, but I'd like to see the first Warcraft Open Sourced. I'm referring to the DOS warcraft I from 1994.
I'd rather ask about stuff that matters. Where did I get that from ... ?
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Throw it away, no studio takes suggestions like that and not just because of legal issues (fear of being sued for doing anything similar to the idea even if they've thought it up independently, for example).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
And to follow up that question, how does it feel to bask in the glory of your defeated enemies, drinking their blood as they futility attempt to dethrone your empire, unsuccessfully and without any hope? Do you ever break out into song, perhaps in Orcish or Gutterspeak, to said victories, uncontrollably -- or have you become numbed by the whole experience?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Is there any possibility of there being an official port of StarCraft 1 to StarCraft 2's game engine?
To Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II: What is the current targeted minimum requirements for a computer that should be able to run Starcraft II, and what data are you working with that makes you comfortable with using that as a minimum for Starcraft II?
Any chance you guys could release the map creator for SCII prior the release of the game? I'd love to go into SCII with custom maps (Read: dota) ready to be played, and I think a lot of us who play custom maps more than the melee game would agree.
There is ample proof of WOW working (somewhat) in WINE, so why not work with the Linux community?
Note that I am not asking for Linux "support" as that is much more expensive a proposition. Just a supported or acknowledged linux community...
To: Paul Sams, Blizzard COO.
br Are you intentions to keep battle.net free for Diablo and Starcraft? If so, thank you, if not, what will you be offering that would justify the expense?
Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. This comment may not be copied in any way including, but not limited to caching.
Do you guys plan on answering the rest of the interview questions (make this one first) like the last interview we were given at Blizzard?
Just want to know now so I can tune out of the rest of the questions if the answer is "yes". Thanks for the help Blizzard!
...in bed
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: I notice that in a lot of ways the next expansion is almost throwing out the old WoW systems and replacing them with something radically (for WoW) new (much of the class balance, getting rid of the CC/DPS distinction, gear consolidation, etc). What's it like to commit to making such a big change when you've got a hard deadline to meet and millions of fans who'll hunt you down :) if you wreck the game? How do you evaluate whether it's going to be a good thing or not before committing however many resources it takes to redo (and then test) things?
With PC gaming dying (Netcraft confirms it)[1], what is Blizzard's take on consoles?
While a game like StarCraft wouldn't work on a traditional console, the argument can be made that Diablo and World of WarCraft could be made to. (There exist crappy little "chat" keyboard controller addons which answers the "keyboard question." Plus all three next-gen consoles support USB keyboards.)
Any thoughts on porting existing games to consoles? Or developing a console-only game?
[1] That's a joke for anyone that missed it. There's an (old) troll about how BSD is dying based on Netcraft's figures. So, no, I don't think PC gaming is really dying.
I'm fan who got left behind when you guys moved towards story based and online games. Will there ever be another RTS game from Blizzard?
Side Note: The reason I never tried the online games was because of the immature community on Blizzard.net when playing the older games. Matchmaking just worked way better for me when handled outside Blizzard's scope of control.
To Jeffrey Kaplan,
Why is there such a negative attitude towards bots and the makers of botting software. The usual arguments of gold farming don't cut it - if everyone has the ability to bot then the value of outside gold sellers automatically deflates.
I don't buy the negative effect on other players argument either; It creates an equal advantage or disadvantage if regulated instead of taking a total prohibition to botting.
It would not be unreasonable to think that botting can coexist inside of MMO's. In fact, I think it could enhance the experience much in the same way that autopilot enhances flying: It didn't replace the pilot, it just allows the pilot to take a more managerial role when needed.
http://www.accelerateglobalwarming.com
Chris Sigaty: Are there plans to support simultanmultiple displays in StarCraft II? (like how supreme commander supports 2 monitors)
I would build a PC with 4 cards and 8 monitors if SC2 supported it!
Can you explain how loading a copy of your software into memory infringes on your copyright? If I load a million copies of your software into my computers memory have I infringed your copyright a million times? Can you estimate the damages I would need to pay you for loading a copy of World of Warcraft into my computers memory a million times using an unauthorized method?
Thanks.
To Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II: Will it ever be a fourth race in StarCraft II? And why didn't you kept all the units from StarCraft I?
2+2=5 for really big values of 2!
Will Starcraft 2 have DRM or any kind of home calling "feature"? If yes, do you honestly believe that it is going to solve the piracy problem beside just annoying legitimate users?
From what I have learned about Diablo III is that you decided to do away with the classic potion system. No more stacking potions and using them rapidly when your health is drained by some (tough/horde of) enemies. I can understand that you wish to abolish the "inventory obsession" that sometimes plagued D2(haven't played D1). The problem is that the potions were a reaction to rapid health loss by a player. This is all too common in a D2 because of the hordes of enemies and relative high speed of the game.
My question is: Now that you have abolished the potion system in favour of the "health(or mana) orb" system, aren't you afraid that this will affect the speed of the game? The fact that you lose a lot of health was part of the exciting rush in the game resulting in the player always being alert to any danger. Will that Diablo feel persist or will this be a real breaking point in the Diablo series?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
That would certainly explain why the MMO genre is so diverse: they don't copy each other's ideas.
To any of the interviewees: do you ever get tired of being so awesome and kicking so much ass?
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Is Diablo 3 going to use any of the Warden rootkit technology to police online play?
I find being offended by me offensive.
I was once a Blizzard friend from Warcraft 3. I didn't know you could lose Blizzard friend status by not betaing a game(The Frozen Throne). I was busy writing my own MMORPG or I would have betaed TFT better. I was the first to 1500 wins in Warcraft3. I'm worried I won't get into Starcraft 2 beta. I have high hopes for SC2. I want to help beta the game, and I want to later go pro with it too. I'm strong with game balance, and you guys considered me for a game design position for WOW at one point. Can Blizzard give me back my friend status?
ScreenName:CrazyJim
Email:James_Sager_PA@yahoo.com
And if you have time for a 2nd question: Do you have any original Activision/Blizzard titles under consideration?
God spoke to me.
I have been trying to reach Blizzard for the past 3 months and have yet to get a response. Email, Webform, telephone... nothing works. They just won't respond at all.
"Computer Scientists can count to 1024 on their fingers" (non-mutant, non-mutilatated, human computer scientists)
To Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II: has Blizzard ever considered making Battle.net pay to play given the success of World of Warcraft?
There is more gamers using linux on PC hardware
then Macs gamers. Give them quality games and they will play it on linux.
Why Blizzard can't see this growing market?
-Bob
To all:
We've all seen the fallout from EA's decision to put heavy-handed DRM into Spore. What is your position on DRM and its place in gaming? Do you think it is fair that a single-player game require an internet connection in order to phone-home for anti-piracy reasons?
Thanks.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Linux users have been able to run WoW very successfully using Wine and Crossover. While Linux represents a small share of total WoW users, Crossover works equally well on Macintosh. Using Wine completely obviates the need for expensive Mac porting, whether it's done by rewriting libraries or through a framework like Transgaming's. Transgaming, at this point, is widely regarded as technically inferior to the free Wine, even for running games like World of Warcraft. Wine, however, works very well, and some users even report superior performance than under Windows.
Has Blizzard considered porting their games to Mac using a Wine-based solution supported by Codeweavers? A Linux port comes as a free bonus from doing this, and if the game already runs well in Wine the entire port can be done at very little cost.
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: World of Warcraft has been very successful. However, when one has success it tends to paint a bullseye on you. Besides competitors targeting you, how have you dealt with the increasing "World of Warcraft sucks" backlash? (E.g. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=world+of+warcraft+sucks)
To all:
What is your position on cross-platform computer gaming? Is there a viable market for MacOS and Linux gaming in your view?
Thanks
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: Now that you've prevailed against the published of the Glider software and (via precedent) earned strange new powers to control the software your customers can and cannot run, are your users enraged or merely apathetic?
Further, how much has this activity hindered the gold sellers your product is lousy with? Zero percent? Five percent (MoE +/- .05)?
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
Sorry, but nobody cares about ideas. Ideas are cheap. I have several every day. Why is your idea so much better than the ideas, complete with workable implementations that the designers have?
Is it cold in your office?
Go go Gadget Nailgun!
Christina, from New Zealand, then I suggest that the question you ask should be:
"Can I have a blowjob?"
She's a master of the craft.
For many, loot is one of the most enjoyable parts of Diablo series...but I wonder if you plan to keep this fun while at the same time limiting those a bit not so fun parts of looting?
(few ways in which this could work, I imagine: automatically filling available "backpack/chest space", without the need to manually rearrange items; grouping items in distinct categories; perhaps even "miniteleport" to send items and money to your chest one way (by drag&dropping them on miniteleport item/book for example) - with items "lost in the void" for example if the chest is full, so it won't be too easy; if you rely on Deckard Kain for identification, let him identify things that are in the chest (if he'll be present nearby; ofcourse you still have to manually initiate identification; etc.)
One that hath name thou can not otter
To all Diablo 3/Starcraft 2 Staff:
WHEN??????
To Jeffery Kaplan: Is there any concern from your team that Achievements could have a negative effect on the game? I lament what has happened on consoles where people are buying and renting trashy games just for 1000 more imaginary points. This gives "life" to bad games which should be ignored because of their awfulness. I'm already seeing this happen at 70 but I am worried this could be a problem in where level 80 players are doing distracting if not stupid stuff just to have a check box checked.
Sorry to put this in inappropriate palces But its important for everyone:
Maccain On Health care: .." That's right, not unlimited health care but unlimited premiums can be charged by insurance companies. Amazing that no one picks up on this ???
Listen to his speech carefully.
At the point when he talks about insuring sick
people he actuall says ".... unlimited premiums
How did it feel to get fired by Vivendi?
With the focus on cooperative play in Diablo III, How much bandwidth will it consume? In Australia, we have very restrict usage caps; the same thing is slowly being introduced to the US. This means the total data used by games in Australia (both up stream and down) becomes a very important commodity.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft; there are several add-ons to WoW that filters almost 100% of all gold-selling and leveling spam in WoW, with next to no false positives.
How come that you don't want to (or know how to) implement this in the default WoW setup? Why don't you just place a lvl. 5 hostile NPC on the road between Northshire and Goldshire? Have you estimated your monthly income from the gold/leveling spammers monthly fees? Is this the reason you don't do anything about the spam?
There's no doubt you guys could be successful forever by continuing to make games in the warcraft/starcraft/diablo universes, but have there been any discussions about doing something totally new?
I think a lot of us who play custom maps more than the melee game would agree.
If you're still playing melee, and you want custom maps, it's probably time to upgrade to brawl.
To whoever: There are a lot of quests in MMOs. Many of them are designed for single players.
Why? Why make a Massively multiplayer game and then try to shoehorn it into a single player game?
What specifically will this entail? Will these be limited to the Bioware [Good/Evil/Mercenary] decisions, or opt for the VTMB/The Witcher system of [no right choice/moral grays]?
Also, how much impact can we have on the world if the dialogs are optional?
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
Why do you hate hunters? For four seasons, hunters have been the ugly stepchildren of arean play, despite a few exceptionally skilled players managing to play hunters. The problems with the class are exceptionally well known but (it appears) it's more important to appease rogues and warriors and make one of the most popular classes in the game dramatically inferior to all others. Why? And do you honestly plan on addressing it or is there a quiet desire to keep them low on the totem pole of balance to encourage players to switch to other classes to even things out a bit? (And, yes, I have been following the upcoming changes in Wrath but I have yet to see anything that suggests that hunters will become more viable in arena play and, in fact, have seen several things that suggest hunters will become less viable (pets being insta-gibbed, for example)).
You could ask them if they plan to release a Linux-compatible DIII-client. Although we all know the answer - no - frequent inquiries about linux compatibility might rise an eyebrow or two. I already asked one of germany's biggest starcraft fansites to ask them about a SC2 linux client (which Blizzard denied, of course). So if even Slashdot asks about Linux compatibility, they maybe might rethink their position about linux compatibility for future games (faint hopes coming up...) ;)
My Blog: "sum it up - News, emotions and science"
Will any Role Playing aspects of your previous outstanding games, like Fallout or Vampire - Bloodlines show up in Diablo III?
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
To Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer on Diablo III
One that hath name thou can not otter
Has anyone at blizzard every played a real MMO instead of WoW?
Is there a warcraft 4 coming?
I have played WoW for several years now, and am impressed with how you have managed to integrate a backstory into the game setting, but not make it necessary for gameplay. Its there if players take an interest in it, but if they just want to go into a dungeon and kill things that's okay too.
I have a question regarding the plot and how stories are driven. Is this a game setting that is established by committee? is there a single source or individual who has final say over plot elements? Do you have a vision of the story that tracks several years out from the present? (e.g. you're planning 1-2-3 expansions ahead, you know where you're going?).
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Mod parent -1 Unfunny
How does it make you feel to know that your work has become very intergrated into lives of your players? For example I know that there have been occassions where two players who meet in World of Warcraft go into fall in love and get married? I would also say for the majority the experinces of these players are good and positive ones, however there are also negative ones such as addiction that leads to cutting off the real world in ones life.
I ask because I spent over 3000 hours grinding characters with my brother on a LAN, and still don't have any sort of reliable (lag-free) internet connection at home.
Will there at least be some sort of Open Battle.net on which we can use mods and/or play single player characters?
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
To Leonard Boyarsky: Why isn't real money allowed in Wow micro-economy? Do you Think it's possible to create a MMO successful as Wow with no monthly fee? What do you think of players being to create their own items, or at least change, to some degree, the design of existing ones?
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: Do you have a team of people that look at world legacy content with an eye for keeping it new and fresh? For example, the tower outside the Alarian Stronghold has been burning for three years now... The bridge over the lake in Redridge Mountains has also been under constructio... wait, nevermind! That is pretty realistic right there. The librarian leading around the school kids always says the same stuff, etc. I really dont _know_ how hard this stuff is to update from month to month, but it _seems_ that this might be an easy place to add in a little sparkle and keep the back-story current for the main plot. I know that it's polish instead of new flashy content, but I think it would be worth it.
For Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole): With Blizzard always concurrently developing their games for both Windows and Mac, are we ever going to see any distribution of Linux supported natively? With Linux being not far behind Mac in usage and the fact that Blizzard has already done most of the hard work with maintaining an abstract cross-platform code base, it seems strange that - at minimum - World of Warcraft has not had a native port to Linux.
To Tigole or Paul Sams:
Before the release of World of Warcraft, the (US)MMO market was thought to be saturated around a peak of 500,000 players. Following its release, WoW has shattered that misconception and then some.
Now that WoW has 10+ million subscribers, do you believe the MMO market has reached its peak, or do you believe that there is still room for growth?
Also, with WoW being such a giant in the market, do you think it's possible for another game to reach WoW-level-of-success without the downfall of WoW or the release of another MMO from Blizzard?
Look at the battle.net versus bnetd debacle to find the answer to that. They will maintain control of their products post-sale through whatever means necessary.
To Tigole: New dances and emotes, are we ever going to get them for World of Warcraft? Blizzard collected feedback for additional emotes back in fall 2006 and we have yet to see a slue of new ones added. As for dances, it was mentioned in the initial press released for Wrath of the Lich King and then went silent.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Will Leeroy [Blizzcon07] be there again?
While looking at your employment notices, I saw that you were looking for people for a next generation MMO (From your site : Software Engineer, Server - Next-Gen MMO http://www.blizzard.com/us/jobopp/mmo-software-engineer-server.html). It surprised me at first because Blizzard own such a great part of the MMO Market and I did not see the use of creating a new product when your first one is such a commercial success.
I know that this project has not been announced yet but I was wondering what was the logic behind that ? The only guess I have is that the new project is dramatically different and will appeal to an extremely different crowd.
He had a baseball bat, and I was tied to a chair. Pissing him off was the smart thing to do. - Max Payne
This is my question too. I don't have mod points today so my only way to indicate how significant I find this is to post a follow-up.
My version of this question and Blizzard's insane distortion of copyright law into something completely unrecognizable would not have been framed nearly as politely as the parent has done.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Why do you not have a better plan for keeping older players interested in your game.
In the expansion you are offering certain incentives for new members to join, however I feel that you lay the older members off to the way side, the ones that suffered through your numerous patched and
problematic servers at the beginning, the ones that have been paying 15$ monthly for the last 5 years, those are the ones that made you rich and should be justly rewarded.
To keep me interested and to try different classes, offer the character bonus, if you already have 1 lvl 70, creating another character(any class) could offer your new character better xp then normal.
Meaning it would take half the time to lvl another 70, then if after this one, you could half that time again, listen I only have 1 70, and cant afford to keep paying you to try new story lines based on class....i guess I will just live through my friends druid to know what a druid feels like...
unless you offer something better for the long time players.!!!
What do think is the proper mix between
Gambling (low-drop-rate quest items, boss drops, this year's brewfest mounts)
and
Grinding (kill quests, badge gear, last year's brewfest mount)
?
To Jeffrey Kaplan: What's it like being a proverbial drug lord?
Warcrack, indeed.
(HiDef "Fellow Terrans" speech would be amazing.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
Why are there no black people in World of Warcraft? Are you guys some kind of racists? Or maybe all that Norse mythology went to your head along with the Esoteric Hitlerism?
Can I get a response from blue? No, I'm asking about anything important, that couldn't be answered by reading the thousands of existing answers to it. But I just want to hear from blue! Blue! Blue!
To Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II: It is my opinion that Starcraft is the greatest game ever made. The only problem with this game is that "hackers" have created their own software that modifies the game so that they can cheat, for example: see the whole map with no "fog of war", cancel zerg larvae and receive 1000 minerals, nuke players from across the map without having to sneak a ghost into their town, etc... This hacking is an enormous problem in online play. It ruins the game. Patches have been released to defeat 'hacks', but hackers respond by creating new 'hacks' = ( Are you allocating resources and energy into making the game more difficult to hack?
To Tigole
Will there ever be a faction wide chat channel in WoW. If not, why not? The old LFG system was the closest it got to a faction wide channel not specific to location. Then this was "nerfed" with the release of the LFG tool. Now, trade is used as a semi-universal chat channel in cities.. but obviously doesn't work while not in cities. It's fairly clear to me that the player enjoys and wants this and it is simple to implement. Why does the WoW development team not seem inclined to implement this?
"The usual Slashdot interview rules apply, but beyond that the sky is the limit." So, now questions regarding StarCraft II then? I got the feeling that will be an odd interview for Mr. Chris Sigaty...
I have two questions. I appreciate very much the fact that you guys support Mac OS X out of the box. Indeed, I enjoy playing WoW on a Mac far more than I did playing on a Microsoft Windows box. Will you ever consider doing native (OpenGL) support for Linux?
My second question is about the weather. There are several zones that are always covered in snow, Winterspring, Dun Murogh, etc. You have rain effects in the old world, how come it never snows?
To Paul Sams:
Does Blizzard have any plans to create any new franchises or expand into any new (to Blizzard) game genres after Starcraft II and Diablo III launch?
Where exactly is the USB key with the "Sword of a Thousand Truths" right now?? and exactly how is it guarded??
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
To Jeffrey Kaplan,
Is there any chance at all of having a Jabber (or something else open-source) instant messager interface for at least whispers, but perhaps guild/officer communication as well? Would make arranging raids and such while we're at work a lot easier where we can't run the WoW client but can run Pidgin or Trillian. :)
To Paul Sams the COO: It seems that Blizzard has become dependent on several big market properties (Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo), does Blizzard have plans to release any new properties soon?
To Leonard Boyarsky: Part of what made Diablo I and II great was the way the world expanded as the game went on, from a small town, to a jungle, to a desert, to Hell, etc. How do you plan to expand the World of Diablo for this installment compared the previous two?
And, if so, when can I get my frostsaber and Nightelf Mohawk Barbarian?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
WOULD U HURRY THE **** UP???????? sorry i had to, please take your time.
To Chris Sigaty,
Are there any plans to release an early version of the SC2 editor, to allow map makers to make UMS or regular maps ahead of the game? I can understand if you want to protect certain content, but I'm just frothing at the mouth to make the next Turret Wars.
Finding a group for an unpopular instance, a lower level instance, or *any* group on a low population server can be very difficult. I would like to see cross-realm instances. After all, cross-realm battlegrounds seem to work well.
Please don't bother dragging on about loot "ninjas" or unaccountability across realms either. I just want to go to, say, Strangle Fang Keep and have enough people to actually fill the group (with everyone in the correct level range.)
Why did Blizzard use the might of the Federal government to kill BNetD?
Do you believe PC gaming is dead?
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
When it costs more with DRM than without it (lost sales and lawyers) companies will pick no DRM. I think the pendulum is starting to swing that way.
We all know WoW's financial model is based on retaining subscriptions.
Fans love that the content keeps flowing, and often say that it's the main reason they stay with the game. They have friends and guilds in Azeroth and enjoy playing with them.
Critics (recovering addicts?) say the content is repetitive and, ultimately, pointless. They say the community as a whole is disorganized/disadvantaged on the casual end, and too demanding on the hardcore end.
When planning and testing new content, how much of a focus do you put on moving the genre forward and getting new players into Azeroth?
How much of a focus do you put on simply dangling the carrot in front of current subscribers by increasing the level cap, adding new armor sets, etc.?
To StarCraft II guys: Are you going to release some specification of the replay format for StarCraft II so that software can easily analyze it? Software like BWChart that measures different game statistics can greatly benefit from that. Also websites that allow replays to be uploaded would be able to easily (i.e. no reverse engineering needed) extract informatio from the replays.
What challenges do you face when you need to moderate massive forum content continuously being posted by players? How do you keep up with the moderation efforts required? Also, are the public forums a preferable way to communicate feedback and ideas from the players to the developers and back? Sometimes a little transparency goes a long way to put people's minds at ease, so how do you decide whether to communicate certain ideas and trends to the players or not?
To StarCraft 2 guys: Do you intend to provide any API for third party developers to get player profiles, single game information, etc. from Battle.net? This will allow the creation of better fansites and custom ladders.
I recently downloaded Starcraft directly from the Blizzard store because I lost my old discs for the game and some friends and I had the urge to play it. So, my question is, since you opened up the new store and offered digital downloads of your older games, are there any plans to use this to distribute your new games (Such as Diablo III or Wrath of the Lich King) through this avenue?
My question is about Starcraft 2, but feel free to apply it to Diablo 3 if you think it's appropriate.
Assume for the moment that I choose to exercise my rights as a U.S. citizen by reverse engineering your network protocol and writing my own server which interoperates with your client software. After I publish my work, which jurisdiction will your lawyers sue me under, and why?
(I'm hoping it's not too much trouble for you to consult your legal department on this one.)
Is Blizzard comfortable with their world PvP system? Arena play is fun for a while, but the dynamic nature of capturing a zone or assaulting a fortress is exciting and would fit right into Warcraft. More importantly, it would give players something to do while waiting in a queue. Turn that broken tower in Hillsbrad into a battlefield objective, whadya say? And let me enter a battleground or Arena queue without visiting a battlemaster so I can return right to where I left off!
Some theorycrafters put up some calculations in wow europe forum, regarding the dps difference in between pure dps and hybrid classes.
over time, it seems to be boiling down to just 15% difference.
thinking that hybrids bring in much utility to the game, and, taking into account the fact that whereas a hybrid can have much more content in terms of playstyle, because they have different options for playstyle. (a shaman can heal or spec to caster, or to dps with enhancement for example. it just takes at most 50 gold to respec for anything).
this leaves pure classes a bit in the rain. their only differentiation from a hybrid class that can do much more is just 15% in dps. the only thing they can change in regard to playstyle is the style they do dps, through their talent builds.
dont you think that is a bit being unfair to people who rolled pure dps classes, or pure classes even ?
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Do you feel like failures as game designers when people pay extra to not play your game? Do you feel like you're losing revenue by getting out of bed every morning? Why bother living?
To Jeffrey Kaplan: I'm sure your teams are very aware of R.A. Salvatore's series of books involving Drizzt Do'Urden and his viewpoint of his racial history and his disagreement with it. Is there any possibility of WoW incorporating some type of engine to allow players to choose a change of allegiance (WRT Alliance/Horde) with the opposite faction? (IE: A Blood Elf choosing to fight for the Alliance, etc.). I'm wondering if after reaching a certain level (say level 10 or 20 and limiting the choice to only a few levels thereafter (6 levels, perhaps) that the player could choose to permanently change allegiance to the opposite faction.
It could be argued that since the game-making powerhouses behind the Diablo1 era games have moved on, Blizzard has been inadequately clawing to stay at the top of the mountain of excellence. How do you feel about Blizz corporate throwing away most of gamers remaining goodwill by its inapparopriate and heavy-handed litigious bludgeoning of the creators of BnetD and MMO Glider?
FGD 135
immediately relinquish all the social rights you have against your government that were won for you by hippies in the 60s. better to get beaten to oblivion by police brutality, than get associated with the 'smelly' hippie in the corner, isnt it ?
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As a long time, hard core tabletop RPG player, online "*RPG" games so far do not interest me. In my view, an RPG is more than a wide range of character races and classes set in an environment which is essentially a first person shooter/slasher with some largely static and repetitive quests thrown in. Eye candy isn't a selling point for me; playing in an environment which more closely resembles the fully interactive, freeform environment of tabletop games is what I've been waiting for.
What are the issues (hardware, AI, network, players) which prevent this from being achieved in online games whose genre lays claim to the RPG moniker?
To Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II: It is my opinion that Starcraft is the greatest game ever made. It has one gigantic problem on battle.net: hackers have been able to create software that modifies the game, i.e.: seeing the entire map with no "fog of war", cancelling zerg larvae and receiving 1000 minerals, nuking anywhere on the map without having to sneak a ghost into an opponent's camp, etc. This ruins the game. Patches are regularly released to fix problems, but hackers respond by creating new hacks. I want to be re-assured that a significant allocation of resources and energy is being dedicated to making SC2 intractibly difficult to hack.
Question for Paul Sams: Is Blizzard/Activision pursuing any development efforts with Jordan Weisman and/or Smith & Tinker?
he is saying allow botting for everyone. so everyone will be able to bot. instead of you grinding that gold manually in 10 hours, bots will grind it for you, like anyone else. since there is an amount to how much grind that can be done even in automated fashion, there will be a cap to the gold that enters the market every day.
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I started playing WoW this spring and stopped this summer. I was hooked to an unhealthy degree, and it was negatively affecting my professional and personal life. I quit cold turkey, and am very happy I did.
I know there are mechanisms built in to the game to encourage logging off (daily quests, rested experience), but those aren't as much of a motivation when you hit 70, and there's plenty of dungeons, raids, bg's, etc. to keep you playing.
What, if anything, are you guys going to be doing in WOTLK to help the weaker-willed players such as myself enjoy the game without ruining our lives?
but judging from the mac users on the net and in my life, i can say that they are rather on the raw end of the stuff related to technology. and generally use their macs for loading music to ipod, creating albums, and resorting their playlists and whatnot as a normal user.
i really dont think they are a force to be reckoned with in online gaming.
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Since the announcement of the official Bejeweled addon (although they should use the existing gem icons for it), i've thought they should take it one step further and integrate a quick stripped down version of the original WC in the game to play before raids and things.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
we should beat chris with a thick stick, for creating 'evil paladins of light' with the blood elf paladin concept. for the first time in any major lore, light is affiliated with some party that is on the evil side -> remember blood elven chose to side with head villains of wow to acquire the mana they need, and this is also reflected in the intro of tbc doing evil.
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In response to Warhammer Online hitting the shelves, Blizzard re-aired their year-old commercials about b-list celebrities who "play" the game. Aside from that, what else is Blizzard doing to keep Warcarft in the minds of current players, and to get into the minds of prospective players?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft :
I just visited the new daily quest zone you created in north of azeroth for allowing players to earn cash.
i have seen from the daily quests that with a few hours, you can make mind boggling amounts of cash each day.
it is only rational that, if you had ramped up the gold that npcs pay for those quests, and minimize the gold/items that drop from the npcs on that island, using a bot to farm gold would be totally pointless, because there is a limit to the amount of gold you can generate through mowing down any amount of mobs or farming resources, even if you use a bot. furthermore, it is impossible to repeat a single daily quest for a character, making it impossible to use a bot for repeating a quest. not to mention that you made quests complex enough so that only humans can cope.
so im asking why you felt the need to sue glider. was it the game developers' decision, or was it the decision of some jerks in legal/financial department.
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I'd like to ask why there is so much emphasis on end game content, especially in new releases in World of Warcraft. As a fairly casual player, I don't have time to join a serious raiding guild. Therefore, once I max out on levels, there's not a lot for me to do. I enjoy PVP, so that's about all I do at max level. On top of that, they keep making it easier to level up, further promoting the grind and race to max level. End game content is important sure, but so is the rest of the game. Why doesn't Blizzard add more middle game content? More low level dungeons, more things to do? Other than PVP, the only other thing that keeps me interested is leveling up alts to learn different classes. But that gets old on the same old content and even the same old classes. Why not keep leveling up the same difficulty or harder, but add more mid content? (Remember when having a level 60 was a BIG deal?) Now 70's are a dime a dozen, and soon to be 80s. With the exception of end game raid content, instead of being more challenging, it seems to get more dumb down with each expansion. What's your response to my comment?
Now that the MDY/Glider issue has been dealt with, can you get strict enough to laying down the law on regions known for botting/farming and keeping them quarantined in their own area? I still see too many advertisements for RMT outside of game to think there has been much enforcement (as opposed to a certain new competitor's focus on immediate enforcement).
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Is there any reason to believe that Blizzard is going to take any of these questions seriously, unlike the last Blizzard interview that appeared on slashdot?
Are you concerned about the arena becoming the pvp equivalent of raiding? That is to say, the one blessed path to endgame progression, and anyone who doesn't enjoy it be damned?
I will admit my bias: I canceled my account three days ago over just this issue, after playing for over four years. I spent a long time being frustrated by getting only second-rate pve content because I wasn't interested in raiding; I would have canceled long ago, but I found and began enjoying pvp. Now I'm seeing pvp deteriorate in the same way: the same monomania on one very small corner of it, to the detriment of everything else.
The raiding/pve issue has never been solved to this day, so I'm afraid I see little hope that the arena/pvp issue will be. Or can you offer us any assurances that it might someday be possible to pursue these broad facets of the game without needing participate in the extremely narrow subset of them that have been deemed endgame-worthy?
to Tigole: When testing balance changes for world of warcraft, do you first focus on pvp aspects of skills or do you balance the pve side first? Do you run any statistical testing, or any AI-automated arena matches, for example, when trying to balance classes? Finally, when will murlocs become a playable race?
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
StarCraft and WarCraft have shipped with a very powerful map editor that has allowed independant gamers to create excellent games. An example is the Defense of the Ancients (DOTA) mod. Has there been any thought to releasing similar modification tools for Diablo? If not, why?
I welcome our new 99% overlords.
for this is a question i would like to get an answer for.
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When will Blizzard apologize for blowing BNETD out of existence, start a foundation to fund further public BNETD development, and make payments to the former developers in recognition of Blizzard's bad treatement?
Until that time, I and hundreds of others, will continue our boycott of all blizzard and blizzard partners' products.
Both Diablo II and Starcraft (along with Warcraft III) have seen very active modding communities. Will blizzard be supporting mods in Diablo III and Starcraft II? (e.g. through the release of tools, editors etc)?
The idea of "grinding," or having a player repeat certain actions to reach a certain achievement in a game, has a generally unfavorable reputation. At best, grinding is relaxing or unnoticeable, but at worse, it is tedious, boring, or even addictive (in a very negative way).
When the selling point of a competitor's product, such as Warhammer Online, is the fact that it promises less grinding, I think something seriously strange is going on in the MMOG world.
My questions:
1. What has Blizzard learned about grinding through its previous products, like The Burning Crusade's diverse supply or reputation awards? Will this experience be reflected in future products, and if so, what ways?
2. Casual players, by and large, avoid grinding. Do you develop a game with two types of players in mind (casual and hardcore), or do you focus on one and provide concessions to the other?
3. Is the elimination of grinding a worthy goal for MMOGs? Is it even possible? If so, what forms would it take?
I'm sure Blizz has another MMO in the works. Can you give any details? Is there any hope for World of Starcraft? (Plsplsplspls!!!!)
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: What has been driving the recent, seemingly drastic changes to World of Warcraft? Wrath of the Lich King is being released much earlier than expected and there has been a recent announcement that arenas and world PvP will be scaled back in favor of more battlegrounds.
Those poor bastards, they have us surrounded. Now we can fire at them in all directions!
I mean, you got NVidia and ATI drivers for both platforms, plus you have the guys at Hot Head Games doing high-action 3D Linux games (Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness Part 1, 2 just announced and previewed). You also have Linden Research (Second Life) being the closest thing to a Massive Multi-user Online Role Playing Game (in this case Massive Multiuser Online Social Gathering Game) while hitting the 3D card almost as heavy as Crysis -- all after switching from DirectX to OpenGL. You also have id Software releasing for Linux, Mac, and PC.
So, there's no excuse for not releasing for Linux and/or Mac. When will the ports be out?
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# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
To Jeffrey Kaplan:
How is raiding relevant in WoW anymore? You have a well established pattern now of basically 'giving away' all the end game loot and content via nerfs and such mid way through a release cycle.
Now, I am not complaining because I feel I have some sort of right to be part of an 'raiders only' exclusive club. But I can pretty much see all the game content now by subscribing for a month when the expansion comes out, and then for another two months 3/4ths of the way through a release cycle.
SSC and TK? Pretty much a massive waste of six months play time, with badge gear and PvP welfare epics.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
YMMV, but my experience of most pure DPS class players is that you can't get them to do anything that is class specific that doesn't add to their DPS meter somehow. The only class we have to nag for buffs during raid is the Mages, and if you think they will interrupt thier cast sequence to decurse, think again.
Most of them chose to play DPS because they want to see big numbers. Hybrids wanted variety, or at least the illusion of variety - you still need to respec and build the gear set to actually perform in any given spec, most hybrids cant switch roles at the drop of a hat - it takes planning.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
What is best in life?
This space for rent
To the WOW crew (Tigole and whoever else has an answer):
Do you ever plan on increasing the appearance customization for characters in the game, where not all (for example) tier 6 hunters look almost exactly the same? Perhaps by letting us choose to substitute existing graphics from other pieces of gear for those found on the "tier" sets? I know there has been a repeated wish on the part of the devs to make it easily recognizable what level of "progression" someone is on by looking at, for example, their shoulders and helm, but wouldn't it be equally desirable to allow players a chance to customize based on their own personal tastes, instead of wearing whatever has the best stats, without giving up the game mechanic advantages of wearing the higher powered gear?
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: Do you foresee the number of WoW players growing against the backdrop of rising unemployment / current economic implosion?
Well I woke up this mornin -- got out of bed.
Looked outside and -- seen the dead
competitors to my company -- cryin mistrust
I grab my axe and I stroke my cocke.....
~riff~
More than a feelin
(more than a feelin)
As I see my stock dwindle away...
... against people who reverse engineer your games?
Will we ever be able to play an officially ported version of Starcraft for the Nintendo DS? The stylus input system serves perfectly for strategy games, the minimap could occupy the top screen, flash is cheap enough now to be able to store full FMVs and audio, wireless support could use Battle.net, etc. It would sell like hot cakes!
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
Trollish, but there's a real question hidden in there:
Do you play other MMOs, looking for ideas? What looks interesting?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
First to Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole).
- What range of latency do you design the game around for pvp?
- With the metrics that are gathered, do you record latency, occurances of placement misses (targets behind you, out of range) and factor this in when making changes to classes for pvp balance?
Secondly to Paul Sams, Blizzard COO.
What would it take to have the oceanic servers hosted in Australian?
As I'm positive that there are several ISPs (apart from Telstra or Optus) that would bend over backwards to have the privilege. And there is no clear answer that I've been able to find stating why from any employee of Blizzard on the WoW forums. While I suspect that it might have been because of issues with Telstra, they could be dealt with via the ACCC.
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
No doubt; I'd love to hack apart the code for Warcraft. IIRC (I was 10 at the time) it had an awesome engine under it. I love old game code. Those guys had things figured out 15 years ago that I won't have thought of until 15 years from now. It's actually humbling, as a software development student in college, to see this stuff. If this stuff is never released, it'll suffer bitrot, and that would be a shame.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
How will the multiplayer experience via Battle.net change with Starcraft 2? For example, will an online community portal exist to manage gameplay stats and coordinate match schedules?
To: Paul Sams, Blizzard COO. Why after 4 years is Blizzard still unable to justify placing servers in Australia for Oceanic players when Warhammer is able to go live with Australian based servers from day 1?
Despite the fact that they're owned by a multinational with annual sales in the billions and voracious shareholders, they feel they've made enough money on their most successful property, and are thinking of going in a new creative direction: sewing kits for middle school girls. After that, maybe shutter the WoW datacenters and use them for the world's best air-conditioned homeless shelters.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
When you lay out all you money and roll around naked in it, do you ever worry about infections?
I even have mod points, but I am the top of this thread... Argh! Talk about frustrating!
I'm just curious, blizzard, with how you see WOTLK, or any mmo for that matter, working without distinctions beteween classes.
I also want to know why you're not properly implementing your own stated policies to prevent raid stacking.
If people want healers, they're not going to take my warrior, hunter, or warlock. Clearly we need healing spells too.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Have throwing lawyers at any (mostly open source) projects in any way related to your games (bnetd, freecraft, starlite ds) had any noticeable effect on sales?
They're very receptive to new ideas from their creative team. From you, not so much. Ideas are a dime a dozen. I have several good ones before my morning shit. What matters is a proven ability to deliver consistently good ideas. You don't get your ideas considered until you've paid your dues and earned your way.
To Jeffrey Kaplan (World Of Warcraft):
Given that tunnelling tests (lowerping, internode) have shown conclusively that Australian players experience an artifical ~200ms latency increase due to the network in the US,
are Oceanic players ever likely to see servers actually in the Oceanic region?
Would blizzard consider forcing an across-the-board latency for all PVP encounters?
ie, a US team against an Oceanic team in Arena would have their latency artificially increased to match the Oceanic team
To Jeff Kaplan (WoW):
In WoW 1.0 it was very difficult for casual players to participate in end game content. For those that did make the investment, their achievements were wiped away by the whitewash approach 2.0 took to gearing.
2.0 allowed casual players to participate in a rich end game, but the balance between the hardcore and casual players was still way off.
3.0 is set to whitewash the days/months of end game investment players have made during 2.0. This annoys me, and I am seriously beginning to wonder why I should keep playing.
Are there any plans in 3.0 to:
a) just allow players to participate in PvE end game content without grinding lower level PvE content or PvP content; and
b) prevent all the investment people make during the life of 3.0 simply being whitewashed by 4.0?
To Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer on Diablo III.
I've been playing Diablo 2 (and d2x in particular) for a long time and have been very much enjoying that game. But I've seen a very disturbing trend with d2x:
* Hell difficulty in single player is close to impossible, except with a few characters and very, very high-end equipment;
* some very good items are realm-only;
* some drops are way too rare, and the only chance you get to complete a BotD for instance (Breath of the Dying, VexHelElEldZodEth) is either to accumulate a four-digit-hours play time, use "item libraries" and edit your character, OR trade online.
The problem is, I don't play online, I don't WANT to play online, I'm not interested AT ALL in playing online, and I don't have 1000+ hours to spare, even for d2x. So, guess which solution I chose.
So, I'd like to know whether this trend will continue with Diablo 3, or if, at the opposite, there will be close to no difference in playability and good drops should you choose to play single or not.
To Paul Sams, COO:
You have designed a global, massively used, high bandwidth computer system that maintains the state of several million users + provides for a computer AI interaction. How is your physical and software infrastructure designed to provide for this kind of access to that many simultaneous users, around the clock globally? How is maintenance and repair of your computer systems managed--you can't possibly get enough done in the scheduled window of downtimes. How have you distributed your datacenters to provide for the greatest reliability and accessibility? What are the specifics of your computer infrastructure, and how do they connect to your storage systems?
What direction do you expect to take your computer infrastructure in the future?
--
$tar -xvf
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women!
What's your opinion on the liquidity infusions and euro bank bailouts - do you expect libor rates to be a good indicator of an increase in money supply and do you expect that to lead to an inflationary environment over the longer term?
Are there any plans to release play-station compatable Blizzard games?
To Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer on Diablo III
I believe one of the most exciting features of Diablo III, which made the distinctive difference between D3 and WoW is that there are no character stereotypes. The same class can be developped in so many different ways. Although there are cookie-cutter builds, there are several more which are viable and fun. How do you cope with the balancing?
They asked them about politics and the current global economic crisis? I'm asking because if they were just talking about games...it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
"Ask Blizzard Employees About Things That Matter"
*talk about games*
FAIL
Will there be more quests in ROTLK that require you to collect animal turds? Can't get enough of those quests.
Thanks
To anyone who can answer,
In the 90's Blizzard was one of the very few game companies that also supported Macintosh and continues to do so till this day. This early support has given Blizzard a positive image and strong foothold on the rapidly expanding Mac community.
Linux is already a strong desktop OS and I know alot of people whose only excuse to staying with Windows are the games or even only WoW. Then there's those of us who settle for playing under Wine, this works but there are some annoyances and the performance leaves a lot to hope for.
Could you please start supporting WoW (and all upcoming Blizzard games) natively on Linux? Thank you.
With Blizzard's outstanding reputation for cinematic cutscene production and massive game lore in several well-established game universes (Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo), will we ever see CGI feature-length or animated series productions?
there is an over 20 pages long thread in eu forums discussing this issue. it is a valid issue. i wonder which idiot modded this down.
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Is it true you are going aiming for a release on Handhelds?
Why are you supporting sub 640x480 resolution screens.
You can still se everything at QVGA.
It you aren't removing all fine sturcture to look like at cartoon why are they doing it?
Where do you stand on the current tax laws in the US? What about offshore oil drilling?
Oh...so sorry...it said 'Things that matter'...games really don't.
> Why is your idea so much better than the ideas, complete with workable implementations that the designers have?
I never said it was or wasn't. But they keep making games, which means the do need to keep grabbing ideas. I come up with both brilliant and idiotic ideas, all across the board.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
In World of Warcraft are there any statistics on how much time the average player spends traveling from where they are to where they want to be?
Is there any consideration for allowing veteran characters [level 70+] to teleport to any flight path location in the older zones like Azeroth and Outlands? We've experienced them already and travelling them now is largely tedium.
For WOW - Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole)
Is there a plan to implement a Spectator mode for Raids? One part would be the fun of watching (and learning) raid tacticts for both in-guild and outside use. The second part would be for the Raid Leader(RL) use. In such case, RL would not have to control a character but would only oversee the raid. I mean, in any advanced raid, leading and controling a character at the same time is borderline impossible. I know from music that there is a reason there exists a conductor. And it's not the easymode position.
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: Currently the battlegrounds are imbalanced due to character "twinking". It makes it difficult for players without high level characters or that do not belong to a guild to play in the battlegrounds. But, what is even more imbalanced about the battlegrounds is a large organized team vs. a PUG (pick up group). When you are on the side that is a PUG there is no point in playing if the other side is composed mostly of guild members that have the advantage of talking over a vent server as well as experience playing together.
Why not make two battlegrounds? One for large organized groups to match up and one for PUGs. It would be simple to implement. If you are in a team of more than 4 people your team gets queued into one battleground. If you are part of a small team (3 or less people) or are on your own then you get queued to a completely different battleground. As I said before if you are in a battleground and your side is a PUG while the other side is composed of a guild, there is no point in playing. You will lose...badly, and most likely, in Warsong Gulch the guild side will stop at two flag captures and camp your grave yard racking up kills. Where's the fun in that for you? And where is the skill in that for the guild side?
forethought: People like to play together, but high level characters and low lever characters have no play synergy whatsoever, they can "roleplay" and chat, but any challenges for one will be either too easy for the other, or a completely undoable obstacle.
question: Have you discussed implementing a system where a high level character could lower his level to play with his lower level friends, or somekind of a system to increase play synergy between high levels and low levels?
followup: The new "heirloom" items are very interesting in that regard, but they don't increase playability with a high level character you perhaps already enjoy playing with. To be able to grab that character and play with your low-level friends and have it challenging and fun would be increasing that playability.
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Extra question: Can we have a cute red heart as a new raid Icon? That'd be awesome.
In games that is. In the real world: Stop it!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
My wife has been playing WoW for more than a year and I miss her terribly, as do our 2 young children. Do you think that I'd be able to see her, or at least talk to her again soon? Sincerely, A WoW Widower.
Can you make the leveling process more tedious please? I mean, can you give us more kill 1000 of that thing and then when you're done kill 1000 more? Oh and please make it like in Borean Tundra (I'm in beta) where there are only 10 of that mob spawning and hundreds of players waiting in line to kill them?
And please stop trying to 'balance' the classes because you are not doing a good job at it. Here's an idea, is it possible for you guys to just revamp all of the talent trees and make 1 for pve, 1 for pvp and 1 for when you're bored? we have 1 class that's just like that.. why can't you do that to all of them? And please don't use the lore as an excuse.
The only good thing that I've seen in beta is the phasing. Will we see more of that throughout the game? or is it just something that you guys added to make me feel good for spending 40 bucks?
To Paul Sams/Jeffrey Kaplan:
I realize this might be a bit outside your realm of expertise, but you recently experienced some down time as a result of maintenance by your upstream network provider, AT&T. Given the subscriber levels and revenue (and the fact that there is frequently "scheduled" downtime anyway), how can Blizzard not have redundant network paths to avoid just such a thing?
Surely with the amount of traffic generated by WoW and associated products there are deals to be had on that front. As someone who has (helped) run a similar sized network in the past, I know it can be done - in fact it was considered a necessity.
https://comerford.net
I'd like to see Blizzard build some sort of utility into the game that allows people to form groups for instance runs and set them for specific times, basically a calendar function. I know there are add-ons that do similar things but I'd like to see it built into the game more like the "looking for groups" utility except this would allow you to logoff and come back for the scheduled run. The minmum number of players, levels, classes, etc could be custom set. Not all players have access to guilds big enough to support regular runs or even raids.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
lets see :
a race (orcs) that happen to have the addiction to instantly become slaves of any head villain that pops up. their culture is of conquest and brutality.
a race that eats corpses. undead. living with unholy energy. and sought to destroy ALL life on the world.
a race that sold itself to villains to acquire mana. went basically evil WILLINGLY. blood elven.
a race of cows that are in alliance by situation. no comment there.
a race that is described as 'vile and vicious' by blizzard at one point in character creation screen. now they have changed it. they are trolls. nothing vile and vicious can be not evil. not only that trolls are evil since the early celtic myths of 8000 years ago.
so, basically its all a load of bullshitty make believe by many horde players saying that 'horde is not evil'. just a cover not to admit that they are basically playing an evil faction, just out of the need to play something badass. badass wannabeeness.
Read radical news here
Why are you such a no-talent ass-clown?
How do you form your team of designers?
Wich qualities and skills specify for the entry of that designer into the group of creature, weapon and spell creation?
To Jeffrey Kaplan: I'm completely baffled why there are such things as 'RP' servers in your network, when in reality they are exactly the same as 'normal' servers, since Blizzard makes no attempt to enforce RP-ing (and how could they anyway?) in WoW.
[rhetorical] Was this just a deliberate marketing ploy to attract old-time MUDders like me? [/rhetorical]
Enlightenment? It's just a flush in the pan.
Tigole,
I heard you were looking to buy a Prius. I wanted to let you know that I'm building a car that handles like a Porsche, gets the same gas mileage as the Prius and has the cabin and trunk space of a Suburban... all for the same price as the Prius!
Interested? I call it my hybrid class car.
You have done the following in the upcoming WOTLK expansion:
- normalized raid buffs such that any given "buff" can be obtained by more than 1 class/spec
- normalized DPS such that all DPS classes can DPS equally well
- normalized healing mechanics such that each healing class/spec has a way to provide some sort of single/group heal
- allowed hybrid classes to perform the role of tank/healer/DPS as well as any other class in the game.
- allow each class to have 2 separate specs to alternate from (shortly after the expansion)
Now, I'd like you, Tigole, to explain to me why I should play anything other than a paladin or a druid (hybrid classes) in the expansion?
Why should I play a mage or a rogue? They only bring 1 thing to the table (DPS), whereas the paladin and the druid bring equivalent DPS AND can tank and can heal.
For that matter, why bring a Shaman? They can only fill 2 slots. The same is true for Death Knights and Warriors (tank/dps).
Why not just give every class 1 tank spec, 2 DPS specs (melee and ranged) and 1 healing spec?
to whoever, Will blizzard see fit to use DRM to annoy legitimate users like spore does? (even if the DRM is not fully cracked to allow normal play initially, it WILL be cracked to allow people to play the game to some extent soon after the release) Will Diablo III make it impossible to beat the game on closed battlenet without playing with other people? I usually play online with D2 alone, but I enjoy it when a few of my friends happen to be on when I am so we can play together although having to arrange to be online with friends at a certain time to for me to advance in the game would ruin it for me. the massivley single player online role-playing game appealed to me, so the ability to play the ENTIRE game by myself is important. Will blizzard see fit to charge for online play with SC2 and D3, and if so what benefits does that charge bring over the free battlenet used for D2
What about the zerg balance..
Get back to work and stop goofing off on slashdot for cryin' out loud. I needs my SCII!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Is there anything you have done to avoid the problems like: bots, spam, dupe and item/gold shops? Or is it going to be same as Diablo II in 1-2 years. I see you have given up on Diablo II and it's pretty much not playable in public games. It's sad to see so good game has turned in so bad state. I hope Battle.net v2.0 will solve some of these problems. Now that you have milked a lot of money from cashcow game WoW im pretty sure you can affort to update Diablo II, but i wonder why nothing has been done? It's still a good game and many wants to keep playing it, but most of my friends hate the spam and all the "hacks" so they look for a fun elsewhere...
To Chris Sigaty -
StarCraft is one of the top five games ever. I don't know what the the other four are but I know StarCraft is one.
I was excited at the thought of another game but also concerned it could never be as good. New units in 3D have already been done, but I bet you haven't shown all your cards.
The only thing that could make it worth while is the option for RTS and FPS together. A First Person point of view like very few have done (Savage). Can you please verify for fans whether there will be a First Person point of view in StarCraft II?
Thanks,
Not Really Anonymous
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: Why dont you have any dedicated servers physically located in Oceania? What with all the money you guys are raking in each month i dont see why you couldnt give something back to your dedicated fanbase down under by placing a server in say melbourne! >
Testing and balancing maps takes time. I created a few Tower defense maps, and my best one (Traps & Towers TD) took something like 9 months to get it working well.
There's no way they'd get DotA balanced in two weeks.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
To Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II,
With the popularity of UI modifications in World of Warcraft, are there any plans to include the ability to modify your UI in future games such as Starcraft 2? I for one would appreciate the ability to customize my UI, and I can see this getting popular fast in competition.
Directed at anyone who'll answer it - Why was the Linux client cut from the final release?
Few know that there was a Linux client that shipped with the original beta versions of WoW (~0.9)
file WowClient
WowClient: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.0.0, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped
ldd WowClient ./WowClient: /usr/lib32/opengl/nvidia/lib/libGL.so.1 (0x55580000) /usr/X11R6/lib32/libX11.so.6 (0x555e8000) /usr/X11R6/lib32/libXext.so.6 (0x556b3000) /usr/lib32/libexpat.so.0 (0x556c3000) /usr/lib32/libfreetype.so.6 (0x556e2000) /lib32/libz.so.1 (0x5574b000) /lib32/libpthread.so.0 (0x5575c000) /usr/lib/gcc-lib/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/3.3.4/32/libstdc++.so.5 (0x557af000) /lib32/libm.so.6 (0x55889000) /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/3.4.3/32/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x558ac000) /lib32/libc.so.6 (0x558b5000) /usr/lib32/opengl/nvidia/lib/libGLcore.so.1 (0x559cc000) /usr/lib32/opengl/nvidia/lib/libnvidia-tls.so.1 (0x560a4000) /lib32/libdl.so.2 (0x560a6000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x55555000)
linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000)
libfmod-3.72.so => not found
libSDL-1.3.so.0 => not found
libGL.so.1 =>
libX11.so.6 =>
libXext.so.6 =>
libexpat.so.0 =>
libfreetype.so.6 =>
libz.so.1 =>
libpthread.so.0 =>
libstdc++.so.5 =>
libm.so.6 =>
libgcc_s.so.1 =>
libc.so.6 =>
libGLcore.so.1 =>
libnvidia-tls.so.1 =>
libdl.so.2 =>
So, to reiterate - why fight Linux when there was a working client?
No, but I did throw granola at a deaf person once
I would pay through the nose for a Linux or BSD version of Starcraft 2, but only if it worked as well as the Windows version. What is being done to make Starcraft 2 equally available to users of all operating systems? Similarly, what if anything is being done to make Starcraft 2 fully playable on lower-end systems, particularly those without powerful video cards? One of the things I like best about Brood War is that I can play it on a lower-end laptop, which only supports integrated graphics. Will it be possible for me to do the same with Starcraft 2 (will it be possible to turn the graphics down low enough?) or would you be asking me and players like me to buy new systems for this game?