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 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?
That would certainly explain why the MMO genre is so diverse: they don't copy each other's ideas.
As a Six Sigma, and LEAN, Green Belt I would probably say that making a good MMORPG is more of an art than a science. Six Sigma is purely scientific. You could develop and operate an MMORPG and be within the threshold of Six Sigma for all possible technical factors and yet the game could be absolutely horrible. This is because Six Sigma is poor at measuring the key factor of an MMORPG: fun.
You could use Six Sigma to support business functions and to identify problematic areas in places like project flow, server uptime, and programming, but in the end it's only really just support for the artistic vision that is the real backbone of the MMORPG.
And let's face it, plenty of MMORPGs are successful without needing Six Sigma uptime or coding defect rates, etc.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Is there a warcraft 4 coming?
Perhaps instead of allowing everyone to bot, the 'need' to bot should be considered more. Botting generally serves two purposes: 1.) To automate the 'grind' and 2.) to acquire resources to the players advanatge.
1.) Many of these botters see the grind as an impediment to the endgame, this relies on the player thinking that they're winning the game (a seperate argument for persistant world based games). Traditionally this has been confronted by adding more interesting content to these level ranges, risking alienating older players/characters leveled too high to make use of the content, or forcing the game to institute a system where the player may go back and experience the content from these earlier levels (ostensibly negating the leveling progression as obsolete)
2.) Those that bot to acquire in game resources do negatively impact the game world by artificially inflating the in game economy and progressively widening the gap between haves and have-nots.
These are not new issues, they go back to the original deployments of telnet based MUDs. Perhaps it can be argued that the current model of prohibition has failed since these problems are still around. And as such it should be asked if any concepts have been considered for addressing the cause rather than the symptoms. Have any alternatives to the repetitive gameply formula currently in place been evaluated and show potential for any actual implementation?
-=Bang Bang=-
That's 10 million+ active accounts, not subscribers.
Many hardcore players have at least 2 accounts...
I think that would be one of the (accidental) moments you'd be most proud of. It was an incidental feature that brought about behaviors that are very similar to the real world. It can be hard to design such things intentionally.
Obviously a bug, but I think most people thought it was cool.
I would hardly qualify Corrupted Blood as disastrous or disheartening. On the disaster scale, even if you got infected repeatedly, it meant no more effective downtime than a bad day of server maintenance. Once you get past that, I think it was pretty cool to watch it spread. Death in WoW does not normally inspire fear or trepidation, but with Corrupted Blood you saw some very serious and unusual consequences, albeit for a short time.
WAR PvP is largely consensual unless your on the open server. WAR PvP system has been one of better ones to date in fantasy setting.
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.
Anything that gets you a picture on the cover of Science can't be that big a disaster.