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.
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=-