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.

Comments

Classes, Races & Professions

[eldavojohn]

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?

Re:Classes, Races & Professions

[Digital Vomit]

This question has pretty much been answered publicly already. To quote one of the developers:

We have spreadsheets -- huge ones. We have values for characters in greens and raid buffed with epic gear. We have estimates of mob damage and health, character downtime, the benefits from enchants, gems and glyphs. We have conversion rates of mana to runic power to energy to rage. We look at damage per second, efficiency, button presses per second, typical rotations, movement vs. standing still, mobs vs. players and every other variable we can think of (and there are a LOT of them).

In the end we come up with an estimate for what an attack should do. We come up with a budget for talents and spells just like we have a budget for items at a given level. Sometimes those estimates are wrong because we forgot to take something into account, or because there's a bug in a talent or spell somewhere that messes up the calculation.

And then we do lots of testing, and to get a reality check on our tests, we compare them to the numbers people are reporting from the beta. Repeat as necessary.

I've said this in a few posts: that our numbers can sometimes be wrong (as is the case almost any time you deal with numbers), but the methods we use to arrive at them are absolutely not sloppy.

Re:Classes, Races & Professions

[The_reformant]

To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: Zug-zug?

Re:Classes, Races & Professions

[Slime-dogg]

To Tigole,

Do you have any plans to address imbalances in racial abilities? As an example, a Night Elf's 1% to dodge and "little extra" nature resistance is nowhere near as valuable as the Human racials. The Troll and Orc racials are also far more valuable as a whole, to most classes, then any others.

Re:Classes, Races & Professions

[morcego]

This is extremely relative. I was planning on answer the OP, but this one opens a nicer avenue.

I was in change of balancing classes/races for about a year on another game. There are so many factor to take into account I never want to do that kind of thing again. But just a rough sketch:

- Across the board balance issues: This are easier to detect, and spreadsheets are great for it
- Situational balance issues: And WoW example would be horde classes on PvP
- Perception balance issues: This are balance issues that players think exist, but don't. Usually they think of it as unfair or unbalanced by analyzing isolated facts, like your example. The 1% extra dodge for night elves is EXTREMELY beneficial if you are a raiding bear tank. You have no idea how much difference that 1% can make.

As a player and former developer (again, from another game), I think Blizzard does the only thing that can be done: keep the imbalances balanced. Meaning: give each race, class etc something they excel at. Some are better for pvp, some are better for PvE, some for gold farming and gathering professions. After leveling my 4rd character, I have to say that all classes, if played correctly, are equally overpowered (so to speak).

I can't vouch for the WotLK expansion. I have no beta access. But, in any case, I expect more of the same. Balancing, rebalancing, adjusts, and lots of QQ about a give class being OP.

Players will be players.
 

Re:Classes, Races & Professions

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

I sense a soul in search of answers...

Re:Classes, Races & Professions

[Blakey Rat]

Whatever happened to Captain Placeholder? I loved that guy!

Re:Classes, Races & Professions

[Databass]

I'll field this one: The answer is "Daboo."

What's it like working for a cool division

[Anonymous Coward]

Owned by an evil company?

Dominance

[eldavojohn]

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?

Artwork & Mood Inspiration?

[eldavojohn]

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?

Re:Artwork & Mood Inspiration?

[rgo]

I believe the answer for that is My Little Pony and the Carebears.

Biggest World of Warcraft Disaster?

[eldavojohn]

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?

Re:Biggest World of Warcraft Disaster?

[slimjim8094]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood mayhaps?

Starcraft II on a Table Top?

[eldavojohn]

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?

Is It Hard Being Number One?

[eldavojohn]

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?

Re:Is It Hard Being Number One?

[Apocalypse111]

Day-to-day challenges with a 10 million subscriber base? How about getting to his desk around the huge piles of MONEY?!

Re:Is It Hard Being Number One?

[daveime]

It certainly WAS popular with Chinese gold farmers up until Jan 2008 ... at which point Runescape decided to rid the game of those pesky "cheaters" by basically abolishing any value exchange greater than 3k gold. (This in an economy where the rarest items were trading for 650 million gold).

They achieved this marvel of control by killing PvP completely, both the Wilderness AND Duelling Arena, not allowing the trading, exchanging or gifting of any item worth more than 3k, and saw their player base drop from typically 200,000 players to about 70,000 in the space of a month.

It's a shame because it WAS a great addictive game in some respects.

Population Cap in RTS Games

[eldavojohn]

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?

World Design

[eldavojohn]

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?

Diablo III Mousing

[vjmurphy]

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?

The Original Warcraft.

[Zombie Ryushu]

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.

Re:The Original Warcraft.

[BloodyIron]

Please state your answer in the form of a question.

Re:To any of them

[KDR_11k]

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).

Follow Up Question

[mfh]

Do you feel that Blizzard's dominance hurts other MMORPGs?

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?

Port SC 1?

[Tubal-Cain]

Is there any possibility of there being an official port of StarCraft 1 to StarCraft 2's game engine?

Requirements

[Darundal]

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?

Why fight Linux?

[houstonbofh]

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...

Battle.net still free?

[snowraver1]

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?

Starting from scratch (almost)

[n dot l]

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?

Consoles

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Glider + other bots

[thed00d]

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.

Re:Glider + other bots

[MaxwellEdison]

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?

StarCraft II

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Dear Blizzard

[DigitAl56K]

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.

Re:Dear Blizzard

[Otter]

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?

I imagine that Blizzard does in fact employ people capable of multiplying some number by a million and getting an accurate result, not just an estimate. You should have gone with a billion, or some other number that defies calculation.

DRM?

[chord.wav]

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?

Dear mr. Boyarsky,

[Daimanta]

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?

Re:Dear mr. Boyarsky,

[Chris Burke]

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.

The thing is, as long as you had a belt full of rejuvies, you weren't in any danger (and as soon as you get low you'd Town Portal and burn a couple more to make sure you got through to restock).

Which means that the only method they had of actually putting you in danger/killing you was to do ludicrous amounts of damage in an extremely short amount of time. i.e. MSFELE or even worse MSLE with anti-resist aura, or the necro boss's corpse explosion, and so on. Things that felt extremely cheap, especially because 90% of the time there was no danger whatsoever. I hated e.g. running up to a pack where unbeknownst to me there was a similarly-shaded boss stuck in the middle and click once and *wham* You Have Died "WTF?!"

When describing the new system, the devs mentioned this fact explicitly, that the only way to "challenge" you was to outright kill you and that they think this was silly, which makes me very happy.

I do share your concern it may make the game slower, but if done right they can keep the pace going nicely. They just need to balance the amount of health orbs that drop. As long as your survival is dependent on you taking down enemies (or hurting the boss if as I assume they drop orbs on taking damage) as fast as they are hurting you, then it could still be frantic but even more challenging (or at least, challenging more of the time instead of super-easy most of the time and insanely cheap the rest).

Re:To any of them

[mweather]

That would certainly explain why the MMO genre is so diverse: they don't copy each other's ideas.

The Colbert Report asked Rush this, so...

[bigstrat2003]

To any of the interviewees: do you ever get tired of being so awesome and kicking so much ass?

DRM?

[molo]

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

Cross-platform gaming?

[molo]

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

Re:Cross-platform gaming?

[Yvan256]

Seeing as Blizzard is one of the handful of game companies that release their games simultaneously for Windows and Mac OS X, I think that already answers your question about Mac OS X.

Your question really should be "will you ever make ports for Linux?".

Glider

[jesdynf]

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)?

Dear Blizzard:

[Windows_NT]

Is it cold in your office?

New game series?

[MooseMuffin]

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?

Role Playing in Diablo III

[thepotoo]

For Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer of Diablo III: I'm really excited that Diablo III will include more options for players to interact with the world (source).

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?

Is there a warcraft 4 comeing?

[Joe The Dragon]

Is there a warcraft 4 coming?

Diablo III LAN Multiplayer?

[thepotoo]

For Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer of Diablo III: why was the decision made to cut LAN play from Diablo III? Simply to stop piracy, or to reduce hacking, or something else?

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?

Re:Six Sigma at Blizzard

[Nefarious Wheel]

More to the point, how do you handle the approach of MBA's? Do you just stand off and send in the pet, or drop a snake trap and wait for their approach? Can they be soloed? And why are the only tameable Auditors caster-stat?

for Jeffrey Kaplan aka Tigole

[way2trivial]

Where exactly is the USB key with the "Sword of a Thousand Truths" right now?? and exactly how is it guarded??

Re:Map Creator for SCII

[i.of.the.storm]

Don't underestimate the complexity of DotA though. I'm almost certain it would take far longer than a week or two, especially since people would need to learn the new language in the SCII map editor. And Icefrog has said before that he's not sure when/whether he'll move to SCII, so I doubt he would change his mind right after SCII came out, and I don't think there are many people who know the intricacies of DotA as well as Icefrog, although I don't know what happened to the original mapmakers (Eul, Guinsoo, etc.)

Digital Download

[omega8932]

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?

PvE:raiding::PvP:arena ?

[Onan]

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?

WoW Geography

[Moredhel27]

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