Ask Blizzard About Starcraft2, Diablo III, WoW, or Battle.net

Well, Blizzcon 2009 is about to get underway (look for the big news from the keynote in a few hours) and given how fast it sold out I'm sure there are still many rabid fans interested in what Blizzard might have to say that don't want to shell out the $40 for Pay-Per-View access. So, to that end we have interviews scheduled tomorrow with the teams from Starcraft2, Diablo III, World of Warcraft, and Battle.net. If there is anything you wish to know about the progress or juicy details from any of these teams please leave it in the comments below. We'll try to parse through for the best questions and get you answers during our interview slots tomorrow. The usual Slashdot interview rules apply.

Comments

Reduced Effort in World of Warcraft

[eldavojohn]

To the World of Warcraft team, I have been playing the expansion but largely left the World of Warcraft in search of something else after frustration from reduced effort to level. This isn't a new trend, I recall experience received from quests being increased for certain level ranges. This is, of course, a tactic to entice new players. But it has by and large been a very negative turn for the game. I feel that your recruit a friend program is also quite negative to existing players as I have coworkers who can mill out two level sixties in two or three weekends if they can borrow another person's account.

Have you seen any other negative feedback about this? Has anyone complained? You sit as the largest online game, is growth really so important that game mecahnics need to be changed to entice new players?

In my honest opinion, you are selling yourselves short. The players see less quest content now because of increased experience. While they get to end content faster, they pass up a lot of areas and beautiful terrain just purely because they don't have to go there. What does the future hold as you strive to cut out content? The ability to start at level (current expansion cap - 20)?

Re:Reduced Effort in World of Warcraft

[debrain]

Sir:

I respectfully disagree. I think the end-game content and social aspect is most aspired after by the majority of players of World of Warcraft. In my opinion, I think Blizzard made the right decision in reducing the barrier to this end-game content and social aspect by making leveling faster and easier. Lower level content is still available for those who wish to pursue it (and comes with fulfilling achievements like Loremaster), but it is no longer an ominous, artificial, and arbitrary barrier to entry to the more desired content.

Mind you, I don't know the habits of most WoW players, but I'm confident that Blizzard isn't selling themselves short here. I'd say they're catering to the desires of their paying customers, but not necessarily overindulging them.

Re:Reduced Effort in World of Warcraft

[pezpunk]

i understand what you're saying but i strongly disagree. for me and my friends, the game really [i]starts[/i] at level 80. we are not the hardcore elite of the game by any means, either. blizzard has made max-level raiding accessible to anyone with a handful of friends, and that's what me and my handful are doing. it's the latest content with the richest rewards and most complex mechanics and prettiest graphics. there's a heck of a lot more story in the more modern content, as well.

the leveling process takes you through content that is over 5 years old (if you count the open beta). it's outdated graphically and mechanically. the quests are simple and mundane. old players have seen it before, and new players ... well, the sooner they see more modern content (and catch up with their friends who have been trying for years to get them into the game) the better.

Re:Reduced Effort in World of Warcraft

[Chris Burke]

reduced effort to level

I'm going to disagree with you on this terminology right here. Okay, sure, the total effort is reduced. But the effort per unit time is the same as always (easy), the only thing that's changed is how much time you're spending. In a game genre that is defined by sucking extra monthly fees out of you by wasting as much of your time as possible, this is actually a welcome breath of fresh air. They no longer have any real incentive to make getting to level 60 take 20 days /played, and thus they speed it up. Yay, Blizz.

Seriously, making leveling in Azeroth easier is a great thing.

First, it keeps new players from being that much further behind where everyone else is doing stuff and having fun, Northrend and level 80. They aren't missing anything by leveling faster than they would if leveling was still as slow and painful as when 60 was the level cap. Who cares if they do slightly fewer kill quests or delivery quests? The only good content they'll be missing out on is Old World 5-man instances, like they'd be doing that anyway! I leveled a character just before the first big leveling nerf, and then just like today about the only instance you have a prayer in hell of finding a group for is Scarlet Monestary.

They really aren't missing anything.

Second, it keeps all the old players who want an alt from going insane doing the same content for a 5th time in a row.

Third, it keeps everyone from just rolling a Death Knight to instantly skip Azeroth. Seriously, if you are going to complain about people skipping content, complain about DKs. Keeping the 1-60 grind as long as it used to be would just guarantee that nobody rolled any alt but a DK.

Re:Reduced Effort in World of Warcraft

[TheTick21]

I would have never come back if not for the changes they have made to leveling. Several of my friends would never have started playing. I am positive that the number of people who dislike the accelerated leveling are in the minority.

If they made it to where you could start alts at level 80 when you've already leveled a character to 80 then I would play considerably more than I already do. Sinking that much time into a character before you can even really start to play the game is simply stupid. I don't have 8 hours a day to play. I'm glad you do.

Oh wait no, I think you're right. Please make this game even more grindy.

Re:Reduced Effort in World of Warcraft

[RabidMonkey]

As someone levelling their 5th toon, I can say, I love the changes. I am sick and tired of the Barrens, and anything that can get me up to the higher levels faster is going to allow me to keep playing and enjoying the game. The first 2 times I levelled, I did all the quests, got into the lore, etc, but you know what, it's no different the 3rd, 4th, 5th, xth time. If it wasn't for the L2P value of spending hours with a new class, I'd say Blizz should just allow you to start a new toon at level 58 like the DK's, so you can miss all the old world runaround.

Sure, it's annoying to know how much money I've paid for mounts, and how much time I spent on autorun in the old world, but thats the nature of things, they change. I just wish they'd change more, so that maybe levelling other toons wouldn't be the boreing grindfest it is now... cuz I'd really like to try playing a warlock.

Re:Reduced Effort in World of Warcraft

[Chyeld]

I left WoW before any of the packs hit. But I was an obsessive quest completer, I wouldn't leave a zone till I had taken care of every quest I possibly could, which meant before long I was well out leveling the content I was up against (until I finished a zone and then moved to the next, where I'd be just 'midlevel' again).

The reason I left WoW had more to do with my first few raid experiences which were in Stratholme. Here I was, in a town sized dungeon, with lore and nooks and crannies to explore, and the group I was with just wanted to rush to point A to beat Named Boss A, then point B to beat Named Boss B, and etc.

After the third go through, I realized that the way WoW had been set up, high level content was simply contrary to the idea of exploration and 'enjoying the scenery'.

I never had a problem doing 'grey' quests, or popping out of a zone now and then to do an 'appropriately leveled' quest. But raids required people. People who weren't necessarily there to do anything more than grind away till they got their next food pellet in the form of another 'epic' piece of gear.

Maybe that's changed somewhat, I've heard that some of the old 'high level' content can now be sort of soloed by a good maxed out character, and perhaps the new raid stuff isn't so focused on finding the most efficient path through without stopping to look at stuff. But given all I've heard, I doubt it.

And honestly, that's sad. One of the things that Blizzard has always done well is tell a story. Even if some can claim that the stories are lifted from other sources, it's the quality of the story teller that matters just as much as the source of the tale.

I'll always remember WoW for those pre-expansion Worgen related quests (no clue if they've been added to in the expansions), how you could find the origin of their presence in the world through the eleven zones, discover how the 'dark powers' got involved in the human zones, and then have to switch to the Horde side to find the end of the story.

It's a shame, because I know that Blizzard has to put in as much story effort into the high level content.

Re:Reduced Effort in World of Warcraft

[melikamp]

Hmmm I think I feel much the same! Why won't they make all drops completely random, except for a basic category bias whereas archers tend to drop drop bows, kobold miners drop hammers, etc. Aside from one-time-quest-drops, why should be bosses privileged? They already have a quest progression (like in Stockades) where at a higher level you are invited to revisit a dungeon to get yet another quest: that should suffice for a reason to run an instance multiple times.

But then, of course, people will concentrate on volume-killing for farming items. Instead of running end-game instances, they will be running 5-cold-mage parties in killing fields somewhere ad infinitum, killing, I can only assume, boars. There are various ways to fix this as well. One way is by creating items on kill and making younger spawns to have shit for items, and making drops progressively better as the mob gets older. This, actually, could be quite interesting, as the balance could shift towards lone hunters who seek out rare and elite mobs. Running instances would still be OK for drops (guaranteed flat drop rate), but totally comparable with farming Outlands with a friend or two.

Another (imho, positive) consequence of making all drops random is the increased appreciation for crafted items.

To make a long story short, I am done with WoW for reason outlined by the parent. I would play MMO that rewards solo players with all possible items, given enough time.

Re:Reduced Effort in World of Warcraft

[pezpunk]

i don't know what expansion you played because it wasn't wotlk.

quests are unquestionably more interesting than "go kill 8 spiders". in wotlk, you constantly get to drive vehicles, bomb things from the air, elad a charge up a hill, or take part in quests that truly matter in the world and even change the face of the zone (through phasing). you take part in meaningful battles with zone-wide consequences. you see huge chunks of lore unfurl before your eyes ...

speaking of which, did you even do the Wrathgate thing? best thing in WoW ever. look it up on youtube if you missed it.

70-80 unquestionably puts you more in the middle of the lore situation than anything previous. Arthas shows up at least once per zone to threaten you with the wrath of doom or whatever ... hell, in icecrown you actually get to BE Arthas for a while!

Are there any plans to revamp Parental Controls?

[Raindance]

When I play wow, I probably play too much. I'd like to use some built-in functionality to gently put limits on my playtime and remind me how much I've played in a week. At first I had high hopes that the Parental Controls function could help me.

Unfortunately, though the rest of wow's interface is great, its parental controls are not only a crime against all that is beautiful and elegant, but pretty useless in the real world. There's no way to set "able to play X hours per week" or "able to play Y hours per weekday, Z hours per weekend". One must set a hard-coded block schedule, click okay, then hope you've predicted your exact needs. And there's no in-game warning when you're coming up against a limit-- you're simply disconnected when it hits.

Please, please, please tell me there are plans afoot to fix this tool and perhaps remake it into a more general method for account owners to manage playtime better? Extra kudos if it could include a Netflix-style option to put your account on vacation for a variable length of time...

Battle.net Fixes and Improvements?

[eldavojohn]

Assuming Diablo/Starcraft are going to be on this, what are you doing to fix, improve, update, solidify Battle.net? Last I heard, we can't use Starcraft II on a LAN so how are you going to ensure us that Battle.net is valid replacement in terms of speed, security and reliability? Will Battle.net be completely redone from what it was in the Diablo days?

Re:Battle.net Fixes and Improvements?

[Anonymous Coward]

Without LAN, how are we going to play with 2 computers at the same time behind a NAT router? With original Starcraft, you can't go on battle.net with more than one computer behind the same NAT router. If I want to play a 4v4 game at a LAN party, I will now need to connect 8 computers behind a single NAT router to battle.net. (Or, if I wanted to participate as 2 players on opposite teams in a 3v3 game, I will still need to connect 2 computers to battle.net from behind a NAT router). Whenever I tried this on the original Starcraft, it dropped one of the players.

Re:Battle.net Fixes and Improvements?

[Hatta]

If I bring my PC to my cousin's house for a LAN party (who lives way out in the country, and only has dial up) are we going to be able to have a full speed, low latency network game of Starcraft II?

Re:Battle.net Fixes and Improvements?

[Rogerborg]

Followup: since every nerd who's currently pissing and moaning about LAN play is going to buy Starcraft II anyway, why would you care?

Re:Battle.net Fixes and Improvements?

[EaglemanBSA]

Seconded. I haven't actually said anything about up 'til now but I'm not going to buy a game I have to log in to their specific server to play. The fun is in the LAN parties where it takes no time to set up and play a bunch of people at once.

If they're going to be Microsoft-esque in making sure my copy is genuine, I'll just go play something else. There are plenty of games out there that can be just as fun without the bullshit.

StarCraft II - LAN PLAY

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, why why why is there no LAN play?

I understand the desire to have a method of preventing piracy. But, if I get a group of 10 buddies in a room, and we want to go nuts with this game, ALL of us using the Internet to access a server is just plain dumb.

It's great if we want to setup a 'virtual LAN' party. But REAL face to face ones suffer as a result.

Why not make it require AUTH to open LAN play, then everything else is local? Anything is better than forcing everyone to use battleNet.

Re:StarCraft II - LAN PLAY

[FlyingBishop]

Well, to get more to the point, what answer do they have for our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and who knows where else who would like to play a quiet LAN game when internet access is limited or nonexistent.

Also, what kind of ports are required, given that a lot of college students are behind restrictive campus firewalls.

For a final question on this LAN issue, will the game be playable at all if your battle.net account is banned? This is probably a fitting punishment for hacking and the like, but false positives are inevitable, and I don't really want to put down $50 for something if, on a whim, Blizzard can revoke my license.

Re:StarCraft II - LAN PLAY

[Kryptal]

Do you expect an increase or decrease of pirating due to the choice to remove LAN play?

Re:StarCraft II - LAN PLAY

[wizardforce]

unfortunately I suspect that SCII is in such an unfinished state that Blizzard decided to cut testing out LAN play in favour of Battlenet in order to get SCII out the door in an otherwise finished state ASAP rather than let it become SC Ghost all over again. The question is, why? SC fans have been waiting a decade and change for SCII or *something* expanding on the SC storyline so what is a few months extra testing out LAN for the release?
 
Anyway to bring this back on topic, to the SCII team: is there any possibility of WINE support in the next three chapters of SCII in order to run the games on alternative platforms such as LInux/BSD etc?

Re:StarCraft II - LAN PLAY

[HeronBlademaster]

Then why can't two people behind the same router play a game on battle.net where one of them is hosting? (With very little effort you'll find plenty of posts here on slashdot indicating that if you have two players behind a router, connected to battle.net, and they try to start a Starcraft game that way, one of them can't connect.) I could elaborate on the apparent technical reasons (public vs private IP addresses, for example) but I don't think it's necessary.

My point is, it's a little more complicated than you're making it out to be, and Blizzard has given exactly zero indication that Starcraft II will be any different.

More to the point, if I have 8 guys at my place trying to start a pseudo-LAN game via Battle.net, can Blizzard make it work without making me reconfigure my router? (Assume that a single person playing via Battle.net works fine with that router configuration.) The answer is probably "no", or at least "yes, if X, Y, and Z are true" which is bound to fail for a large portion of gamers. Furthermore, if each client thinks all the other clients have the same external IP address, presumably with different ports (the only way to make this work using the same external IP address), the router has to do a bunch of additional work mapping ports on its external IP to machines on its internal network, whereas a real LAN game would just spit the packets for each internal IP address in the appropriate direction with little effort.

But I can give a better real-world example. At my university, all computers on the network had a unique external IP address assigned to them for all traffic leaving the network (the mapping was handled by the externally-facing routers; our computers only knew about the 10.x.x.x internal address). So, with Blizzard's current plans, if I and my roommate wanted to start a LAN game of Starcraft II, we'd have to do it through Battle.net - but Battle.net would see a unique IP address for each client, and would have no way to know they're on the same LAN. The game clients themselves would have no way of knowing that they're in the same room, either.

That means once we get the game started, the game is not really local - if I'm hosting, my computer sends packets bound for my roommate's computer - which is connected to the same physical switch - all the way to the edge of the network, to the externally-facing routers. They shouldn't go further than that, but why force packets to go all the way across campus when they shouldn't have to go further than the switch handling our two wall sockets?

You might argue that this additional latency is negligible, and you have a valid point. However, I'm sure I could dig up hundreds of hardcore gamers who would insist that the extra latency is noticeable.

What were you thinking....

[Gruturo]

When, after a LONG period of overloaded instance servers, with literally months of people complaining, in patch 3.2 not only you encouraged everybody to run as many heroics per day as they can possibly do due to easy emblems of conquest, but at the same time you pretty much forced any hardcore raider to never skip the daily heroic for at the very least 1 month. As a result, the load is now 3 times worse and people complain of being locked out of instances for 40-50 minutes even in offpeak hours, not to mention that due to the priority system, low level instances are pretty much inaccessible. This hurts the new players a lot. Those same new players whose experience you are terrified to ruin, and due to which you won't apply more restrictive anti goldspam measures, causing everyone to have to endure the constant shit in city channels.

LAN

[Arthur B.]

There's been talk that Starcraft II would not support LAN. The reason I am a fan of Starcraft and want to buy Starcraft II is I spent many many hours playing it in LAN cafes. People will be doing LAN with pirated version anyway, they'll just run their own battle.net server locally and the only thing you'll achieve is piss off other consummers with a crippled product. Why oh why?

Re:LAN

[sexconker]

Yeah, Blizzard is retarded if they think they can stop it.

Blizzard is also retarded if they think people want to always be connected to Battle.net . I don't give a shit how good BNet 2.0 is, I shouldn't need to be online or connect to your servers just to play the game I bought (3. Fucking. Times).

Re:Are there any plans to revamp Parental Controls

[sys.stdout.write]

There's no way to set "able to play X hours per week" or "able to play Y hours per weekday, Z hours per weekend".

Have you tried a girlfriend?

How do your games Help America?

[For a Free Internet]

Dear Bilzzard, how do your computer games help America's children prepare to help acquire the skills needed to fight the war against terrorism and for freedom? Do any of your games have educational content? What about a game that encourages learning terrorist languages like Arabic or Mandarin Chinese? Everyone in America needs to do their part, are you doing yours?

Linux support

[Sascha J.]

Obligatory question: Did you change your mind about Linux support for any of your existing or announced games? Are new, upcoming games going to be playable on Linux natively?

Re:Linux support

[walshy007]

Another good question on that topic is:

When it is known and established that there was in fact a linux client for WoW when in beta, what obstables hindered you from releasing it as an unsupported extra? was it maintained and if so what obstacles still remain to this day?

Re:Linux support

[Azaril]

I remember reading in a post on the Wow forums, that infact most of the staff actually use a linux client, but the cost/benefit ratio of support and patch testing for a linux client makes it impossible to release. At any rate, there is blue support on the forums for using WoW with wine.

Re:Linux support

[Hinhule]

Probably because there would be problems implementing warden on Linux machines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warden_(software)

Re:Linux support

[_Sprocket_]

Another question in this thread:

Blizzard has noted that they allow the use of Cedega and Wine but will not provide technical support. They have worked with the Cedega developers on issues. And there's whispers that they have unofficially worked with Wine developers.

What does Blizzard get for these efforts? Are there insights to bugs / issues to the game client that aren't apparent on the supported platforms? Or is this just a fun side project that helps out a (presumably) smaller subset of fans / customers?

Re:Linux support

[_Sprocket_]

Another question:

Is Blizzard aware of how many of their customers use Linux? Do these statistics show up via Warden and/or the occasional "non-identifying system statistics" reports?

The Status Quo of Delayed Release Dates

[eldavojohn]

To the planning divisions of all teams: My coworker and I love every single one of your games. But we don't love your release dates. We'd almost appreciate it if there was no release date until you know 100% about it. Your delays vary wildly and have lead both of us to be extremely dubious even when we hear reports like Starcraft II delayed until 2010. We've taken to an X-Files approach: Trust No One. Lest you get your hopes dashed. Why are release dates given when they almost always get pushed back? Is this something you just have to do so marketing has time to hype? Is there any effort to fix these estimation problems? Why aren't you assigning a larger variance and learning from past experiences by now?

I understand this happens by and large everywhere in software development but you guys are epitome of online games. If you can't give solid release dates, no one can.

Re:The Status Quo of Delayed Release Dates

[rehtonAesoohC]

My coworker and I love every single one of your games. But we don't love your release dates.

Ever thought about the fact that the REASON you love every single Blizzard game is because they put more emphasis on quality than they do meeting a release date? In my experience in the software development world, if you want to release software with as few bugs as possible (which Blizzard actively strives for more than any other game company I've heard of), and as fun as possible (which requires insane amounts of iterative work with development and then testing), by your logic, they may as well not give a release date until the discs go gold...

I think they have to put a release date on there because the publisher (Vivendi) requires it, but I've never seen a company take so much leeway with those release dates, and I think we're all better off for it.

Re:The Status Quo of Delayed Release Dates

[Rallion]

I just want to point out that they already do exactly what you're saying they should. They never announced a release date for SC2, but the gaming community slapped an imaginary 2009 date on there after statements to the effect that they hoped to be able to get the game out by the end of the year, but that it would be difficult.

Starcraft II LAN Support

[Anonymous Coward]

As a company who has shown a generally tendency toward keeping its fans happy (the return of the original voice actor for Raynor being a great, recent example of this), are you paying attention to the heavily supported petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/LANSC2/petition.html? I ask this because the petition brings up quite valid points about the creation of pirate battle.net servers. Surely you must realize that time and time again game companies make similar decisions regarding anti-piracy practice (think Spore DRM), and each time all it nets the company supporting it is a loss in valid customers frustrated with the lack of support and an increase in piracy. (For reference, Spore was supposed to have "unbreakable" drm to protect it, yet it was also considered the most pirated game of all time and in fact the cracked version was available up to a week before its official release.)

What about spammers?

[Yvan256]

Will you do anything to protect us from being annoyed by spambots who can enter a game, write five lines of spam and leave the game in less than 2 seconds? Why can't you guys put protection against those idiots, it's easy enough to detect those kinds of patterns and block the user accounts.

And if you think making a private game in D2 protects you against those morons, they started using private messages to tell you about their crap, which is D2-related spam about items and stuff, which are also not allowed by Blizzard, which they should also be stopping from happening.

I know that Diablo II is old and playing on battle.net is free, but still, that doesn't leave a good impression when asking me if I want to play your future games.

Does Censorship in China Bother You?

[eldavojohn]

To the World of Warcraft team: your work is censored in China. Is this negative or an unavoidable necessity? Does it ever bother you on a personal level that you slave over skeletons and zombies and stories involving them only to have 1/5 of the world relegated to some modified version of your work? Would you rather error on the side of cultural sensitivity? I had heard rumors that panda-like characters will never be in World of Warcraft due to them being a cherished icon of China. Is it true that real world politics play a role in what you do and don't do in your game? Do you ever feel restricted or cautious because of this? Do you ever find yourself musing on how great a scenario or character would be but then reject it because so-and-so would have a field day in court with it?

Why should I buy your product?

[B5_geek]

After several instances of your company being evil towards the community bnetd & removal of LAN play on your newest titles, please give me a good reason to buy what you are selling.

Starcraft 2 three games?

[space_jake]

If my goal is to only play Starcraft 2 online, do I need to purchase all three games? Does purchasing each one unlock a new race for multiplayer or do we get everything in one box?

Re:Starcraft 2 three games?

[rehtonAesoohC]

From the FAQ on Starcraft II's website:

Will we still be able to play multiplayer matches of StarCraft II with all three races?

Yes! From the beginning, StarCraft II will be a fully featured multiplayer game, and all three races will be available for competitive play.

Sell Out

[Richard.Tao]

With the Mountain Dew game fuel, charging money for direct TV view of blizzcon, WoW being used to advertise Toyota trucks... I wonder: did you guys sell out on your own accord, or did it have to do with the merger with Activision?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Are there any plans to revamp Parental Controls

[Timex]

This is not always a help... My wife plays WoWC too. Sadly, she's better at the game than I am.

Battle.net and StarCraft II

[tlhIngan]

WRT Battle.net and StarCraft II, would you be making it so multiplayer play is possible with zero configuration on the firewall/router? If I invite 10 of my friends for a get-together, and we want to play StarCraft II, will that be possible without having to reconfigure my router? Or to do this, will it require using technologies like UPnP so SC II can open ports for each player?

Why is there no provision for offline play? Considering the way Blizzard games run so nicely on low-end hardware, if my friends and I are stuck at the airport waiting for a connection, it means we can't just setup an ad-hoc network and play SC II (especially since many airports charge $$$ per minute of Internet) to pass the time. Or even at low end motels/hotels where WiFi isn't necessarily available (or is costly)? (To be honest, I've seen even high-end hotels charge for Internet access, too, but it seems a waste that we all have to pay good money to get access to Battle.net so we can all play together).

What about offline play for single player? Or will single player also require battle.net?

Linux

[emanem]

Q1) Given the massive success of WoW on Linux (through wine) are you considering a Linux port of your main incoming titles?
Q2) If no Q1, will you at least consider wine as a release platform for your incoming titles?
Q3) Given the current situation with incresing Linux distribution/usage, what are your future plans for Linux OS?
Q4) Is it so hard to develope the same engine on both D3D and OpenGL?
Q5) Are there any particular effects you couldn't be able to easily implement in OpenGL version (eg. fancy shadows in WoW)? If yes, why?
Q6) Would you reccomend to a young ISV to use OpenGL or better both D3D and OpenGL to create a multi-platform game?

Cheers, Ema! ;-)

Starcraft II

[rehtonAesoohC]

They have stated that there will be three separate game releases, one for Terrans, one for Zerg, and the final for Protoss. Because of this split, will the game length suffer? Given the fact that both Starcraft and Starcraft: Brood War were entirely single games that encompassed three storylines, the game took a significantly longer amount of time to complete fully. How can Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty take as long as the original game 's three chapters to complete while remaining fresh and fun throughout?

Will each game be treated as an entirely separate entity in terms of publication, IE, you pay the same $50 for each game, or will it be treated as episodic content where you have to purchase the first game in order to play the second and third, and the second and third installments are significantly less expensive?

Will we see Diablo III on consoles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, please bring Diablo III to consoles (at least XBox360) with local multiplayer support (preferably 4-player). For PC enthusiasts or those who say it can't be done, please see:

Champions of Norrath (PS2)
Champions: Return to Arms (PS2)
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Series
Sacred 2 (360 and PS3)

Also take note of the user interfaces...I think that Champions:RTA had the best UI for this type of game on a console. It would be nice to be able to have at least partial inventory access without interrupting other local players.

It's such great fun to share a couch with a few friends and explore dungeons and compete for loot.

Re:Will we see Diablo III on consoles?

[Ammin]

Please god no. That is all.

Starcraft II LAN Petition

[Sycon]

As a company with a history of working hard to please its customers (the return of Raynor's original voice actor being a great example), are you paying attention to the petition to bring back LAN support at http://www.petitiononline.com/LANSC2/petition.html? I ask because the petition brings forth a number of valid points, chief among them the fact that pirate battle.net servers will be created no matter what precautions you take. This is a point that has been proven time and time again by other companies seeking to use DRM. Take Spore for example: Spore arguably had the most powerful and restrictive DRM available and was intended to be "un-pirateable", yet it went down as the most largely pirated game in history and the pirated version was even available before the game had officially been released.

What are the plans to combat rampant cheating?

[antifoidulus]

I used to be an avid Warcraft II player both in single player and online, and I also dabbled in a little bit of Warcraft III, but ultimately quit both after encountering rampant and flagrant cheating online. The cheaters didn't even attempt to hide what they were doing, level 16 grunts in WC II and teammates telling me they had the map hack in WC III made it pretty obvious. (To that end, I turned against the teammate who told me he had map hacks and spent all my resources attacking his stuff and then got beat by the other team). While I get beat more often then not, playing against cheaters makes the game 0 fun, and it seemed that Blizzard was either unable or unwilling to do anything about it. What are the anti-cheating technologies that you are employing in Starcraft II and do you think they will make a difference?

Question about New Hires & College Grads

[eldavojohn]

In regards to server and mechanics development: What are the biggest deficiencies you see in new hires and college grads? Are there any paradigms in the game development professional world that game and graphics courses in college don't seem to cover? When a new developer starts, what are the basic things you teach them first? Do you ever have to take time unlearning things that are pervasive in say, web development? Are there any patterns or architectural paradigms that hold importance above all else in online games?

In regards to the artists of graphics and world design and modeling: What are the biggest deficiencies you see in new hires and college grads? Is the "art" aspects of your games something that can be learned or do you have a few talented visionaries driving the group? I've been impressed with the mood in Diablo and the beautiful scenery in certain areas of World of Warcraft. Is that a single person at work or a large group adding a little brush stroke to the whole painting?

Diablo III

[Hojima]

Why did you use a Witch-Doctor to replace the necromancer? I can think of a million other ways to replace him. If you really want to be original, try to make a class that doesn't have a common English name. Call them Maj'kan and give them their own culture. Say that they were priests from the remnants of a civilization that was destroyed by the prime evils, and that they trained to travel to hell itself to bring them back. Then they can have the ability to summon stitched-together demons and they can even augment themselves with the corpses of demons. Also, they can have the ability to travel to their own pocket dimension in hell (an ability that is truly unique to the game). Even the barbarian could have been replaced with a Shaolin-monk type culture that bashes away just like the current barb. And the sorceress has not been replaced, only renamed. We're not buying that one.

Key to success of Blizzard games

[debrain]

I'm wondering why you (the developer teams) think so many Blizzard games stand out from the crowd, from World of Warcraft to Diablo I & II, and Warcraft. Why do you think the Blizzard games have been better (or at least more popular) than so many alternatives?

Thanks.

How will removing LAN encourage more sales?

[H0NGK0NGPH00EY]

What actual hard data does Blizzard have that led them to make such an about-face on LAN from Starcraft to Starcraft II? The ability with the original Starcraft to create a "spawn copy" that allowed friends to play for free in a LAN game was (IMO) a big driver of sales. Why remove such a successful feature? In what universe does removing popular features from your product and pissing off a large base of your fans somehow result in more sales?

Re:Diablo III

[sys.stdout.write]

I fail to see how this post relates to blowing Keith Lee.

Single Player

[PktLoss]

I love playing games with friends in person, have a few people over and play.

Online, this has less draw for me. In a FPS I get my ass kicked. In WoW I gave up, I was spending more time LFG than actually going through dungeons. When my ideal gaming session is less than an hour, upper levels just got impossible if I didn't want to grind slowly through random encounters and skip quests.

Diablo 3 seems to have a heavy focus on the multi-player, Starcraft 2 campaigns look great, but all eyes (and in fact the release date) seem to be set on how Battle.net is doing.

Is single player dead? or at least dead at blizzard.

Re:Are there any plans to revamp Parental Controls

[Chris Burke]

Have you tried a girlfriend?

Girlfriend? Where does that drop? I bet its off one of the 25-man hard modes, but I've never even seen one. A guildmate of mine said he heard it's going to be added in the raid after Icecrown Citadel in what will be the most evil raid instance of all, The Outside.

Auction house in D3

[Twillerror]

Are you considering allowing D3 users to trade object using Battle NEt out side of a game?

Re:Diablo III

[An ominous Cow art]

"Blow Keith Lee" (whoever he is) would be the level 20 talent ability in the Maj'kal tree, of course.

WoW - Further Internet Integration

[BobMcD]

Do you have any plans for integrating World of Warcraft with the internet? People have speculated for ages about the ability to access the Auction House, receive and send in-game mail, schedule raids/events, and even chat with players in the game from a web-based console, or even a mobile phone. What sorts of challenges are keeping you from exploring this more fully than we have already seen with the experiments on the Armory?

Re:WoW - Further Internet Integration

[brkello]

I'm pretty sure WoW is already integrated with the internet ;)

WoW - Spectator Mode

[BobMcD]

Are you still considering allowing a 'Spectator Mode' in WoW? This feature would be specifically interesting in Arenas and Raids, and doesn't seem to be too technologically complex to implement. What's holding you back?

WoW and Realms

[Prien715]

WoW is the only game I can't play with all my friends. Because some are are on realm A, some are on realm B, and some are in realm C. And while I can create 3 different characters to play with each of them, I could not tackle a dungeon with all of them. If I was playing Warcraft 3, Guild Wars, or any number of first person shooters, this wouldn't a problem -- and I don't pay a subscription to any of them.

Are there any plans (aside from the current "Paid Character Transfer") to enhance cross-realm gameplay? Or is this low on your priority list and are never going to do it (like allowing flying mounts in pre-BC areas)?

(And yes: I realize I'm in the minority by having met most of my friends who play WoW IRL...rather than the reverse)

Re:Are there any plans to revamp Parental Controls

[Chyeld]

I hate to break it to you, but it if takes 25 men for you to get a 'girlfriend' she's probably either not a girl or not your friend.

A Question WIth No Answer Except One

[Petersko]

"After several instances of your company being evil towards the community bnetd & removal of LAN play on your newest titles, please give me a good reason to buy what you are selling.."

Since they clearly aren't going to budge on either position, there's only one reason to buy what they're selling. It's because you think that the entertainment you get is worth the money you spend, and is good enough to overcome your objections. What other reason could there possibly be?

In other words, what kind of answer are you after?

Economy of Diablo

[Chardish]

In Diablo II, gold was a worthless commodity. Because the only way to get quality items was from either monster drops or gambling (which would often costs millions of gold to find something salable), the standard unit of economic trade became a unique ring.

This was bad for the economy in general: unlike World of Warcraft's Auction House, it was impossible for players who weren't competitive traders to participate in the economy. In addition, the design of the game in general made trading difficult (having to start a game to initiate a trade, muling, etc.)

What changes are you making to Diablo in order to make the economy of Diablo III more vibrant and accessible?

Secrets and Mysteries in Diablo 3...

[Braintrust]

Dear Blizzard,

You have the chance to do some really extraordinary things with Diablo 3. Hiring Leonard Boyarsky as lead world designer, seemed to this long-time crpg fan a potential masterstroke. Although neither Diablo games have ever been fully accepted as "true" crpgs by many, they are undeniably fun games in their own right. Many of us still play them both on occasion.

The one thing I, and I would think many other long-time fans of Diablo would like to see... I would like to still be discovering new secrets and mysteries the game holds for years after release.

WoW is many hundreds of times larger geographically than Diablo 2; it's much easier to build very large worlds in 3D. What are your plans/ideas for taking Diablo 3 to the next level in this regard?

You can play older crpgs many times without even seeing the entire game world. Mr. Boyarsky has already helped design such deeply realized games before. (Fallout(s). Arcanum. Etc.)

You have the chance with D3 to put a lot more "rpg" into the Diablo franchise... any plans on doing so?

I would love to be discovering new areas, new quests, and new adventures, 5 years after D3 is released.

Is this the direction you are planning to go?