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Ask Author David Craddock About the Development of Diablo, Warcraft
The original Warcraft and Diablo games hold a special status in the hearts of many gamers. Each game brought its genre into focus, and their success elevated the status of Blizzard Entertainment and Blizzard North to the point that further games are still hotly anticipated more than 15 years later. In an effort to discover and document that part of gaming history, author David L. Craddock conducted extensive interviews with early Blizzard developers. His intent was to investigate how both of the Blizzard studios succeeded at breaking into a saturated and competitive industry, and how their design process influenced both their acclaimed releases and the projects they discarded along the way. He's writing a series of books about the history of Blizzard, titled Stay Awhile and Listen. The first is due out on October 31st, and David has agreed to answer your questions about his investigation into those early games. David will be joined by Blizzard North co-founders David Brevik and Max Schaefer. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.
Can we get another Lost Vikings game?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If there is one thing you could go back and change in any of Blizzard's games, what would it be?
How did you determine the best game speed for WarCraft? Do you feel the increased speed in the sequels detracts from the strategy element?
Gauntlet. Highly addictive. A quarter sink for sure.
Will there ever be a fully 3D Diablo? I was hoping for that when III was announced, but it was just more of the same.
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Since it was announced that Diablo III would be ported (and has been ported) to consoles, has there been discussion as to whether WoW would/could be ported as well?
To all you virgins: Thanks for nothing.
Warcraft came out in 1994. At the time there was no such thing as a "gaming computer". If it had a sound card and cd-rom they called it a multimedia PC. Gaming video cards did not exist yet. You bought a video card based on maximum desktop resolution, for example a 2 megabyte card ran a higher resolution than a 512kb or 1 megabyte. The first gaming video card, the 50mhz 4 megabyte Voodoo, came out in 1996. But even then the Voodoo was rare and very expensive (hundreds of dollars) so most games ran fine on regular video cards because that's what 99% of buyers had.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
As a developer of one of the WoW emulators, I am curious if Blizzard made a conscious decision to randomize the opcodes used by WoW (and the many other protections that were put in place). Up until the Cataclysm expansion, there was no real protection against reverse engineering the WoW client. As of Cata, blizz seems to have gone out of their way to prevent any emulation of WoW. Cata, and MoP take a lot of work, but we will still be able to provide decent emulation *eventually*. Also, why hasn't Blizzard removed GRUNT? That would completely eliminate ALL emulation of WoW as Battle.net has yet to be broken.
-- Brian
-- http://anonet.org -- The internet the way it was meant to be. Check it out, you may be surprised.
I'm a lifetime and thoroughly addicted gamer, starting when my dad hoisted me up to PacMan when I was 3. If you combine all my time coding, playing games, and designing, I'm probably in the tiptop of developers. The problem is that even though I've coded heavily since I was 12 and been seeking since I was 16, I have only ever gotten one video game developer interview in 20 years!(just this past week)
What is the secret to getting a starter job in the video game developing industry? I've been doing indie stuff since 1992 when I was trying to write a MMORPG. The key is that I attempt large scale projects that normally take dozens of programmers, and then I couldn't find artists to contribute when my code was pushed forward.
To me, it seems like Indie is the only way to go if you're passionate about games anymore since there are not too many game development houses, and the competition is fierce.
Is there some secret to breaking into the gaming industry if that is all you've done your entire life? Or should we all resolve ourselves to doing Indie titles and starting our own companies? I mean I do have 15+ artists working with me on my current project due to cracking the code on revshare, but I'd rather have a steady paycheck and a higher mountain of source code for better games.
God spoke to me
Having seen games evolve in positive ways, it seems that gaming has either gone one of two paths:
The first path is the console game. The game is usually a late beta, so requires patching. Then, for content, unlike in the past where expansions were as good as the original game, one is inundated with DLC purchases they have to make. Want to play an orc? That's 9.99. Want the rocket gun? That's another ten-spot. Want another level? $29.95 please. So, to play a game that was released to the fullest, it can easily be hundreds of dollars for gameplay that on earlier games, came with the game.
The second path is free to play, play to win games. Yes, one might be able to get a canoe to play for a pirate's game, but if one actually wants to advance, they will have to spend hundreds to purchase a decent ship, not to mention cannons, and so on.
These two paths seem to be what 99.9% of the gaming industry seems to be going. Games tend to be cookie-cutter.
I tend to bag on WoW, but even though WoW is a MMO, Blizzard does a great job with expansions, providing not just endgame stuff, but additional things to do 1-cap. MoP had an additional class and race, Cata had two races, WotLK had another class, BC had two races and classes (debatable, but regardless of faction, you had another class to choose from.) Other MMOs miss this and might toss in a few expansion zones, some raids, and call it done, but WoW does a good job at the whole 1-cap game.
Another good game that did it right was Neverwinter Nights 1. The expansions not just added gameplay, but added to almost every facet of the game. The later modules were smaller, but added a good amount of content that was worth playing. One didn't have to spend $10.00 for the ability to get a ninja turban, or $20.00 to play a drow.
My question:
Is there a market niche for "old school" games (think Baldur's Gate) that one bought the game, then down the road, perhaps a significant expansion or two. Not "junk" DLC that might be required to win, such as $10.00 for a sword or $100.00 for uberness? Or are we pretty much doomed to keep getting nickled and dimed by pointless [1] DLC regardless.
[1]: There is useful DLC, such as the NWN1 modules, then there is pointless DLC as having to buy the privilege to see and use a rocket launcher in order to survive at a multiplayer FPS.
There were definitely gaming cards in the 486 era. A VLB video card will run DOOM faster than an ISA card. A Tseng ET4000 will run DOOM faster than a crappy Trident.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I think a big part that people overlook when talking about the simplification of WoW, is that WoW was always going for the simplification of MMOs. If you look back what pre-dated WoW (EQ, DAoC, UO), WoW took the basic game and simplified and polished it dramatically, big EQ fans complained back then that WoW was dumbing down the MMO genre which arguably they did. The trend of gaming in general wanted less time sinks and greater accessibility. WoW didn't only recently start "catering to the casuals" That's been their MO since day 1 vanilla.
I miss my old shaman where there was a use for almost every single totem and ability, just to eek out a small amount of group benefit in certain situations
Only problem was that if you didn't research "the" way to skill your class, and "the" rotation for it, you got abused and told to "learn your class" by idiots. Before the skills became homogenized by decree, they were homogenized by peer pressure.
Around 1994, you'd spend close to $300 on 8MB of memory, a 486 CPU could be around $250 (being generous). I've blown your $500 budget, and you've still got the motherboard, sound and video hardware, floppy drive, hard disk, power supply, and IO peripherals before you have a functional computer. Sound and CD-ROM alone would cost around $500. If you're buying enough to build a whole computer from scratch with retail-priced parts, you're looking at an easy $1500+ for a machine that isn't particular top of the line. Swap meet prices would lower that somewhat, granted, but it's hard to imagine it would've been an over 70% discount.
And anyhow, the guy you replied to didn't say anything about computer prices. His parent post did, but you replied to the wrong post.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
what were you guys thinking when you made diablo 3 always online only? Most the people I know who love the first 2 installments used the game as single player or at lan parties. sure multiplayer is fun but why the necessity to always be on? the RMAH has been such a flop that it is being removed from the game so there is 0 reason that the game needs to be online to play a single player game
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same