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While I was a game designer at Blizzard on World of Warcraft, not only was I able to make some pretty incredible content, got to work alongside some wonderfully talented developers, I also learned some critical design and development lessons.
Id like to share 5 of them with you here today.
— Chapters —
00:00 – Intro
00:29 – Fantasy First
05:14 – Foster Junior Talents
07:57 – Iteration Equals Quality
12:14 – No Talented Jerks
15:40 – Massive isn’t Social
— Contact Information —
My email – [email protected]
source
What i would like to know.. and thanks for the insights btw , but do you still have any contacts from your time at Blizz? anyone you still are in contact with? also, what is your view on the current class / game design filosophy? they're really taking a different turn with The war Within, focussing much more on alt play and evergreen features. what's your take on that? good idea? bad?
Loved the vid! I loved the survival hunter change and played it for most of Legion. And I can attest to the debilitating effect of having a talented jerk as a manager/leader. It's a 'Fear Tax' – as coined by Liz Wiseman – and that is so expensive for the company, that no matter how talented they are, they are a net-negative.
Really cool to see your perspective on this. Do you plan on talking about your work experience as a whole? maybe talk about what you did at Netflix? Show us your journey as a designer
When you talked about how smaller servers are more social, Eco Global survival came to my mind. I think that's a game you'd be interested to have a look at, if you haven't already. It's "survival" game based around the tension between selfishness, cooperation and a global threat, all without physical violence. You build a civilisation from scratch in a Minecraft like voxel world, but everything is very slow and there's a job system that forces you to specialise. Then there's a whole politics system with player founded towns and countries, with custom (semi programmable) laws that they can pass that are mechanically enforced. There's also an economy system with player created currencies and shop blocks that the owner can set prices at and that people can shop at without the owner needing to be present. The player number is between a dozen and one or two hundred per (player hosted) server.
It's incredible how you have less than 20 videos published, but the you've managed to grow your quality so much.
Whats your favorite WoW class?
Great video! I was wondering if you would be willing to speak to the dynamics between different teams/roles and how that relationship may influence desgin. I'd be curious to hear how the team dynamics may have been similar, whether at Netflix or Blizzard, and what you took away from them.
I cannot express with words how much I've enjoyed this video
Legion was my favorite iteration of elemental shaman from fantasy and gameplay perspectives (except for totems getting shanked) and has some of my favorite design flairs. For example, the chance to proc Ascendance off of another spell added to the fantasy of shaman, in that they don't COMMAND the elements, but they ASK for their help. Sometimes they just help a lot more than you expected, and if you're well prepared, you can channel that help into a massive performance boost.
If you had any direct hand in that, I thank you for making my time with the spec then and now a superb way to spend $15 a month.
Ele sham and Marks hunter were two of my favorite specs when I played. Wild to think you likely had a hand in them! They're both casters that require fun decision-making and big booming projectile hits that feel so good when you combo them with other buffs through the rotation.
Talented Jerks, Bobby? Talented at abusing the business?
subbed !!
what was ian's role in the work and how was he to work with? and what about metzens?
I remember when the Survival Hunter melee change was first publicly announced, I thought, "That's a cool idea, but there's no way it's making it to launch." I was pleased to be wrong.
QA UX team got my attention. How long did they exist – in the structure you were talking about them. Isn't there a certain risk, when you start growing yourself "hardcore raider" and convert them to game designers, that their focus becomes mostly intern driven? Or what exactly was their given role? How is community feedback evaluated? Very interesting video! 🙂
Why was adding too many tank specs a problem? Anecdotally, there's always been a large shortage on tanks, at least during the leveling phase. I don't mean that to be confrontational, I'm just very surprised to hear something so opposite to my experience as a player.
Nice video, I enjoy all of your videos, they are very will put together but anything on blizzard is always going to be more interesting to me. DM reacked to one of your videos a will back so thats how i found you. Id be disappointed if asmangold dos not reacked to your wow video. Thought i do think your deablo 3 video was my favorite. Interesting to see your take on why it ended up the way it did.
Looking forward to watching more
Why do all the designers hate feral druid?
I love everything about these tips, especially I love Iterations Equals Quality and No Talented Jerks. Other lessons are good too <3 Thank you.
Is it super common for the same people to work on vastly different games? I would have expected different genre's with different engines and goals to require experience.
The unlocks of Quel'Danas and also Isle of Thunder being somewhat of a regionwide effort but on the other hand also throttled/boosted to stay in line globally felt a bit off too.
Yellow is king of thumbnails colors. Nice Thumbnail!
I've been a hunter main since Vanilla and raiding within the top 50 scene since Legion and the reworks to each hunter spec I personally felt were fantastic particularly Marksmanship. The whole concept of the Vulnerable mechanic I fell in love with it and felt it was truly a unique concept that seperated from every other spec in the game. I did every single mage tower for every spec in the game during Legion and I can confidently say Legion MM is my favorite version of a spec i've played in the entire history of WoW, thank you for your contributions to my favorite game <3
what was the dynamic between the retail and classic dev teams?
It’s fascinating hear a firsthand perspective about changes that drastically flipped my experience upside down. Thank you for sharing!
I do have 2 questions if you wouldn’t mind answering them? 1. What was the rationale behind removing gladiator stance? Given that legion was an expansion where nobody was rolling against each other for weapons, it seemed jarring to effectively kill such an epic gladiator/knight fantasy in an expansion that touted heavy emphasis ON class fantasy
2. I distinctly recall the survival hunter having the “sentry turret” level 100 talent in the Legion alpha, before it was removed. Was this your doing? Were the designers dipping their toes into the “Tinker/Engineer” MMO archetype?
I ask that 2nd question because as someone that has always had a heavy affinity for the guild wars 2 engineer, torbjorn from OW, Gazlowe from HotS, Heimerdinger from LoL type of gameplay, the tinker has always been my dream class. Was it ever on the cards and do you think blizzard could ever revisit such a concept in the future??
Thanks again, and much love from Aus!
Thanks man, really great stuff
Wish you were still with wow, such a cool game, really needs leadership with the mindset you have. Thanks for all the joy you've given me and others over the years! 😀