NYT on World of Warcraft 82
The New York Times (registration required) has a piece on Blizzard's World of Warcraft, discussing the game's popularity and high sales. The article also examines the design processes that go into the game, and the artistic outlook of the WoW live team. From the article: "From around a dark, windowless room, nine young men peered into the unfinished virtual interior of Karazhan, a haunted tower set in a forlorn mountain pass that will open later this year. 'As you can see, the architecture is a little ornate, a little Gothicky,' said Aaron Keller, a 29-year-old designer, gesturing to the 3-D model on the computer screen before him. 'We're thinking about turning these arches into horse heads.'
Graphics (Score:5, Insightful)
And to beat the inevitable rush of complaints, the Hardware issues are much improved over release. When speaking about the World of Warcraft everyone seems to have selective memory. There hasn't been a majorly anticipated MMORPG launch in the history of internet gaming that didn't have bottlenecks.
Re:Did I miss the memo? (Score:5, Insightful)
They released World of Warcraft.
Re:Did I miss the memo? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Did I miss the memo? (Score:4, Insightful)
I haven't purchased or played a Blizzard game since and I own all of their titles previous to the incident. They lost a lot of repect from me that day.
Beauty is Truth, Truth; Beauty (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Did I miss the memo? (Score:3, Insightful)
No way man, I had no hand in designing it. I just pointed out a ton of imbalances, and was rewarded with Blizzard friend status from my frequent feedback. It was barely a game at beginning of beta, just a bunch of units with semi-random statistics. Its fun for me when a game doesn't choose to balance their game because I can find imbalances like no other. I was winning close to 100% of my games at start and as things became more balanced and everyone started learning strats, my winning % dropped down to like 85%. I definately would like to design games though, or do more beta testing. I like to be in the development process because I think thats where all the fun is. Once a game's strategies are known by all, the game either becomes paper rock scissors, a twitch fest or a fun psychological battle of wits. I think a psychological game is the best, but they're hard to achieve.
Re:Did I miss the memo? (Score:2, Insightful)
Most people don't care. An obviously large chunk of slashdot doesn't care.
As soon as you get off this idea that slashdot is one giant mob as opposed to a collection of people who MIGHT have their own opinions that differ from yours, you will be a lot better off.
Re:Graphics (Score:5, Insightful)
Suddenly, they had all 600k users in a month, and they had a year of bugs and bottlenecks to fix immediately.
Honestly, I now see the reason for World Passes. FFXI was flawless (as much as one could expect) during it's NA PS2 launch.
Re:Did I miss the memo? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey Hey Hey...
I play WoW on a Mac.