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Ex-Blizzard lead men, Strain and O'Brian, Profiled 112

Posted by Hemos from the talking-wtih-the-men dept.
obchrisj writes "Wondering how Guild Wars came to be? FileFront profiles the conceptualizing, trials, and tribulations of ArenaNet's MMORPG, slated to be released sometime early this year, in an article titled, "F! True Game Story: Guild Wars". In case you're not in the know, Guild Wars was started by well-known ex-Blizzard employees, Jeff Strain and Mike O'Brian."
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Ex-Blizzard lead men, Strain and O'Brian, Profiled More

Ex-Blizzard lead men, Strain and O'Brian, Profiled

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  • Well Known... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Kjuib ( 584451 ) on Monday January 03, 2005 @12:35PM (#11245805) Homepage Journal
    If they are so well known how come I have never heard of them? The only Blizzard Employees I would say are well known are: Kerrigan, Thrall.

  • I miss "Tagu" (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bonch ( 38532 )
    I miss "Tagu." That is all!

    Honestly, the voices of the previous games were sorely missing from WarCraft III's lame "can the formalities" dialogue and phrasing. Most of the humans and Orcs were missing that vocal quality we loved from before.

    Anyway, I don't think Blizzard has really been the same company for years. Not since StarCraft. There's a paraphrased story about one of the programmers for StarCraft whose wife went into labor. He checked out a laptop and headed to the hospital and continued work

    • Re:I miss "Tagu" (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      - You're missing the birth of our daughter to work on that damn game?
      - It's not some damn game! It's StarCraft!
      What a fucking moron! I don't have a GF, but I sure wouldn't miss the birth of a child for some stupid game. Missing sex once or twice maybe, but not a BIRTH! It's not passion, it's being stupid. You don't need to praise his actions like he was some kind of god, he's just a very stupid human being...

      • Re:I miss "Tagu" (Score:3, Interesting)

        by megaversal ( 229407 )
        As a person, he's not that great. Of course the birth of a child is far more important than just a job. However, from the point of view of a customer/client/user, it does seem kind of cool to know there was that much dedication toward the product you're using (even if it is a game).

      • Re:I miss "Tagu" (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        What a fucking moron! Jesus your priorities are screwed up.

        Miss sex to code? Shit no! Sex is a precious commodity.

        The little brat will be around to pester you for the rest of your life (unless you run for it while you still can). Missing it's birth is a GOOD idea. You shouldn't absorb in all it's gory detail the moment that heaves your life into a huge fucking mess. That's mental scarring, it is. Besides you're sure as shit not seeing either the kid or the mother at their best.
      • Get a grip man, birth of a person isn't that exciting. It's how you parent and love a child that matters, not oggling some baby being squirt into the world. Christ man. Some people have a passion for what they do, and just because the guy had passion for his work doesn't mean he's an idiot. The games industry and especially blizzard would like their employee's to be pretty hardcore about games and play them enough to understand them and from their track record of hits, guys like these are exactly why we
        • If it was his second or later child I would agree with you. But if it's your first child I can't see why you would not want to experience it. It's a miracle that someone like you or me can create a new life with the help of a woman.

          Yes, second and third births are gonna be pretty humdrum, though. It's the fifteenth that becomes magical again ;)
        • It also has something to say about his respect for his significant other. It's not just about watching a baby "squirt" out, it's about watching the grand opening of what should be a new chapter in your life - and sharing that with your significant other.

      • Re:I miss "Tagu" (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Not long ago it was very unusual (almost unheard of) for men to be present in the delivery room during child birth. The fathers would sit in the waiting room until it was all over. I'd like to know how 50 years transforms a universally accepted practice into something that makes one a "very stupid human being." I'm guessing you are a teenager who thinks the universe was born in 1985. Go read a book. You might learn something.
        • I'd like to know how 50 years transforms a universally accepted practice into something that makes one a "very stupid human being."

          Actually, it's the other way round - the mere fact that something was an accepted practice doesn't mean it's not a stupid thing to do. And if you read a book, you'll find that only 50 years ago there were a lot of accepted practices that were very stupid.

          On a sidenote, your criticism is invalid for another reason: I have a feeling that the OP would have less of a problem with
        • Not long ago it was very unusual (almost unheard of) for men to be present in the delivery room during child birth. The fathers would sit in the waiting room until it was all over. I'd like to know how 50 years transforms a universally accepted practice into something that makes one a "very stupid human being." I'm guessing you are a teenager who thinks the universe was born in 1985. Go read a book. You might learn something.

          And not long before that there were no delivery rooms and fathers - assuming they
          • You should follow your own advice. In many cultures, men are excluded from participation in childbirth. It is very common for it to be a "women only" event.
    • Wow, that guy sure has his priorities straight... /sarcasm
    • You obviously don't miss "tagu" enough to realize it was actually "dabu."
    • "I miss "Tagu." That is all!"

      STOP POKING ME!!!

      Gotta love them Orcs...
    • Most likely the passion left the programmer about the same time his wife did.
    • I really have to disagree with you here.

      Warcraft 3 has character. That is hard to do 8 years after their first and 7 years after their second release in the series. Technology was very limited compared to the 2002 release of Warcraft 3 and I think they did an excellent job. So many times companies screw up the feel of a game when they do a sequel that has access to better hardware than the original had. The dialogue and phrasing in Warcraft 3 were sufficient to bring an interesting tale, that had you playi
    • I take it you haven't played a lot of World of Warcraft then :P

      More than 3-4 clicks on an NPC usually results in "stop clicking me", "you're rocking the boat", "you're making me sea-sick", "*sound of vomit splattering*" style dialogue :)

      Cool story, though when I first heard it, the programmer was one of their head honchos (can't remember his name).

  • This game is gonna shake things up in 2005 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've been following this game for over a year now and it certainly has lots of potential.

    Unlike Blizzards pay-to-play World Of Warcraft game, Guild Wars does not require a monthly subscription fee.

    Guild Wars has streaming patches which makes the game up to date on a daily basis. No more having to wait weeks or months for a patch like other games on the market.

    • This is not competition for MMORPGs. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Viewsonic ( 584922 ) on Monday January 03, 2005 @01:16PM (#11246149)
      It is basically a visual Battle.Net where people can walk around and talk and create groups with each other. However, at the core of the game, it is still groups of 5-6 players doing missions, not much different than multi-player Diablo, Neverwinter Night, etc .. It is very slick, and Diablo fans will simply love it. It is the next step for multiplayer games (A visual gameworld to walk around talk/create groups in) ..

      But it is an entirely different beast than a full-on MMORPG like WoW, which are geared to having groups of 40 players fight dragons and such at the same time. Or huge PVP battles with hundreds of people in the same location just battling it out. You simply cannot compare Guild Wars to games like WoW, EQ 1/2, etc .. Totally different games entirely.

      • Well until Blizzard puts more horsepower to use on their higher population servers, having 100's of Horde/Alliance in the same zone at once is just a quick way to a server crash ;) I believe that happens whenever some Alliance get together to raid into The Barrens or horde raid Duskwood ;) Hillsbrad is pretty laggy near Tarren Mill or Southshore when raids go on as well. Heck, just try running around Ironforge in the evening... chop chop chop! The Auction House draws tons of players and the server can't ke

      • Re:This is not competition for MMORPGs. (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Massively Multiplayer - CHECK.
        Online - CHECK.
        Role Playing Game - CHECK.

        What were you saying, now? I couldn't read your comment with the word "FANBOY" flashing so violently across my field of vision.
        • Oh, come on. I don't think he was putting down Guildwars, as if *is* a very slick game with some very interesting technology (like the streaming content). But it DOES play differently than something like WoW, especially since WoW is so seamless. Guildwars is great in its own right and can do stuff WoW can't do, and vice versa.
          • I'm going to do it's beta weekend this weekend. I ended up with 3 activation codes for it, but missed the Dec 4 beta weekend. Hopefully they have more then this january 7th.

            • I took a little getting used to for me, because I expected a full-on persistent MMORPG world instead of mostly instanced quests. It was pretty cool with a great graphics engine that ran pretty decent on my old computer (which is a P3-800! I have no idea why people call their 1.8Mhz AMD's ancient hardware ;)). I really don't know many other games with such sweet female models. I mean, hell. Who needs real women with computer games like these? I'll just play a female ranger and look at her bounce and bounce--
  • /"We took a game that only had 100 or 200 players at one time and had over 200,000 people play over a 24 hour period," he said. "Watching thousands and thousands of people play the game and join the world was emotionally crippling."/

    Having 200,000 people play wasn't just emotionally crippling. I imagine it would be "server" crippling too.

  • Text of article (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 03, 2005 @12:41PM (#11245851)
    True Game Story: Guild Wars by Andrew Serros on 01/03/2005 :
    Overview: Wondering how Guild Wars came to be? We profile the conceptualizing, trials, and tribulations of ArenaNet's MMORPG, slated to be released sometime early this year.
    When Blizzard Entertainment began development on World of Warcraft, a few of its employees had other things in mind.

    "Blizzard is a phenomenal developing company," Jeff Strain, lead designer for Guild Wars, said. "But we decided to leave and form ArenaNet to pursue this unique game."

    ArenaNet is the result of two men getting together with a certain discontent and a desire to see their own visions of an MMORPG come to life. The other man responsible for starting ArenaNet is Mike O'Brian, team lead for Warcraft III. Their meeting might have been more than a coincidence.

    Back in 2000, Strain and O'Brian met through their respective work within Blizzard, and found that they had a lot in common. Strain was one of the original leads for World of Warcraft, but found that he did not quite want to design just another MMORPG based on the Warcraft series. And O'Brian's ideas for multiplayer were really motivational.

    "The more we talked, the more we found that there was this great game in the middle," Strain said. "The original goal was [to] make an MMO that is truly unique and avoids the classic design elements that only makes it fun for hardcore players."

    ArenaNet's list of key designers read like a who's who of classic Blizzard titles, including Starcraft, Warcraft III, and now Worlds of Warcraft. Along with Strain and O'Brian are James Phinney, who was the lead designer of Starcraft.

    "We brought on James [Phinney] because he was the one that was responsible for balancing three different races in Starcraft," Strain said. "We had a great deal of confidence that he could take the game with thrity different professions and 450 unique skills and balance it so that it really puts together this concept that Guild Wars is a game of skill."

    Another key component to the design team was Steve Hwang, who formerly worked at Lucas Arts as a level designer on titles such as Dark Forces and Jedi Knights. With all the experience on the team from many successful games and backgrounds, it was a hopeful start for ArenaNet. But what it did not have was a guarantee.

    "As a new studio, we did not form a publishing relationship," Strain said. The usual route for game development is that publishing companies set up a line of funding for the development to get done, but sometimes this means creative control may end up in the hands of the publishers. "We decided to self-fund so that we could be completely independent for a few years," he said.

    The article continues below..
    Close ad.

    ArenaNet started development on Guild Wars in the summer of 2000, and Strain said that while it was not a great time to be a developing company, they managed to stay on track with their development as they had planned. However, there was always pressure to stay on track because, as he said, they did not have a safety net of a "big fluffy developing contract from day one."

    However, it was not long before they found financial backing. Well, actually, they did not find a company to publish their game, a company found them because they had been tracking their progress since they left Blizzard.

    NC Soft was anxious to see exactly what ArenaNet was up to, but the developing team held off until two years after they started development because they wanted to be able to show NC Soft exactly what type of game they were going to be publishing. During the summer of 2002, ArenaNet agreed to begin talking to NC Soft and by the fall of that year they agreed to publish Guild Wars. Strain said the company saw the originality of the game, and appreciated the fact that it was "not just another MMO."

    "We were really excited working with NC Soft," Strain said. "They share a lot of the same goals and vision that we do. We've never heard
  • a desire to see their own visions of an MMORPG come to life.

    I guess they're implying that blizzard was holding them back and they wanted to see a change in management. No wonder Starcraft: Ghost took 10 years to develope
    • Blizzard didn't develop StarCraft: Ghost. Nihilistic Software started development on it and now Blizzard is "taking over" and publishing it. A: Not in-house software. B: Any time a product switches hands you can expect a huge increase in the development timeline.

  • Personal experience (Score:3, Informative)

    by steeef ( 98372 ) <steeef@@@gmail...com> on Monday January 03, 2005 @01:01PM (#11246017)
    I've played Guild Wars during the World Preview Event and two of the Beta Weekends. All told, it's a great game, and combines the cooperation of MMORPGs with what I enjoyed about games like Neverwinter Nights and Diablo II.

    Since the last Beta Weekend though, I've been playing World of Warcraft. Certainly WoW is more of an MMORPG in the traditional sense than Guild Wars, but it makes the same effort to ensure casual players get as much enjoyment out of it as hardcore players.

    I'll still probably buy Guild Wars when it's released, but I think I'll skip the next Beta Weekend. I don't think I can split my interest between two RPGs just yet.
    • "I'll still probably buy Guild Wars when it's released, but I think I'll skip the next Beta Weekend. I don't think I can split my interest between two RPGs just yet"

      Same here... massive online games really work better when you have friends online to share the experience with, and it's hard to cultivate two online families at once.
  • is a blast, but so is City of Heros which is a NC Soft game. We know that on the service/sever sice NC Soft has their act together. This could be an interesting game, it seems like the going of into the frontier to make your game dream is still alive.

  • Beta Weekend (Score:3, Informative)

    by Buzzard2501 ( 834714 ) on Monday January 03, 2005 @01:17PM (#11246154)
    The next beta weekend is this weekend (8th - 9th). You can grab the client from http://guildwars.com/ [guildwars.com] and a beta weekend key http://www.fileplanet.com/betacenter/guildwars/ [fileplanet.com] (reqs email + dob)

    • Re:Beta Weekend (Score:2, Informative)

      by b00jah ( 672635 )
      The beta weekend will start on the day preceeding the Beta Weekend (January 7th). They started doing this since the last Beta Weekend to enure players from other countries will get time to play aswell. For us in North America it just means another extra day to play the beta!
  • I am currently playing WoW and enjoying it. I think they have done a nice job of creating a range of options for character choices that are well balanaced and fun. I am still exploring them. At the same time I understand alot of their work has gone into making the experienced player happy at the high levels, so I am looking forward to what that is like.

    Still, I can see alot of things that could make it better, and I have my own visions of what a good MMORPG would include, including more dynamic environment
    • I got to play during the WOW beta, and enjoyed it very much. I play alot of EQ and Lineage II, and am going to try the Guild Wars this weekend. So far, with the exception of Guild Wars, Wow has been the best MMO. I find that wow has alot of things I like in the game. I like how I don't feel like i have to wait forever and often for mana to regen, and I like how I can zoom back to 3rd person mode and it's all works well together.

      I've been playing on Free Servers for EQ and Lineage II. When I can afford
    • You're probably going to like this, then. The Battlegrounds [worldofwarcraft.com]. A battleground will basically be a special region of the map where each side must cooperate to upgrade their bases and take resources, while battling npcs and other players as well. It'll really introduce the whole Warcraft feel to the game, I think.
  • Don't miss the next Beta Weekend Event for a weekend of Guild Wars gaming. It's THIS weekend (starting January 7th) and you can get free beta keys at FilePlanet [fileplanet.com] for an entire weekend of fun. Or not. Regardless, it's a good way to make up your mind, and I suppose the only "cost" is a disposable e-mail address [dodgeit.com] for the sign-up! :-)

    Personally, I have ordered the pre-order package for a key that will be good for all BWE's and it's a good tip if you end up liking the game, since it's not certain they'll give awa
    • wish I would of waited to activate my Guild Wars for this beta weekend. I would of used fileplanets, and kept the one i used for the next one, just in case.

      oh, well, still got 2 more cds with keys on them.

      if there is even that many beta weekends left...

      oh, I would of modded your post up, parent, but I had already posted to this topic (yours, is the second or 3rd post)

  • Play GW this weekend (morning of Jan 7) (Score:3, Informative)

    by randallschleufer ( 807425 ) on Monday January 03, 2005 @02:02PM (#11246679)
    Don't worry, WoW, EQ2, etc. will still be there when you get back.

    I've played every beta since the WPE, and it has always been an enjoyable experience. Even though the game is in Beta, it is thoroughly playable and remarkably stable. Most developers would have been satisfied and launched already- ANet wants to be sure the final game is satisfactory AT LAUNCH, despite the fact that they can fix bugs almost immediately and stream patches to the clients.

    I hate MMORGPs. I really do. But a few things that drew me to Guild Wars were:

    1) No Monthly Fees. EVER
    2) No grinding.
    3) No 1337 uber-skills and items.
    4) extremely balanced, EVERYTHING literally has a counter and no one player is overly powerful.
    5) extremely intuitive and clean interface.
    6) elimination of PKing and KSing.

    Straight from their ads:
    An open Promise to gamers from the Guild Wars team-
    - Guild Wars will not require a subscription fee.
    - Guild Wars will reward playing SKILL, not hours played
    - Guild Wars is an Online RPG to be ENJOYED, not endured

    Guild Wars is an important step in gaming for me, because I don't have the time to dedicate to a subscription-based service. I don't have the time to play for hours on end- with Guild Wars I can jump in for 15 minutes or 5 hours. It doesn't matter, I always have fun.
    • If Guild Wars rewards playing skill, I'll play it. Somehow, though, I think my character's damage, or chance to dodge an arrow or a sword, is going to be based on invisible dice rolling and not my actions. A skill based game would be a game where it requires more thought that simply clicking on the enemy to attack. At least make you AIM the arrows or something. Then a skilled player could outshoot an unskilled player.
      • The difference in player skills in GW comes mostly from how well they're tactically using their characters' skills. There are 6 professions that you make dual class characters from, so there's 30 combos right there, and then each profession has around 75 skills for a total of 450 skills. For each mission / duel / Guild-vs-Guild fight you pick a total of 8 of those from however many you've learnt.

        Yes, invisible "dice rolling" indeed, but you're basically always going to lose if you don't know how to counte
      • A skill based game would be a game where it requires more thought that simply clicking on the enemy to attack.

        That sounds like GuildWars, alright...

        At least make you AIM the arrows or something. Then a skilled player could outshoot an unskilled player.

        Not that, however. GuildWars rewards skill as in strategy and tactics, ala Chess or (perhaps more appropriately) Magic: the Gathering (indeed, there's two different levels of skill, constructing your deck or build, carefully choosing what to bring and wha

      • If Guild Wars rewards playing skill, I'll play it. Somehow, though, I think my character's damage, or chance to dodge an arrow or a sword, is going to be based on invisible dice rolling and not my actions

        You might want to play it first, yes there is invis dice rolling, yes it depends how high oyu're skills are, point is though you're capped on skills, as soon as you hit level 20, bang, no more point to improve you're skills in, ex now only earns you points with which you can buy skill/actions (Of whic

        • Explain to me how this is different than World of Warcraft. Two level 20 people will be on roughly the same footing; it all depends on how they use their skills. Obviously a level 30 will own a level 20, but in Guild Wars you still have to hit the cap. It's just much lower.
          • Its different because out of the 150 or so skills you have access to you can only use 8. The 8 you pick define what your strat is for taking people out. You also have to have the skill to pull that strat off, not 1 thing will make you win, but using your skills at the right time reacting to your opponent are things that go into the equation. Your opponent is in the same boat, they have 150 possible skills of which 8 they are using who knows which 8.

            In WoW every class has set skills they get per their lev
    • Did anyone here play the E3 for Everyone event, or was that just me?
    • I looked at the web site, but couldn't figure out how to get one in time to play this weekend. Got any tips?
    • Elimination of player-killing means I'm completely uninterested in it. Now, what the heck is KSing?
    • 6) elimination of PKing and KSing.

      Well, that's inviting in and of itself. With that one move you've gotten rid of all the 15-year-old shits whose mama's never bitch-slapped any manners into them. And the older shits who never managed to get past the age of 15, at least mentally.

      Max
  • I don't know anyone that tried and liked it during its short preview. I was bored to tears. Even free I won't consider playing it.
    • That's odd, 'cause I don't know anyone who tried it and didn't like it. I even got my little brother to try it out during the last World Preview Event. He thought he was going to hate it, but then got into a game, and saw that it required skill and tactical planning, and it wasn't just grinding away against nameless enemies to level up. In fact, it's almost easy to overlook when you level up, because you just get into the game and quit caring about levelling. At least, that's been my experience.
  • Well, my thoughts on the game (been playing since WPE) One of the things this game has been compared to often is Magic: the Gathering, which is a nice indicator of what to expect from the game, as GW does share some pros and cons. 1) Superficial similarities: The classes correspond roughly to the colors in Magic. Monk = White, Elementalist = Red, Ranger = Green, Mesmer = Blue, Necromancers = Black, and Warriors are something else. Someone suggested Artifacts. 2) Similarities 2: Half the skill comes fro
    • (Doh, picked the wrong formatting option by mistake)

      Well, my thoughts on the game (been playing since WPE) One of the things this game has been compared to often is Magic: the Gathering, which is a nice indicator of what to expect from the game, as GW does share some pros and cons.

      1) Superficial similarities: The classes correspond roughly to the colors in Magic. Monk = White, Elementalist = Red, Ranger = Green, Mesmer = Blue, Necromancers = Black, and Warriors are something else. Someone suggested Artifa
  • I'll have to tell the poor sap he got ignored again tommarow.
  • I 've played in the public beta week-ends. I thought Guild Wars was cool until I tried WoW for the first time. Despite all the claimed advantages of balance and no fees, GW just feels like Dungeon Siege/not quite MMORPG. WoW just sucks you in and the graphics are better to boot. Immersiveness is fantastic. The fact that GW doesn't have you running around the world map actually detracts from the feeling that you're there...seems more like stages which isn't really different from many many other games.

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