Ask Blizzard Employees About Things That Matter

In just a few days, some of us will be making the trek to this year's Blizzcon event in Anaheim, CA. In addition to the interesting announcements, sneak peeks, and other distractions, we will be sitting down with several Blizzard employees to answer any questions you might have. So far we have scheduled some time with Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II; Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft; Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer on Diablo III; and Paul Sams, Blizzard COO. Please address your questions to one (or several) of these candidates and try to keep them civil and on topic. Questions about Diablo III's art style will most likely be omitted since we have limited time and that dead horse has already been beaten into submission. The usual Slashdot interview rules apply, but beyond that, the sky is the limit.

Re:To any of them

[KDR_11k]

Throw it away, no studio takes suggestions like that and not just because of legal issues (fear of being sued for doing anything similar to the idea even if they've thought it up independently, for example).

Re:Classes, Races & Professions

[Digital Vomit]

This question has pretty much been answered publicly already. To quote one of the developers [worldofwarcraft.com]:

We have spreadsheets -- huge ones. We have values for characters in greens and raid buffed with epic gear. We have estimates of mob damage and health, character downtime, the benefits from enchants, gems and glyphs. We have conversion rates of mana to runic power to energy to rage. We look at damage per second, efficiency, button presses per second, typical rotations, movement vs. standing still, mobs vs. players and every other variable we can think of (and there are a LOT of them).

In the end we come up with an estimate for what an attack should do. We come up with a budget for talents and spells just like we have a budget for items at a given level. Sometimes those estimates are wrong because we forgot to take something into account, or because there's a bug in a talent or spell somewhere that messes up the calculation.

And then we do lots of testing, and to get a reality check on our tests, we compare them to the numbers people are reporting from the beta. Repeat as necessary.

I've said this in a few posts: that our numbers can sometimes be wrong (as is the case almost any time you deal with numbers), but the methods we use to arrive at them are absolutely not sloppy.

Re:Biggest World of Warcraft Disaster?

[slimjim8094]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood [wikipedia.org] mayhaps?

Re:Classes, Races & Professions

[morcego]

This is extremely relative. I was planning on answer the OP, but this one opens a nicer avenue.

I was in change of balancing classes/races for about a year on another game. There are so many factor to take into account I never want to do that kind of thing again. But just a rough sketch:

- Across the board balance issues: This are easier to detect, and spreadsheets are great for it
- Situational balance issues: And WoW example would be horde classes on PvP
- Perception balance issues: This are balance issues that players think exist, but don't. Usually they think of it as unfair or unbalanced by analyzing isolated facts, like your example. The 1% extra dodge for night elves is EXTREMELY beneficial if you are a raiding bear tank. You have no idea how much difference that 1% can make.

As a player and former developer (again, from another game), I think Blizzard does the only thing that can be done: keep the imbalances balanced. Meaning: give each race, class etc something they excel at. Some are better for pvp, some are better for PvE, some for gold farming and gathering professions. After leveling my 4rd character, I have to say that all classes, if played correctly, are equally overpowered (so to speak).

I can't vouch for the WotLK expansion. I have no beta access. But, in any case, I expect more of the same. Balancing, rebalancing, adjusts, and lots of QQ about a give class being OP.

Players will be players.
 

Re:Why fight Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

> There is ample proof of WOW working (somewhat) in WINE

It is working much better than "somewhat." I have leveled a character
all the way to 70 in WINE running under Gentoo, and the game has never
crashed on me. I would get a chuckle whenever another player in an
instance would complain about his computer being unstable, and he
needs to log out in order to reboot.

Re:Classes, Races & Professions

[dAzED1]

the cap for all rolls is based on the idea that outcomes are determined on a random 100-sided die.

Defense mod = 0.04 * (defense - (350 + (5 * mob level delta))
Example: for a lvl70 player against a lvl73 mob, that's (defense - 365).

The table looks like this:
Miss = base 5% + (defense mod)
Parry = stat mods + (defense mod)
Dodge = stat mods + (defense mod)
Block = stat mods + (defense mod)
Crit = 5% - (defense mod) - (resil mod)
crush = (5 * (mob level delta)) - (defense mod)
Hit = (remainder, but 1% minimum)

So that "1%" changes your dodge line. It's not a 1% change to your chance to dodge, what it does is make an additional 1% of all attacks become dodges.

As a tank, the goal is to become "uncrushable" and "uncritable" which happens by using up all the stuff on top, taking crit and crush "off the table" since Blizzard set the table up to make anything past 100% be ignored. So, make miss 10%, parry 15%, dodge 15%, and block 60% and tada...you can't be crit or crushed.

So that 1% doesn't sound like a lot to non-tanks, but damn is it...

(see http://www.wowwiki.com/Attack_Table [wowwiki.com] for details)

Re:Classes, Races & Professions

[n dot l]

He's been immortalized in song [youtube.com].