Ask Blizzard About Starcraft2, Diablo III, WoW, or Battle.net 520
Well, Blizzcon 2009 is about to get underway (look for the big news from the keynote in a few hours) and given how fast it sold out I'm sure there are still many rabid fans interested in what Blizzard might have to say that don't want to shell out the $40 for Pay-Per-View access. So, to that end we have interviews scheduled tomorrow with the teams from Starcraft2, Diablo III, World of Warcraft, and Battle.net. If there is anything you wish to know about the progress or juicy details from any of these teams please leave it in the comments below. We'll try to parse through for the best questions and get you answers during our interview slots tomorrow. The usual Slashdot interview rules apply.
Reduced Effort in World of Warcraft (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you seen any other negative feedback about this? Has anyone complained? You sit as the largest online game, is growth really so important that game mecahnics need to be changed to entice new players?
In my honest opinion, you are selling yourselves short. The players see less quest content now because of increased experience. While they get to end content faster, they pass up a lot of areas and beautiful terrain just purely because they don't have to go there. What does the future hold as you strive to cut out content? The ability to start at level (current expansion cap - 20)?
Are there any plans to revamp Parental Controls? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I play wow, I probably play too much. I'd like to use some built-in functionality to gently put limits on my playtime and remind me how much I've played in a week. At first I had high hopes that the Parental Controls function could help me.
Unfortunately, though the rest of wow's interface is great, its parental controls are not only a crime against all that is beautiful and elegant, but pretty useless in the real world. There's no way to set "able to play X hours per week" or "able to play Y hours per weekday, Z hours per weekend". One must set a hard-coded block schedule, click okay, then hope you've predicted your exact needs. And there's no in-game warning when you're coming up against a limit-- you're simply disconnected when it hits.
Please, please, please tell me there are plans afoot to fix this tool and perhaps remake it into a more general method for account owners to manage playtime better? Extra kudos if it could include a Netflix-style option to put your account on vacation for a variable length of time...
Battle.net Fixes and Improvements? (Score:5, Interesting)
What were you thinking.... (Score:5, Interesting)
When, after a LONG period of overloaded instance servers, with literally months of people complaining, in patch 3.2 not only you encouraged everybody to run as many heroics per day as they can possibly do due to easy emblems of conquest, but at the same time you pretty much forced any hardcore raider to never skip the daily heroic for at the very least 1 month. As a result, the load is now 3 times worse and people complain of being locked out of instances for 40-50 minutes even in offpeak hours, not to mention that due to the priority system, low level instances are pretty much inaccessible. This hurts the new players a lot. Those same new players whose experience you are terrified to ruin, and due to which you won't apply more restrictive anti goldspam measures, causing everyone to have to endure the constant shit in city channels.
Linux support (Score:5, Interesting)
The Status Quo of Delayed Release Dates (Score:5, Interesting)
I understand this happens by and large everywhere in software development but you guys are epitome of online games. If you can't give solid release dates, no one can.
Does Censorship in China Bother You? (Score:5, Interesting)
Product announcemnt. (Score:1, Interesting)
....rabid fans interested in what Blizzard might have to say that don't want to shell out the $40 for Pay-Per-View access
Wait, folks will pay to hear a product announcement?!? Something that is done for free by other businesses.
Pay to listen to a public relations guy talk about a product? Pay to hear an advertisement?
I'm having a real hard time understanding this and I'm quite jealous that I didn't think of it. I'm also thinking of a phrase that has been attributed to PT Barnum.
Starcraft 2 three games? (Score:2, Interesting)
Sell Out (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Battle.net and StarCraft II (Score:5, Interesting)
WRT Battle.net and StarCraft II, would you be making it so multiplayer play is possible with zero configuration on the firewall/router? If I invite 10 of my friends for a get-together, and we want to play StarCraft II, will that be possible without having to reconfigure my router? Or to do this, will it require using technologies like UPnP so SC II can open ports for each player?
Why is there no provision for offline play? Considering the way Blizzard games run so nicely on low-end hardware, if my friends and I are stuck at the airport waiting for a connection, it means we can't just setup an ad-hoc network and play SC II (especially since many airports charge $$$ per minute of Internet) to pass the time. Or even at low end motels/hotels where WiFi isn't necessarily available (or is costly)? (To be honest, I've seen even high-end hotels charge for Internet access, too, but it seems a waste that we all have to pay good money to get access to Battle.net so we can all play together).
What about offline play for single player? Or will single player also require battle.net?
Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
Q2) If no Q1, will you at least consider wine as a release platform for your incoming titles?
Q3) Given the current situation with incresing Linux distribution/usage, what are your future plans for Linux OS?
Q4) Is it so hard to develope the same engine on both D3D and OpenGL?
Q5) Are there any particular effects you couldn't be able to easily implement in OpenGL version (eg. fancy shadows in WoW)? If yes, why?
Q6) Would you reccomend to a young ISV to use OpenGL or better both D3D and OpenGL to create a multi-platform game?
Cheers, Ema!
Starcraft II (Score:5, Interesting)
Will each game be treated as an entirely separate entity in terms of publication, IE, you pay the same $50 for each game, or will it be treated as episodic content where you have to purchase the first game in order to play the second and third, and the second and third installments are significantly less expensive?
Will we see Diablo III on consoles? (Score:2, Interesting)
Please, please bring Diablo III to consoles (at least XBox360) with local multiplayer support (preferably 4-player). For PC enthusiasts or those who say it can't be done, please see:
Champions of Norrath (PS2)
Champions: Return to Arms (PS2)
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Series
Sacred 2 (360 and PS3)
Also take note of the user interfaces...I think that Champions:RTA had the best UI for this type of game on a console. It would be nice to be able to have at least partial inventory access without interrupting other local players.
It's such great fun to share a couch with a few friends and explore dungeons and compete for loot.
Support for older games? (Score:1, Interesting)
After Battle.net 2 goes live, are there any plans to update older games (Warcraft 3, Diablo 2, or even older games such as Starcraft and Warcraft 2) to use the new battle.net, or are they going to remain as they are?
Re:Linux support (Score:5, Interesting)
Another good question on that topic is:
When it is known and established that there was in fact a linux client for WoW when in beta, what obstables hindered you from releasing it as an unsupported extra? was it maintained and if so what obstacles still remain to this day?
Re:Battle.net Fixes and Improvements? (Score:3, Interesting)
Without LAN, how are we going to play with 2 computers at the same time behind a NAT router? With original Starcraft, you can't go on battle.net with more than one computer behind the same NAT router. If I want to play a 4v4 game at a LAN party, I will now need to connect 8 computers behind a single NAT router to battle.net. (Or, if I wanted to participate as 2 players on opposite teams in a 3v3 game, I will still need to connect 2 computers to battle.net from behind a NAT router). Whenever I tried this on the original Starcraft, it dropped one of the players.
Starcraft II LAN Petition (Score:5, Interesting)
What are the plans to combat rampant cheating? (Score:5, Interesting)
Question about New Hires & College Grads (Score:5, Interesting)
In regards to the artists of graphics and world design and modeling: What are the biggest deficiencies you see in new hires and college grads? Is the "art" aspects of your games something that can be learned or do you have a few talented visionaries driving the group? I've been impressed with the mood in Diablo and the beautiful scenery in certain areas of World of Warcraft. Is that a single person at work or a large group adding a little brush stroke to the whole painting?
Diablo III (Score:3, Interesting)
Why did you use a Witch-Doctor to replace the necromancer? I can think of a million other ways to replace him. If you really want to be original, try to make a class that doesn't have a common English name. Call them Maj'kan and give them their own culture. Say that they were priests from the remnants of a civilization that was destroyed by the prime evils, and that they trained to travel to hell itself to bring them back. Then they can have the ability to summon stitched-together demons and they can even augment themselves with the corpses of demons. Also, they can have the ability to travel to their own pocket dimension in hell (an ability that is truly unique to the game). Even the barbarian could have been replaced with a Shaolin-monk type culture that bashes away just like the current barb. And the sorceress has not been replaced, only renamed. We're not buying that one.
Key to success of Blizzard games (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm wondering why you (the developer teams) think so many Blizzard games stand out from the crowd, from World of Warcraft to Diablo I & II, and Warcraft. Why do you think the Blizzard games have been better (or at least more popular) than so many alternatives?
Thanks.
How will removing LAN encourage more sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:StarCraft II - LAN PLAY (Score:4, Interesting)
unfortunately I suspect that SCII is in such an unfinished state that Blizzard decided to cut testing out LAN play in favour of Battlenet in order to get SCII out the door in an otherwise finished state ASAP rather than let it become SC Ghost all over again. The question is, why? SC fans have been waiting a decade and change for SCII or *something* expanding on the SC storyline so what is a few months extra testing out LAN for the release?
Anyway to bring this back on topic, to the SCII team: is there any possibility of WINE support in the next three chapters of SCII in order to run the games on alternative platforms such as LInux/BSD etc?
Single Player (Score:5, Interesting)
I love playing games with friends in person, have a few people over and play.
Online, this has less draw for me. In a FPS I get my ass kicked. In WoW I gave up, I was spending more time LFG than actually going through dungeons. When my ideal gaming session is less than an hour, upper levels just got impossible if I didn't want to grind slowly through random encounters and skip quests.
Diablo 3 seems to have a heavy focus on the multi-player, Starcraft 2 campaigns look great, but all eyes (and in fact the release date) seem to be set on how Battle.net is doing.
Is single player dead? or at least dead at blizzard.
Auction house in D3 (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you considering allowing D3 users to trade object using Battle NEt out side of a game?
Re:Linux support (Score:2, Interesting)
WoW - Further Internet Integration (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you have any plans for integrating World of Warcraft with the internet? People have speculated for ages about the ability to access the Auction House, receive and send in-game mail, schedule raids/events, and even chat with players in the game from a web-based console, or even a mobile phone. What sorts of challenges are keeping you from exploring this more fully than we have already seen with the experiments on the Armory?
Re:Linux support (Score:2, Interesting)
Probably because there would be problems implementing warden on Linux machines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warden_(software) [wikipedia.org]
WoW - Spectator Mode (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you still considering allowing a 'Spectator Mode' in WoW? This feature would be specifically interesting in Arenas and Raids, and doesn't seem to be too technologically complex to implement. What's holding you back?
Re:Reduced Effort in World of Warcraft (Score:2, Interesting)
I would have never come back if not for the changes they have made to leveling. Several of my friends would never have started playing. I am positive that the number of people who dislike the accelerated leveling are in the minority.
If they made it to where you could start alts at level 80 when you've already leveled a character to 80 then I would play considerably more than I already do. Sinking that much time into a character before you can even really start to play the game is simply stupid. I don't have 8 hours a day to play. I'm glad you do.
Oh wait no, I think you're right. Please make this game even more grindy.
WoW and Realms (Score:5, Interesting)
WoW is the only game I can't play with all my friends. Because some are are on realm A, some are on realm B, and some are in realm C. And while I can create 3 different characters to play with each of them, I could not tackle a dungeon with all of them. If I was playing Warcraft 3, Guild Wars, or any number of first person shooters, this wouldn't a problem -- and I don't pay a subscription to any of them.
Are there any plans (aside from the current "Paid Character Transfer") to enhance cross-realm gameplay? Or is this low on your priority list and are never going to do it (like allowing flying mounts in pre-BC areas)?
(And yes: I realize I'm in the minority by having met most of my friends who play WoW IRL...rather than the reverse)
A Question WIth No Answer Except One (Score:4, Interesting)
Since they clearly aren't going to budge on either position, there's only one reason to buy what they're selling. It's because you think that the entertainment you get is worth the money you spend, and is good enough to overcome your objections. What other reason could there possibly be?
In other words, what kind of answer are you after?
Secrets and Mysteries in Diablo 3... (Score:2, Interesting)
Dear Blizzard,
You have the chance to do some really extraordinary things with Diablo 3. Hiring Leonard Boyarsky as lead world designer, seemed to this long-time crpg fan a potential masterstroke. Although neither Diablo games have ever been fully accepted as "true" crpgs by many, they are undeniably fun games in their own right. Many of us still play them both on occasion.
The one thing I, and I would think many other long-time fans of Diablo would like to see... I would like to still be discovering new secrets and mysteries the game holds for years after release.
WoW is many hundreds of times larger geographically than Diablo 2; it's much easier to build very large worlds in 3D. What are your plans/ideas for taking Diablo 3 to the next level in this regard?
You can play older crpgs many times without even seeing the entire game world. Mr. Boyarsky has already helped design such deeply realized games before. (Fallout(s). Arcanum. Etc.)
You have the chance with D3 to put a lot more "rpg" into the Diablo franchise... any plans on doing so?
I would love to be discovering new areas, new quests, and new adventures, 5 years after D3 is released.
Is this the direction you are planning to go?
Re:Battle.net Fixes and Improvements? (Score:5, Interesting)
If they're going to be Microsoft-esque in making sure my copy is genuine, I'll just go play something else. There are plenty of games out there that can be just as fun without the bullshit.
Re:Linux support (Score:3, Interesting)
Another question in this thread:
Blizzard has noted that they allow the use of Cedega and Wine but will not provide technical support. They have worked with the Cedega developers on issues. And there's whispers that they have unofficially worked with Wine developers.
What does Blizzard get for these efforts? Are there insights to bugs / issues to the game client that aren't apparent on the supported platforms? Or is this just a fun side project that helps out a (presumably) smaller subset of fans / customers?
Re:Linux support (Score:3, Interesting)
Another question:
Is Blizzard aware of how many of their customers use Linux? Do these statistics show up via Warden and/or the occasional "non-identifying system statistics" reports?
Re:Reduced Effort in World of Warcraft (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmmm I think I feel much the same! Why won't they make all drops completely random, except for a basic category bias whereas archers tend to drop drop bows, kobold miners drop hammers, etc. Aside from one-time-quest-drops, why should be bosses privileged? They already have a quest progression (like in Stockades) where at a higher level you are invited to revisit a dungeon to get yet another quest: that should suffice for a reason to run an instance multiple times.
But then, of course, people will concentrate on volume-killing for farming items. Instead of running end-game instances, they will be running 5-cold-mage parties in killing fields somewhere ad infinitum, killing, I can only assume, boars. There are various ways to fix this as well. One way is by creating items on kill and making younger spawns to have shit for items, and making drops progressively better as the mob gets older. This, actually, could be quite interesting, as the balance could shift towards lone hunters who seek out rare and elite mobs. Running instances would still be OK for drops (guaranteed flat drop rate), but totally comparable with farming Outlands with a friend or two.
Another (imho, positive) consequence of making all drops random is the increased appreciation for crafted items.
To make a long story short, I am done with WoW for reason outlined by the parent. I would play MMO that rewards solo players with all possible items, given enough time.