Yet another Tuesday.

**chaud** · 02-02-2009, 11:22 PM

Tuesday
Only rolling restarts this week!...Unless you happen to be on Tichondrius or Proudmoore.

Naxx Lag

Naxxramas Optimization Changes - Source

In our continuing effort to improve the gameplay experience for our players, we’ve recently made optimizations, specifically to Naxxramas performance, based on feedback from players. With these changes, we are carefully monitoring server performance to gauge the change’s success. In addition to that, we would very much like to hear our players' personal experience in Naxxramas this week. We are asking players to post your feedback in terms of what if any changes in performance you’ve noticed in Naxxramas. Please make sure to include the realm you play on and the time frame you were participating in Naxxramas.

Malygos

Vortex Damage - Source

We identified a bug preventing Circle of Healing and Wild Growth from being able to find targets in Vortex. It was not our intent that these heals be prevented during Vortex (beyond the nerf we already made to prevent them from being spammed).

We should be able to fix this in the next couple of days.

Healers

Design Philosophy question. - Source

The problem is that there should not be infinite mana classes currently in the game. You should not run OOM every single fight (if you play well). But you should not be able to ignore it either.

For what it's worth, Resto shamans are often listed as the healer that can run out of mana. Paladins, priests and druids should ideally play a lot more like that. They do seem to run OOM in PvP, but not really in PvE.

Mage

Request for a Status Report on Mages - Source

1) We like that Arcane is starting to feel like a viable alternative to FFB in PvE.
2) We think Arcane has too much burst potential in PvP. We want to fix it without undoing the progress we've made on #1, or sending all Arena mages to Frost.
3) We agree that the Scorch debuff is too much of a unique snowflake.
5) Definitely a concern. We would love to get the "Shatter combo" vibe in PvE, but we haven't figured out a way to do it yet that doesn't involve buffing Cone of Cold, which would be bad for PvP reasons.

Priest

So, hotfix for GS? - Source

Update: the problem does seem to be related to a second hit killing the target before the GS heal can actually kick in. We should be hotfixing in a solution soon.

Druid

Starfall Discussion - Source

The purpose of Starfall is to do extra damage. What I mean by that is that the spell is not channeled so you can use it along with a Hurricane or whatever other spell you want to cast. It was never intended to be a de-stealther and we've become unenamored with random stun chances added to other spells.

One criticism which we think is totally valid is the paltry coefficient on Starfall. We will be hotfixing in a more reasonable number soon (tm).

Dances

New Dances - Source

This is correct. It has been a work in-progress for some time now for our artists. It's something they hack away at here and there when things like Ulduar aren't imminent.

Quest Video
Another interesting quest you may have missed!

Wow Model Developer
I really hesitated to post this, as it is very likely just trolling, but someone on IRC wanted it. It was posted on a forum and is now long gone, it is unverified, and likely some bored person trolling. However, it is more interesting than the "amazing" arena changes or the laggy raids. Please keep in mind this was posted on a forum with a bunch of people asking random questions. (On a personal note, I would love communication like this from Blizzard, instead of the, "OH GOD THE FORUM TROLLS ARE GOING TO HOLD US TO THIS TO THE LETTER. LET'S NOT POST AT ALL." , kind of thing that is going on.)

Take none of the below as a Blizzard response. An interesting commentary and well planned trolling at best. Don't expect to see any of it come true, ever.

"WoW Model Developer" - No Source

I'm not a developer, I'm just model design. To that end I can't exactly post anything I'm working on, because that'll get out and I'll get fired. If you've got a question I can answer that would definitively prove it I'll gladly answer it, but I can't think of one. I'm not about to do anything that would reveal my identity, though

Q: Yogg-Saron model?
A: He's not modeled - he doesn't appear in Ulduar. Physically. All there is right now is some concept art buried in my email.

Q: Next WoW expansion... Emerald Dream or will we bridge the gap to the continents and enter the Maelstrom, Jul Tiras, and all those other goody parts we've yet to see?
A: They haven't firmly decided on the next expansion yet, though they've narrowed it down. I think they're probably going to decide to go with the Southern Seas/Caverns of Time idea, which would focus around Azshara and Sargeras as antagonists.

Q: You mean like an entire expansion that has you phased in the past?
A: Sort of. The idea is that half the "new continent" will be islands and the Maelstrom, and the other half will be back before the land split up because the night elf queen summoned Sargeras. There's not really a reason yet why we go back in time other than that it's "cool".

Q: Will you guys make a pre-BC server?
A: Like you've probably heard, the official word is "We have no plans on it", and we really don't. The higher-ups don't think it'd attract enough people that aren't playing the game. They intend to focus on moving forward.

Q: What are the main programs you use in designing models?
A: Most of the final models are done with Maya, though they usually have mock-ups in Photoshop at first.

Q: Describe said optional boss to the best of your ability. I'm aware you're model design and not behind th emachanics of said fight, but I'm interested in any quirks said boss has, Nightbane was pretty cool.
A: It's really vehicle based from my understanding. It actually has to do with YS, half your raid will be dealing with the boss, who's some prophet or something, while the rest are using a vehicle interface to knock down walls to break crystals or idols or whatever the hell they decided on. If you don't the boss gets juiced up, but like Sarth you get more loot if you don't screw with it, and each idol you don't smash when it activates it makes you go insane or something.

Q: Is Ghostcrawler a huge dick to you?
A: I like Greg, actually. I don't see him much because I'm not in his department but he likes to bounce class change ideas off of everyone. He's pretty laid-back.

Q: Do we "kill" Yogg-Saron in some way or another? Like, banish him? Also, are Thorim and his dragon bosses now?
A: Thorim's the guy in Storm Peaks, right? He's dead, but you fight the other guys that had the temples, except for Freya. Like I mentioned, Yogg-Saron's not in this dungeon, but you do screw with his attempts to come up or manifest or whatever.

Q: What class has the best looking armor set coming up?
A: Armor's usually objective. I know a lot of them are out on the internet already because we just copied NPC armor. Of the few that we're working, I can promise one thing: Paladin isn't shit this time. I can also promise you that it's no longer gay. The main idea thrown around when the guys were designing paladin t8 was to have something the Scarlet Crusade would wear. One of the sets is red. Think like, badass Inquisitor. Fire is a theme in it - you might have noticed, but for all the t8 one of the themes we kind of worked with is that they're dealing with the undead plague - that's why the hunters have gas masks, the warlocks are plague doctors, etc. The deal with paladins is that they say "Fuck your plague, I'm purifying you in fire."

Q: Do you play wow yourself, and if so do you enjoy it?
A: I raid with some friends but I don't really do anything "hardcore". I don't really like Arena, but I do enjoy questing up until you run out of quests, so I've been trying to do that. I also like Achievements.

Q: What is up with having, like, five total sets of armor models per armor class from 70 to 80? I'm all for a uniform, fur-lined, gritty spiked metal, toned-down earthy look that you guys have going on, but when every plate helm from 70-78 looks the same, every 78-80 plate quest helm looks the same, and every non-tier raid plate helm looks the same (as the Death Knight starter blue plate helm, actually), there's something wrong. Do you personally know the person responsible for this? Can you sleep with his wife and then rub it in his face for me?
A: Blame all of us, I guess. Blizzard didn't want the clown thing they had in BC so they made us make dark gritty stuff, but we didn't have too much time to make a lot. I do mostly creature work so I can't speak for the armor guys but I know that they were really pressed for time to finish the stuff that's in there now. Part of the reason most of tier 8 is NPC armor is because we just want to save time on the models.

Q: I LOVE the Yeti/Wendigo/whatever the hell they are. And the Vrykul.
A: I'm actually going to take full credit for the yeti there. Those guys are based off a cariacture of the yeti things in Alterac I did. Cracks me up.

And the vyrkul models got more work than the blood elf and draenei models combined, so they damn well better look good.

Q: Are there any plans for a dungeon other than Ulduar and Icecrown? Also, how many bosses for each of those instances?
A: Ulduar has about 9 bosses or so, plus the optional one. I'd say about half of them have "difficulty modes" attached to them that could make them count as a new boss. Does it sound like not a lot? Yeah, I don't think it is either. Whatever.

Don't know about Icecrown, mostly we've just got a ton of concept art floating around.

And yeah, there's a new raid coming in between the two, along with a new zone.

Q: Where will the new zone be?
A: Same thing everyone thought it would be coming in to the expansion, Azjol-Nerub. I don't know what they're going to call it now that they actually called something Azjol-Nerub though

Q: Kael'thas?
A: Kael'thas stuck around because we've got this one dev who loves him and thinks it's really, really funny if he keeps coming back. There's a few joke sketches of him as a lich for Icecrown, actually.

Kael'thas in MGT was sort of a new model, really. The wireframe we ripped from his other model but the rest was work. We actually didn't even just copy over his orbs and then delete one (which I think was stupid).

Q: God damn demanding job. Bet it takes like a whole person to do it, working one day in 2 weeks.
A: Eh, you're trolling, but I'll bite. When I say "armor guys" I don't mean literally guys whose job it is to come in and just design armor. Pretty much environmental, creature, and paperdoll models are all handled by everyone - I did some of the dragon bones in Dragonblight, for example. For armor this expansion though there were some guys whose job it was to do, while they were making a lot of other stuff. I think they were building all the buildings for Icecrown at the same time.

Q: BLIZZARD ART DEPARTMENT IS LAZY. IS IT LIKE TWO GUYS OR WHAT?
A: Fair enough. We're trying to move away from that now though. I'd say "look at Naxx" but that was like four years ago, but what I mean is that we want to set that standard of visually different bosses for all upcoming dungeons. Off the top of my head I think there's only one boss in Ulduar that's taken from another model.

Q: Can you tell SOMEONE to fix that hole in the terrain in the mine that leads to Brunnhildar Village?
A: There's a hole in the terrain? No seriously, we don't read the forums much, if there's a model problem it's relayed to us through someone else usually. Complain louder on the forums so that we actually find out.

Q: What is with the broken models?
A: Shrug. There's actually a lot of models that go out with what we consider problems, but which we just have to put into the game. And in most cases once it's in there it's too much work to change it when we've got a new assignment on our desk.

Q: Will the new zone be like Isle? Will it be all underground? Can you use flying mounts?
A: There's no flying mounts, but the city hub has a port to Dalaran. It's going to have unlocked stages, and there will be dailies, but the focus is more on an ongoing questline, from what I've been told.

Q: Please for the love of God use phasing to separate quests between rep levels. IQD was hell because everyone was doing them all the time.
A: I have no idea what they're planning, but I know they want to use more phasing.

Q: Blizzard needs to hire more people, or maybe their income is too small to afford a big enough team? I mean getting millions every week just from subscribers must only be enough to pay the cleaners.
A: We could use a bigger team. Blizz really "believes" in smaller, close-knit teams working together, though, so we'd get like, one or two guys tops.

Q: Do art justice and make Chromie hot.
A: Chromie's not supposed to be hot. You will not find a single person on the model team who thinks that gnomes should be hot.

Q: Thrall is still generic orc...
A: A new Thrall model is actually on our to-do list. We want to redo all the city leaders, but he's first on the list. I don't know when we'll be told "Okay, put energy into this now", though. It's not going to be in 3.1.

Q: Which one of you screwed up on the human female animations with the last patch?
A: That was actually some code that slipped in that wasn't supposed to. One of the things we've been doing on the side is checking out how thoroughly we can overhaul the animations of the old races.

Q: Why are Sylvanas and Alextrasza twins?
A: Because we decided that there's only so many ways an attractive elf chick can look, so we didn't bother making a new base. Part of the reason Alex has those extra dragony bits is to differentiate them. Our cheat.

Q: How are those NEW DANCES coming along?
A: Don't even fucking mention it man, those dances are a pain in the ass. I hate when I have to animate one, we all hate that we have to do them, and we all hate that we don't have time to do them so they just sit there, looming. They WANT us to get it down by 3.1, but with how much of Ulduar we still have to do (mostly environment) I wouldn't hold your breath.

Q: Are the Ulduar raid and the new zone and everything else you've said all coming in one patch? Is it 3.1? And can you estimate with as little accuracy as you deem fit when it will touch down?
A: 3.1 is just Ulduar, the zone will be 3.2. I don't think 3.1. is going to release for a good two months minimum, and that's if the programmers are fast with the fights. I really don't know how far along they were. But yeah, don't expect a new raid until like, April, really.

Q: Also, why are all chest/legplates just bodypaint? Why are there only like 5 different boots/glove models?
A: Forgot to mention in what I just said, but one of the goals for the next expansion is to rehaul a lot of the graphics, and part of that is layering armor on a character. There's no way at the moment for us to make armor bulky except in the shoulders, gloves, and helm, and one of the goals is to update the paperdoll to support doodads on it.

Q: I'm curious as to how you got your job at Blizzard. Did you have previous experience with another company? Also: considering how well Blizzards doing at the moment, is your pay packet better than other people in a similar position at different companies?
A: Like I mentioned earlier, I was initially trying to do 2d animation, which led to me eventually going into 3d because I needed actual work. I did some indie stuff which Blizzard saw as part of my portfolio when I applied (I figured it was a safe job) and they liked it enough to hire me. The pay is...not really anything special. It's good money, but it's only really slightly better than working anywhere else. I'm pretty much working more for the fact that they're not likely to lose money any time soon.

Q: Why do female humans have no legs when wearing a robe/kilt?
A: Human females need a lot of work. I hate when I have to make an NPC off that base. All I can say is that next expansion we want to overhaul the models.

Q: Are there any plans to allow Druids to glyph for or choose alternate looks for forms?
A: There are plans to allow form customization, but we haven't been told how they want to do it yet.

Q: Is it true that most of the original art team is gone and replaced by retarded people who can't design?
A: I don't know about retarded, but there's no one from the original art team around except like, Samwise. As for the loading screens though, I'm pretty sure we stole all those from the CCG.

Q: The items in the game often look like garbage, but I really gotta hand it to you all on the environments. When you really take the time to step back and look at it, you realize that there must have been a metric ton of effort that went into all these zones.
A: Because of the changes to the engine this last expansion we really got to have fun with the environment. I didn't do any of the landscaping but I did get to do some doodads. I wasn't around for the design of all the Outlands environments but I think those look awful, so I'm glad we got to play this time. And I have no idea who any of the voice actors are, except for Cam Clarke. If they did the recording anywhere near here I'd have tried to get an autograph or something.

Q: What's the max poly's used for bosses and general monsters? Use tri or polys? Also what quality do you use on textures, I heard around 70%. Is this true?
A: We use polys. The number is actually, in my opinion, embarassingly low. Textures have a bit of variance, we're trying to push for 80 on most of our stuff now.

Q: Who made the Paladin Tier sets from 3 through to 6 and have they been fired yet?
A: Yup. There's usually a big-ish turnover every expansion, about half the people get laid off.

Q: Has working on games made you hate games? Also how much do you make in a year?
A: Not really. Though it does make me hate games that are made lazily. I make about 50k a year, which is decent, I guess.

Q: How many working hours in your week?
A: 50, but we pull a lot of overtime for a good week a month.

Q: Do you know how many people work on balancing the classes, and if they love men?
A: There's about 7 core balance people, but they like to bounce ideas off the entire place. I can't speak for all of them, but one of them definitely loves cock and plays a (Chaud edit. Don't you wish you knew). Just saying.

Q: How long have you been with Blizzard? Of that, how long have you been working on WoW?
A: I started at Blizzard about halfway through Burning Crusade. My first jobs were environmental details in Black Temple.

Q: Why is Dreamwalker the set that was remade and why is the Tier 7 not a big hulking druid with a bear head and claws and shit?
A: Because we remade all the t3 sets, and we can't make tier sets that look like they're for a specific spec.

Q: Do you like your job?
A: I like the place I work more than I like my work, if that makes any sense. Blizzard is actually a pretty fun place to work, I'd recommend people with the credentials give it a try. In the end though, I don't want to model fantasy monsters for the rest of my life. It's fine to pay the bills, but I'd like to do a different kind of work.

Q: Do you specialize in modelling only or do you do texturing as well? What is the max triangle for each model? Is the unwrapping already done? Or do you have to rework each time you model the models? And do you rework existing model or do you do things from scratch?
A: I specialize in modelling but I do texture work as well, simply because there's only so many people in the department. Honestly I'm the worst one so if you see a lousy texture or one that's stretched funny in Wrath it's probably me. Max triangle is also embarrassingly low, jumps around a bit from model to model, but you can bet it's somewhere from 14-18k. Wherever possible, we'll rework a model. Like I said we get a lot of stuff thrown at us, so we really cut any corners we can.

Q: Will they ever revisit Karazhan? Maybe the basement?
A: I don't know anything about the lore behind karazhan or whatever, but I know that there's videos floating around of the Karazhan crypts or whatever. That place is literally just a playground for us modelers. There's no plans to go there.

WoW Botting
Interesting article on how hard Glider is getting hit...Full Story

Quote:

Blizzard notched another victory in its legal campaign against World of Warcraft bots when a judge on Wednesday ruled that a leading bot violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. MDY Industries LLC, the firm that develops and sells the Glider bot, already suffered a major setback last summer when the judge granted Blizzard summary judgment on several key issues. This week's decision deals with the issues the judge believed could not be decided until the conclusion of this month's trial. The judge ruled that Glider violated the DMCA's ban on "circumvention devices," and he also found that MDY's founder, Michael Donnelly, was personally liable for the actions of his firm...

acecow · 02-03-2009, 09:03 AM

Think the Druid and Priest posts got switched and the "Shaman" post should just be under a Healer category.

**chaud** · 02-03-2009, 10:09 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by acecow

Think the Druid and Priest posts got switched and the "Shaman" post should just be under a Healer category.

Thanks, headed out early this morning so didn't check it.

Shugoshin · 02-03-2009, 03:46 PM

Hey Chaud just a few things you may want to reevaluate about that interview.

Q: I LOVE the Yeti/Wendigo/whatever the hell they are. And the Vrykul.
A: I'm actually going to take full credit for the yeti there. Those guys are based off a cariacture of the yeti things in Alterac I did. Cracks me up.

That bit seems to make it incredibly easy for his supervisor to figure out who he is. Theres also some other things that say what he, personally worked on, like black temple texturing, etc that could be easily saved in his personal portfolio or found in their assignment lists.

Personally I'm all about the open communication concept that companies such as blizzard should really start to embrace.
And I think its ridiculous that he makes 50k per year. That is insanity.

Cantor · 02-03-2009, 04:59 PM

50k is not that much in today's environment; working in sterling, as that's what I know, that's only, what, £34.7k? It's a decent wage, but not jaw-dropping. Probably what I'd expect after 10 or so years in the industry.

Also, Chaud - seems there are a couple of things that could give him away there. The above-mentioned Yeti/Wendigo reference, and when he started working at Blizzard seem like something they could pin on him. Also, stuff that he worked on originally - there can only be so many people that came in and started work on BT textures!

**chaud** · 02-04-2009, 08:34 AM

Assuming it is not trolling, and that I am actually taking it seriously, people in the thread supposedly already emailed it off to Blizzard, so no real harm done anymore. Although I already removed where he earned his degree and such, which would likely explain his pay level.

Perfects · 02-05-2009, 12:29 AM

Quote:

Q: Do you know how many people work on balancing the classes, and if they love men?
A: There's about 7 core balance people, but they like to bounce ideas off the entire place. I can't speak for all of them, but one of them definitely loves cock and plays a (Chaud edit. Don't you wish you knew). Just saying.

Made me laugh so hard

xD

StormGust · 02-06-2009, 12:59 PM

So that guy is telling us, that ulduar isn't completed up to now, even though we were told that is was finished well before BC shipped ? huh ?

**Marla** · 02-06-2009, 03:55 PM

Same as Blizzard is telling us, I'm sure there's something around the "Devs are working on it around the clock" theme going on the official wow forums.