Continued...
Kevin: -How long does it take on average for a change to a class to be approved? -What kind of Class- and spellideas did you scrap?
John: -What kind of Raid- and Dungeonideas did you scrap? -Were there more Raids planned to be accesible to dungeons?
To all: -What is the stupidest workaround you ever found to an issue? -What was the riskiest idea you ever implemented into the game? (As in you were not sure how well it would be received by the playerbase)
Frequently, I worked on and approved the class changes myself. We had peer reviews and I would certainly discuss things with other designers when I was having trouble coming up with an idea solution but it wasn't a super formal process that you see more frequently in the industry today. We just did stuff. Sometimes I would get feedback from QA who say the changes made to the test data and I'd get strongly worded emails, "You're RUINING THE GAME!!!!111". :P
See above for the Heroes Feast idea.
FailureAndAnalysis (Kevin Jordan - Game Systems, Classes & Spells) (link to comment)
what was the design philosophy behind wailling caverns map layout? because I could never find my way in that dungeon back in the day and if you were aiming for Ikea you nailed it.
There's a whole section in my book called "The Growning Pains of the Wailing Caverns." Check out my book, TheWoWDiary.com. ;)
Sorry, but that's a LONG, LONG answer. :P
whenitsready (John Staats - Dungeons & Instances) (link to comment)
/u/FailureAndAnalysis was there going to be some sort of survival system. At least in Duskwood with the torches?
I heard Duskwood was so dark you needed help with torches to get around. There is one screenshot floating about with a defias looking guy holding a torch in darkshire.
Also I kinda wish WoW had a ''survival'' server. You need to collect wood for your arrows and repairing weapons. Needing light clothing in Tanaris and heavy clothing in Winterspring. Each food gave a differen't type of buff.
Breath of Warcraft, more like.
No, sadly. That was never in the recipe. From the beginning we wanted darkness to be a mood change and not a gameplay change. You could still see everything and navigate, it was just a little spookier.
FailureAndAnalysis (Kevin Jordan - Game Systems, Classes & Spells) (link to comment)
Significant, he was the design director for WoW up until Alpha, and that's when Pardo took over and Allan "retired".
Heh. Allen was the Steve Jobs of Blizzard...except his HATES publicity.
whenitsready (John Staats - Dungeons & Instances) (link to comment)
Hello, great that you're doing this AMA, I've got two questions regarding items.
First, rare dungeon BoE items have always fascinated me, some of them have extremely unique stats. However, they always seemed to be excessively rare, maybe dropping once per 4 runs of any dungeon. Was this extreme rarity planned? How do you feel about them being so uncommon?
Second, there are a lot of weapons with interesting procs, like DoTs, armor reduction, elemental damage, from leveling to even raiding like with Perdition's Blade. However, these procs were so rare, unreliable and didn't have much impact that it made these weapons almost never worth using over flat stats. Do you feel like these items could've had more potential? Was keeping the proc rate fairly low a safe way to keep them in check?
Thanks again, I'm very excited to receive this book when all is finalized!
Some of the drop rate stuff was pretty experimental so we were feeling it out as you were playing it. And no, not everything went according to plan. :P
Procs were a tough thing to wrap our heads around in the beginning. Some of them were cool and powerful but came at the cost of attributes and some were weak and lame and also came at the cost of attributes. Later on, we got the tech to do the PPM (Procs per minute) which helped us smooth out the balance on them so we could cost them effectively. Before they were just a flat percentage based on power and weapon speed but the variety of modifiers out there made it impossible to make assumptions for balance purposes.
FailureAndAnalysis (Kevin Jordan - Game Systems, Classes & Spells) (link to comment)
@Kevin, what do you think about the Azerite armor talents and how would you improve it.
Many players have had some great suggestions, but as a creator of the talent system, something I enjoyed back in the day, I'm curious what your thoughts on it is, pros and cons and how you would improve it.
Unfortunately, I don't know very much about the Azerite system. Certainly not enough to comment on. :(
FailureAndAnalysis (Kevin Jordan - Game Systems, Classes & Spells) (link to comment)
If you tried doing that today you would quit before lv 40.
Yeah, and this speaks to the focus of the devs. Some of the devs have been on the team for over a decade. I can't believe they play characters from 1-40 very often, if at all. Frequently, you have to experience things firsthand to get a grasp on what's going on but it's kind of impossible to expect that class devs play all classes at all level ranges all the time for over a decade. :(
FailureAndAnalysis (Kevin Jordan - Game Systems, Classes & Spells) (link to comment)
So Heroes Feast would be like Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion. I'd fucking love that.
I'm not saying where I got the idea, but yeah. That's it precisely. Heh! :P
FailureAndAnalysis (Kevin Jordan - Game Systems, Classes & Spells) (link to comment)
The flavor of hero's feast sounds epic, but using it in combat seems insane, lol.
Yeah, it also was going to require a fair bit of tech to make work so another strike against. :P
FailureAndAnalysis (Kevin Jordan - Game Systems, Classes & Spells) (link to comment)
Did y'all ever discuss a Tinker class? I feel like that one is inevitable
We definitely wanted to represent this idea in the game, but it was the crafting skill instead of a class.
FailureAndAnalysis (Kevin Jordan - Game Systems, Classes & Spells) (link to comment)
"DBM required" stigma is still in the game and you could say it's worse than back then. I can't find the quote at the moment but one of the current WOW devs even said current boss fights are built around players having a mod like DBM.
And that's the slippery slope you end up on right? You should never design around people having it and should strive to include elements that are safe and enhance the game experience right into the UI whenever possible. You do have to decide though on how you're going to challenge the best players that use all the tricks. Does it mean leaving the rest of the populace behind in difficulty? Does it mean doing extra sneaky stuff that just feels bad but gets 'em? Tough choices.
FailureAndAnalysis (Kevin Jordan - Game Systems, Classes & Spells) (link to comment)
Eyes of the Beast
As the main puller of a vanilla raid group, I assure you this had a major practical function!
RIP pet, we hardly new ye. But at least we get to pull Baron Geddon without clearing all that trash.
You MONSTER!
FailureAndAnalysis (Kevin Jordan - Game Systems, Classes & Spells) (link to comment)
Why did you leave Blizzard?
I can't speak for the others, but for me it was because of how the company & team changed after WoW became insanely popular. The team size grew significantly, and in my opinion office politics started playing a major role in how things got done. It was no longer the small close knit group of developers that I loved working with.
SecretPyaray (David Ray - Tools & Database) (link to comment)
How'd you end up handling branching then with the database? There were not just live game updates going on, with both major patches and minor patches, but an entire expansion's worth of work as well that you needed to keep hidden from the players since they liked to datamine. How did hotfixes get handled in all this? I've heard multiple developers refer to Blackwing Lair as Hotfix Lair, so it seems like it was a tool that was used very frequently early on. Did it just simply replay the WoWEdit changes onto the live WoW servers? Seems like a scary way to do that.
Thanks again for spending the time answering these questions.
It involved having many copies of the DB, and tools to copy/move records & changes between them. And yes, it was scary. But that's how it worked.
Some of the "hotfixes" that were applied in the earliest days were actually hand typed into the live DB. Rather not ever do that again...
SecretPyaray (David Ray - Tools & Database) (link to comment)
Durability loss was so cruel. But so, so sweet. <3
The design process is always interesting when you don't have the tech yet ... we had to focus on roles (Tank/DPS/Healer) and how they would interact with the classes to really nail it down
In practice, what did this process actually look like? John Staats mentioned it took over a year to get more than just the hard-coded Blizzard spell into the game, so how did you actually figure out how these interactions would play out without the tech? It seems like a lot of time to plan without being able to verify assumptions. Did you just take an in-development build of Warcraft 3 and script things out from there, or was there a structure to the design meetings that allowed you to sort the good ideas from the bad well enough?
We liked a few things that weapon skills were doing for us. One was a sense of specialization and identity ... The system in general also gave us what we called "mini-dings".
Yeah, it seems like a really ha... (Full text here)
Just like programming, design has a lot of architecture to it. We spent those early days working up what classes were going to look like. Here's an level table with the abilities laid out and when you get them. Compare that to when various elements come online in the game. For example, do the tanks have access to their taunt ability in time for the first natural experience in a dungeon or group setting? Are the group teleport mechanics coming in too soon compared to when we want people to be naturally exploring those destinations? Does Travel Form for the druid come in too early or too late compared to when people are getting their mounts? So that's one side of it.
The other side is the math side. We need tables for everything...xp, hps, damage, combat times, armor, attributes, and on and on and on. Much of those tables had to evolve as the game did but those were the early steps towards defining things. And working on that stuff always raised a hundred other questions that had to be answered, and answered correctly so things didn't fly off the tracks!
FailureAndAnalysis (Kevin Jordan - Game Systems, Classes & Spells) (link to comment)
On behalf of /u/sulticune (for /u/FailureAndAnalysis Kevin Jordan probably)
I have a very unique, specific question that can, perhaps, only be answered here. There is a video called "Earthmonk Chain Lightning Crit" from back in the days. The thing I am curious about is the sound effect of Chain Lightning. In this video, the sound that CL makes when cast is an awesome, thundrous and resonating lightning sound, possibly the greatest sound in all of WoW. This immediately inspired me to level a Shaman. Imagine then, my world-shattering disappointment when I finally get to the correct level (28 or so, I remember it so well, I was in Thousand Needles), run up to a mob, cast CL and all I hear is a weak, meager "crackle". I levelled my Shaman early TBC, iirc, so perhaps the sound was changed. I was so sad. My question is was this awesome thundrous boom the original sound for CL or was this just some good editing by the guy who made the video? Thanks!
I do remember pretty far along after ship of vanilla WoW that I accidentally discovered the Chain Lightning impact sound was using the Lightning Bolt impact sound instead of the one created specifically for Chain Lightning. I can't say when I fixed that, but that's a crazy specific memory you just brought up in my mind. :) I can't say if it's the same sound effect as in the video though.
FailureAndAnalysis (Kevin Jordan - Game Systems, Classes & Spells) (link to comment)
Was it you? Lol. Someone asked john about this in an earlier AMA/interview and he had no idea who wrote this infamous phrase
No, it was not me. I wrote the tools, I rarely used them.
SecretPyaray (David Ray - Tools & Database) (link to comment)
Same!
In your opinion, what would be a good way to compromise between the original trees and the new system?
I personally just want the old one back, but I'm not a game designer, and I don't know what was involved in their decision to take it out.
SecretPyaray (David Ray - Tools & Database) (link to comment)
Do you think you could work with the Classic WoW team in any way to bring Death Knight to Classic WoW with a good talent tree?
Was it the intent of the developers to have so much atmosphere to the world? The Rivers in brill are dried up and you can notice it only if you have an extreme attention to detail, in a way it mirrors Elwynn. Near the end of your journey you end up at Silithus which is a neutral city that houses players of both factions. Getting there and seeing mounts of both sides sitting outside gives a feeling of "There's a bigger enemy and we need to put our differences aside." with the Silithid.
Was that the intention?
I honestly think Classic WoW is one of the best games of all time as both an RPG and an MMO, but together it stands as the best of its (basically) self-defined genre. Thank you for being a part of all of the hours of enjoyment me and my partner and guilds and friends have been a part of and used to get through life. You're really heroes.
Unfortunately, that's extremely unlikely. I don't even know how possible that is in the scope of tech changes for vanilla wow vs. classic wow.
Atmosphere? YES! The level designers were amazing at this and they put so many personal touches and went through so many rounds of polish to make the world compelling. Zone reviews would have entire teams involved with everyone throwing out suggestions in some cases to take things that little bit further.
Your words are so kind. Thank you very much. I set out to make a game I really wanted to play and it's very fulfilling to know how many people shared that same interest in the final product. :)
FailureAndAnalysis (Kevin Jordan - Game Systems, Classes & Spells) (link to comment)
That... sounds pretty cool! Could you tell us about some cool spells that were thought about but scrapped in the end? Perhaps some that almost made it into the game? (I would imagine plenty of crazy ideas for Warlock!)
Also how much did the RTS games (WC1 to WC3) or the books, novels and RPG influence you?
See Heroes Feast mention above for a spell that never made it.
The RTS games heavily influenced us. One core idea was to take the units in those games and put a player in charge of them and put them "Inside the Helmet" so to speak. The other stuff came out as we were making it or after so didn't have a lot of time to read them while working on WoW. :P
FailureAndAnalysis (Kevin Jordan - Game Systems, Classes & Spells) (link to comment)
AMA - Former WOW developers Kevin Jordan (classes and spells), John Staats (dungeons and instants), David Ray (database, Wowedit, tools)
instances*
Edit: AMA is over, glad everyone participated !
Hi !
We are excited to be hosting this AMA with the original World of Warcraft developers Johnathan Staats, author of the World of Warcraft Diary, David Ray and Kevin Jordan !
John Staats (/u/whenitsready) was the first Level Designer on World of Warcraft. From Vanilla to Wrath of the Lich King, he notably built famous instances such as Molten Core, Ahn'Qiraj, Scholomance, and so on.
David Ray (/u/SecretPyaray) was the Senior Tool & Database Progr... (Full text here)
Okay, guys. Going to take a finger break for now. I will be live on my Twitch stream though if you want to come by and ask some questions. I'm happy to keep discussing old school WoW. :P
https://www.twitch.tv/failureanalysis
FailureAndAnalysis (Kevin Jordan - Game Systems, Classes & Spells) (link to comment)
This is pretty interesting to hear haha. I'm curious, did the programmer team have a higher place in some sort of a hierarchy compared to the art team when it came to conceptualization? I can understand why, but it intrigues me.
No, They simply explained that the game can’t work that way. It’s just a tech limitation. If the artists really would want to fight for it, they would go to a producer and try to get it on the schedule. No, the programmers were happy to code it in, but they just knew how long it would take.
whenitsready (John Staats - Dungeons & Instances) (link to comment)
To compensate for all the very open questions: is green your favorite colour?
I'm definitely tossed off the bridge for keeping my mouth shut while trying to think of the perfect answer.
FailureAndAnalysis (Kevin Jordan - Game Systems, Classes & Spells) (link to comment)
/u/whenitsready In another question you talked about potential classes.
1)Was the Bard class ever seriously thought about? I know there was an Aprils Fools about it!
2)Also, how far did some of the concepts for runemasters, necromancers (and monks?) go? Did they have an origin and background lore already, or did it never go beyond the basic idea of "a runemaster uses runes to empower itself and deal [melee/ranged/whatever] damage"? I would imagine death knights were already Arthas/Lich King-inspired (or Old Orcish Horde inspired?)
Everything was talked about, but if nobody came up with anything cool, the class was abandoned. I think Kevin might be done, if he hasn’t already answered he may elaborate later.
whenitsready (John Staats - Dungeons & Instances) (link to comment)
It involved having many copies of the DB, and tools to copy/move records & changes between them. And yes, it was scary. But that's how it worked.
Did you auto-increment the IDs generated for expansions with a buffer then for the live patches? E.g. 20,000 spells at patch 1.1, start spell IDs for TBC at 30,000 so the live patches get 10,000 IDs to work with. Or just replay the expansion changes onto a newer live patch to regenerate IDs?
Some of the "hotfixes" that were applied in the earliest days were actually hand typed into the live DB. Rather not ever do that again...
I imagine some of these were on Friday afternoons? :) Must have been fun times. Do you remember what those hotfixes were for that someone okay'd doing it that way?
I do have one other question that's been bothering me for years so I'm hoping you might know. Hillsbrad Foothills and Stonetalon Mountains](/r/wow/comments/9huows/ama_former_wow_developers_kevin_jordan_classes/e6f1686/)
Did you auto-increment the IDs generated for expansions with a buffer then for the live patches? E.g. 20,000 spells at patch 1.1, start spell IDs for TBC at 30,000 so the live patches get 10,000 IDs to work with. Or just replay the expansion changes onto a newer live patch to regenerate IDs?
No, whenever a full build was deployed, the entire static database was copied over, so we didn't have to limit ourselves to ranges.
I imagine some of these were on Friday afternoons? :) Must have been fun times. Do you remember what those hotfixes were for that someone okay'd doing it that way?
I do not remember. I've been through a couple of MMO launches (or relaunches) since then, and I barely remember the last one...
I do have one other question that's been bothering me for years so I'm hoping you might know. Hillsbrad Foothills and Stonetalon Mountains each had a human transportation boat underneath their world geometry, right at the origins for their respective continents (0,0,0). Any idea what they're there for?
My guess would be that it accidentally got added, and then it's coordinates got wiped out, and nobody noticed (or cared) and so it just got left there. As far as I know, there's no reason for it.
SecretPyaray (David Ray - Tools & Database) (link to comment)
What where you using for a backup system at that time?
Don't know, that was operations responsibility. That just happened to be the first that Dev had heard it wasn't working, when we wanted to do a rollback.
SecretPyaray (David Ray - Tools & Database) (link to comment)
How do the various tools work together to create the world that we know?
John has mentioned that dungeons and raids were designed in 3D Studio Max. Are outside structures like inns, houses, and shops also created in 3DSM or are they created with Wowedit? How about dungeons like the Scarlet Monestary where there is a mix of enclosed dungeon structure and also an open sky, grass, fountains, etc. -- is that a mix of Wowedit and 3DSM?
An exterior level designer would place a building, as they would any other object, on the terrain. Those objects were made in standard 3D software packages. If the object needed to go through the terrain, like a cave, they would cut holes through the terrain mesh, and a line up the cave entrance to it.
whenitsready (John Staats - Dungeons & Instances) (link to comment)
/u/whenitsready Was naxx planned to be the last raid of Vanilla or was there more to come afterwards if the game had stayed in its vanilla state a little longer?
Maybe Hyjal couldve been next or before?
The order of the dungeons wasn’t particularly important before we built them. The reason for this, is that it took so long to build them, that the lore would’ve changed (as features and assets got cut and added, lore is in a CONSTANT state of flux) by the time they were completed. So there was no point in planning.
whenitsready (John Staats - Dungeons & Instances) (link to comment)
I don't really like to name drop (Game Design by Blizzard Entertainment and all that) but Allen Adham is one name I'm fine dropping. His influence on WoW and on Blizzard Entertainment as a whole cannot be measured by the human mind. He is one of the primary reasons the game and the company have done as well as they have.
I'll tell this one story as it's interesting and illustrates how important he was:
As I mentioned above, most of the WoW devs were huge into Everquest. I was an Ultima Online man myself. :P The original plan for WoW was no horde or alliance factions. Everyone could group with everyone and hold hands and cumbaya! I didn't fancy that idea much having come from PvP heavy UO so I wrote this manifesto about the importance of PvP in an MMO and sent it to Allen. I was the weirdo for sure. In the manifesto I let it all hang out. I quoted Fight Club..."how much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?". I talked about personal growth opport... (Full text here)
It is important to note that fear of PVP was very prevalent in Blizzard. People assumed that PVP was synonymous with grief in behavior, a huge no-no, right? This was a major change in philosophy, and I think that needs to be stressed.
whenitsready (John Staats - Dungeons & Instances) (link to comment)
It essentially means I created the ideas behind them. I didn't actually create the visuals but I would say to an artist, this is the spell "Fireball". I need it to put fiery circles around my hands while I cast it then shoot out a flaming ball of fiery goodness as a missile towards the enemy and when it hits a fiery explosion.
Then I worked with a Technical Designer to flesh out the numbers. Damage, mana cost, cooldown, range etc... Then I figured out when it would be accessible to the character class, when it would be upgraded, how it would be upgraded, how a talent or talents would modify it. Stuff like that.
Oddly enough, another Kevin on the team, Kevin Beardslee, created all the spell vfx, the visuals! Maybe it’s not so interesting that they share the same name. LOL
whenitsready (John Staats - Dungeons & Instances) (link to comment)
Did you do that? Who did that? It certainly wasn't me.
I think he’s talking about me. I’m not the first want to get to level 60. I was the first one. At level one, I was the first to CREATE a druid. Is that more impressive or a less? You be the judge! ;)
whenitsready (John Staats - Dungeons & Instances) (link to comment)
Submitted September 22, 2018 at 04:31AM by blizztracker https://ift.tt/2OIpdNL
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