monte-krol
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Breakfast Topic: A day in the life
A poster on the forums queried the developers on what a day at the office for the class balance team entailed. This is one of those topics that I'm sure most of us have wondered about from time to time. Do they spend their days skimming Arena Junkies and Elitist Jerks looking at feedback, or are they nose-deep in spreadsheets running calculations on the effective health of tanking builds (which are sometimes the same thing)? Usually, this is the type of thread that receives a goofy answer from a community manager, if it receives any notice at all. However, Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) decided to chime in with how the standard day goes. As it turns out, there really isn't such a thing as a standard day. His whole description of the day as well as some examples of recent events that players could relate to reminded me of an old Blizzcast from 2008. In it, Blizzard community manager Nethaera interviewed Monte Krol (lead tools programmer) about the behind-the-scenes information. As a code monkey myself, hearing about writing the tools that are used to build World of Warcraft was fascinating. Hearing the process behind how features are developed and decisions on class mechanics come about is something that players are constantly interested in (as some are insistent that the developers just put ideas on a dartboard in order to figure out what they're doing). What part of Blizzard would you like to see behind the scenes of, and what changes do you think have the best developer stories?
BlizzCast episode 6 available for download
The 6th episode of BlizzCast was posted today, and though it contains very little WoW-specific information, the podcast still contains a ton of information general Blizzard fans would like to hear. When listening to it, keep in mind that it wasn't recorded in the last few days or anything like that, it's a few weeks old at least. They mention Wrath of the Lich King still being in beta testing and Sylvanas' custom model hadn't yet been implemented, for example. Their guests this time around are Lead Tools Programmer Monte Krol, Senior Art Director Samwise Didier, Lead Game Designer Dustin Browder, and senior artist for Diablo III Anthony Rivero. That lineup of guests really offers up a cool look at the early design and development of Blizzard games, and the guests actually offer a little insight into just how you can start working for Blizzard yourselves. They also have another installment of their Q&A portion with various developers.Starcraft and Diablo fans will find the gameplay information in this BlizzCast more interesting than people who are exclusively WoW players. As always, BlizzCast is available for download through the official website (EU has it as well), iTunes, or you can read the transcript right on their website.
