Scott Helfand

PC Gaming

PC Gaming By Scott Helfand

Designing WoW: It takes a village -- no, a city

Thanks to major events like BlizzCon, as well as an uncanny level of visibility in public forums, interviews and on Twitter, we tend to think of WoW as a personal project run by a very small number of people. Chris Metzen, Tom Chilton, Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street -- these folks have received a fair amount of the praise, and virtually all of the blame, for nearly every good and bad thing we perceive about the game. And when a change is implemented that we don't understand or disagree with, too many of us often tend to think, "How could they be so stupid?" The answer, a lot more often than we may be willing to realize, is: The people who make WoW happen are far, far greater in number than the few we see publicly -- and they're just as human as the rest of us. In the wake of sad news in the gaming world -- Irrational Games, the company that brought us BioShock Infinite, is going poof -- we've been given an important reminder of how huge the gulf can be between our perception of who makes a game come to life and the realities of dame design.

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Encrypted Text: The promise, and the peril, of Shadow Reflection

Every week or two, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and& subtlety rogues. Scott Helfand (@sveltekumquat) will be your shadow on this treacherous journey; try not to keep your back turned for too long, and make sure your valuables are stashed somewhere safe. When a WoW game designer sends out nearly two dozen tweets in an hour about a talent, you know he's really excited about it. Such was the case last week with Technical Game Designer Chadd Nervig (@Celestalon), WoW's torch-bearer on class design issues since Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street's departure from Blizzard late last year. Celestalon treated us to an epic twitversation about the upcoming Level 100 rogue talent Shadow Reflection -- one of the most involved, intricate discussions any WoW designer has ever had with us regular folk on Twitter. "It has pretty crazy potential," he said at one point in the conversation. Celestalon is clearly psyched about what Shadow Reflection will bring to the rogue class. The question is: Should we be as pumped? In a word: youbetterbelieveit.

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Encrypted Text: Shadowcraft, a raiding rogue's best friend

Every week or two, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Scott Helfand (@sveltekumquat) will be your shadow on this treacherous journey; try not to keep your back turned for too long, and make sure your valuables are stashed somewhere safe. "Should I reforge for mastery or haste?" If you're a rogue player who raids, reading that question probably generated one of two emotional reactions: Curiosity, because you wonder that yourself. A seething, bubbling cauldron of hatred and violent fury, because questions like these are asked endlessly -- even though, for a long time now, the answer has consisted of two words. Shadowcraft it. What Shadowcraft Is Shadowcraft is a modeling tool for rogues. It takes a snapshot of your armory -- your gear, enchants, gems, talents, glyphs and everything else that affects the damage you deal -- and then it allows you to modify that snapshot in a host of different ways. As you tweak the snapshot -- for instance, swapping out one piece of gear for another, changing your reforges, turning on or off certain buffs -- Shadowcraft keeps track of each change you make, and assesses whether those changes will theoretically increase or decrease your DPS. You do the experimenting, it does the math. Two things in particular make Shadowcraft truly special as a resource.

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Gaming By Scott Helfand

Encrypted Text: The buff rogues really need

Every week or two, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Scott Helfand (@sveltekumquat) will be your shadow on this treacherous journey; try not to keep your back turned for too long, and make sure your valuables are stashed somewhere safe. My fellow rogues, it's time for an eleganza extravaganza. For the past couple of months, you've joined me on a long, winding stroll through the state of roguedom today. We've talked about the burning questions on our minds as rogue players; how stealthy (or not) our stealth is; and what makes us (or used to make us) feel unique as a class. We've talked about what we're thankful for, as well as what we're less thankful for, as the Warlords beta likely draws near. And finally, last week, we tagged along as three fictional rogues hung out in a fictional bar, got fictionally drunk and caterwauled over the many nonfictional (and sometimes contradicting) complaints players have about how their class works. So. Where does all of this chatting leave us? Are we any closer to agreement on these issues? I'm not so sure. In fact, I suspect that, while we've generated a lot of great conversation, the main thing we've done here is highlight just how tremendously varied our opinions are when it comes to the specific aspects of rogue gameplay we players would like to see altered. But I think we're closer to getting at one of the major seeds of our communal discontent. Here's what I suspect that seed is.

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Gaming By Scott Helfand

So you want to be a theorycrafter

Theorycrafting. If you're anything like me, just reading that word filled you with a sudden sense of intimidation, inferiority, awe ... and, whoa. Wait a minute. What's that other emotion huddled there in the corner, being beaten up by our fear of failure? Is that curiosity? If you've ever used Ask Mr. Robot and asked yourself, "How do people determine which of our stats are better than others?" If you've ever played a healer and asked yourself, "How do people figure out which spells are the most efficient to use at which times?" If you've ever played a DPS class and asked yourself, "How do people figure out what my spell priority should be?" Basically, if you've ever wondered how some of our game's brightest players find the answers to our most pressing questions about game mechanics, then there's at least some small part of you that's interested in theorycrafting. So, great, you're interested. Now what? How the heck does a person get started, especially when theorycrafting seems so complicated?

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Encrypted Text: A tale of three rogues

Every week or two, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Scott Helfand (@sveltekumquat) will be your shadow on this treacherous journey; try not to keep your back turned for too long, and make sure your valuables are stashed somewhere safe. Stop me if you've heard this one before: Three rogues walk into a bar. ... Mute, the assassination rogue: Man, I am exhausted. Toetoe, the combat rogue: You're always saying that. Mute: I just haven't been feeling very energetic lately. Toetoe: I dunno; you seemed pretty spry during our last raid. Mute: That's just because we were buffed out the wazoo. I mean, sure, I feel better than I did back in Mogu'shan, but -- Toetoe: Ha! I remember that! You were stabbing so slowly you just gave up and started chucking shuriken instead. Mute: Har har. Buy me a drink, will you? Toetoe: Barkeep! Hey. Jack and Coke for me; Thistle Tea for my ever-tired companion. Hush, the subtlety rogue: BOO! Toetoe: And a Sneaking Potion for my little friend here. Hush: I didn't scare you? Toetoe: You've been standing right in front of me, Hush. Stealth ain't invisibility.

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Encrypted Text: How the special rogue snowflake melted

Every week or two, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Scott Helfand (@sveltekumquat) will be your shadow on this treacherous journey; try not to keep your back turned for too long, and make sure your valuables are stashed somewhere safe. As we usher in a new year, our thoughts inevitably turn to the single most important subject there is: our rogues. And how we wish that WoW's designers would make a New Year's resolution to give them more love and affection and hugs and presents and big happy smiley-face stickers than any other class. But that's just it: Although you might often read otherwise in public forums or on Twitter, the rogue class doesn't objectively have less fun stuff to do within the game than other classes, nor does it receive less attention from the game's design team. The reason I think some players grumble is that rogues receive roughly the same amount of love as everyone else -- but they used to receive more.

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Encrypted Text: The stealthiest stealth rogues ever stealthed

Every week or two, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Scott Helfand (@sveltekumquat) will be your shadow on this treacherous journey; try not to keep your back turned for too long, and make sure your valuables are stashed somewhere safe. A couple of weeks ago, we all had a nice, long chat, you and me. I was all, "Hey guys, what's up with those rogues, amirite?" And you were all, "Totally!" And I was like, "Got questions?" And you were like, "You know it, Scott!" And I was all, "Whoa, whoa; since when are we on a first-name basis?" And you were like, "Hey man, I thought you were cool." And I ... may be digressing a little. Point is, we've had a couple of conversations now about the aspects of roguedom we're least pleased with, and would thus like to see change somehow in the upcoming expansion. Three of the key themes I've seen recurring in the discussion are: Many of us want stealth to be more interesting. Rogues don't feel unique enough. We don't have enough control over the damage we deal. Over the next few weeks, we'll talk about each of these issues in greater depth. This week, I'm all, "Hey guys, what's up with stealth? Eh? Mmm?"

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PC Gaming

PC Gaming By Scott Helfand

Encrypted Text: What rogue changes should Warlords of Draenor bring?

Every week or two, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Scott Helfand (@sveltekumquat) will be your shadow on this treacherous journey; try not to keep your back turned for too long, and make sure your valuables are stashed somewhere safe. The winds of change are howling through the mountain passes ahead. From the path on which we're walking, up a hill toward the mouth of the first pass, we can't see what's up there yet. But we know change is coming. We can hear it in the whoosh of air sweeping past those stone walls. The warlords are coming, the wind whispers. In the new expansion, rogues will not be the same. But how will our class change? Rogues aren't utterly broken, but they do remain consistently unpopular (they make up roughly 6.5% of all level 90 toons in the U.S. and Europe, according to the latest RealmPop figures; only the still-new monk class comes in lower, and not by much), and senior designers have repeatedly expressed a desire to do something about it. Not a Warlock-level degree of change, but something. Going into BlizzCon last month, many of us may have had hope that a solid look into our future would be offered at the convention. But we -- like most every other class -- got more of a teeny glimpse. Some of the key questions we have about the future of roguedom remain unanswered. But, wait: What are those key questions?

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Encrypted Text: The thankful rogue

Every week or two, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Scott Helfand (@sveltekumquat) will be your shadow on this treacherous journey; try not to keep your back turned for too long, and make sure your valuables are stashed somewhere safe. Let's do something crazy, guys: Let's be unabashedly positive. Just this once. Here in the world of public WoW commentary, we love us our complainin'. Be it on forums, Twitter, videos, podcasts or blogs, we enjoy chewing on the game, swishing it around in our mouths a bit, spitting it back out onto our plate and then lamenting how disgusting it looks. Now, to be fair, we do so with good reason. If we don't let WoW's designers know what we think is wrong with the game, how else are they gonna find out? (Besides, you know, analyzing mountains of data and talking to players themselves.) But sometimes -- just every now and then, mind you, we don't have to make it a habit -- it can be just as helpful to talk about what we do like. Not just for the designers, to help them understand what parts of WoW we appreciate and regard as shining examples of the game's successes; but for us as well, to give us a healthier perspective on this e-world we call a virtual home. In honor of Thanksgiving in the U.S., here are a few of the things that I'm grateful for when I play my World of Warcraft rogue. Join me in the comments (or on Twitter with hashtag #thanksroguing) and let me know what I've missed!

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PC Gaming

PC Gaming By Scott Helfand

Doodlegnome answers all of your Warlords of Draenor questions

Doodlegnome has done it again. Five months ago, the World of Warcraft community watched, spellbound, as a certain precocious gnome enthralled us with her scrawled tale of a crab, the floating skull who loved him, and the nerf bat-wielding child they weaned on the tears of irate forum posters. The Doodlegnome, Paululum, has been busy since that 251-page official forum thread finally came to an end -- she's continued to draw at a prolific rate, even starting up her own webcomic and crafting some amazing BlizzCon badges -- but she hadn't created a new epic forum thread since she took the Zarcrawler idea and ran with it as far as her little legs could carry her. Until this week, that is. On Wednesday, fresh from an invigorating weekend at BlizzCon, Paululum took to the official WoW forums once more to offer up scribbled answers to any and all questions about the upcoming expansion, Warlords of Draenor. Thirty-one pages, more than 600 posts and over 50 drawings later (and still counting!), we've got ourselves a Warlords encyclopedia the likes of which the world will likely never see again. In fact, so valued are Doodlegnome's posts that Community Manager Bashiok swooped in to make sure that each link within her posts in the thread could be clicked, even though WoW forum settings don't normally allow for non-blues to have clickable links. Here, for your education and neatly categorized viewing pleasure, are each of Paululum's "Ask Me Anything" responses about the expansion. (We'll keep this post updated as/if new doodles are added.)

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Breakfast Topic: Should there be a BlizzCon next year?

So, I heard that some convention or other happened earlier this month, and apparently it was kind of a big deal or some junk. Oh, whoa, look at that: It was a big deal! More than 20,000 people attended the two-day affair, and many thousands more no doubt bought virtual tickets. We learned about a new WoW expansion, an upcoming Diablo expansion, an online card game, an upcoming movie -- heck, we even learned about an entirely new game based around cooperative team PvP. There were contests, tournaments, live bands and a guy in a red shirt. Wowhead and WoW Insider threw a party, and oh my dear lord so many people came. Was it all worth it? Undoubtedly. The amount of excitement, community buzz and media coverage coming out of this conference was absolutely incredible, and it was a transformative moment in Blizzard history. But is it worth doing again next year? Making BlizzCon happen takes an absolutely stunning amount of time, energy, money and resources. In the weeks -- no, months -- leading up to it, people up and down the Blizzard company ladder have to stop what they're doing in order to prepare for the convention and then make it all happen. Designers, developers, artists, community managers, you name it: Their work becomes increasingly consumed by BlizzCon, which means it becomes increasingly not consumed by, you know, their actual regular jobs making and managing the games we so deeply love to play (and complain about). In 2012, the awareness of how much work they had to do on their games, and their desire to meet the demands of their players (and perhaps their shareholders and corporate boardmembers, too), led Blizzard's top brass to cancel BlizzCon entirely. If they hadn't, it's very likely Mists of Pandaria would have been released many weeks, even months, later than it was. So. Given how much BlizzCon takes away from Blizzard employees' regular duties, which would you rather see: Another convention next year, or a potentially faster release schedule for new games, expansions and features? What if BlizzCon always occurred just once every two years, but lasted for three or four days instead of two? Or is there some other kind of happy medium? (Besides cloning the entire Blizzard company directory.) %Poll-85725%

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Encrypted Text: The first glimpse of your future rogue

Every week or two, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Scott Helfand (@sveltekumquat) will be your shadow on this treacherous journey; try not to keep your back turned for too long, and make sure your valuables are stashed somewhere safe. Although there was no grand unveiling of mind-blowing class changes at BlizzCon -- for rogues or any other class -- we did learn a few juicy tidbits that will intrigue, delight and (possibly) confuse/fluster/enrage you. Let's take a look, shall we? Optimizing Gear Will Get a Whole Lot Simpler No longer will anyone ever have to answer the question, "What's my stat priority?" by saying, "First, get to the hit cap." For Patch 6.0, Blizzard plans to remove the hit and expertise from our gear, and make it so we are automatically at the caps we currently strive to reach.

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BlizzCon 2013: First Look at Heroes of the Storm

The first day of BlizzCon 2013 brought us a healthy taste of what to expect from Heroes of the Storm -- or "BlizzCon, the Game," as several folks at Blizzard are apparently referring to it. A crazy, wacky mash-up of virtually every major Blizzard game currently in existence, Heroes will be a real-time, team-based, multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game in which groups of players must combine strategy with mastery of their characters to win matches on a diverse range of battlegrounds. In an hourlong panel discussion, Game Director Dustin Browder, Production Director Chris Sigaty, Senior Art Director Sam Didier and Lead Software Engineer Alan Dabiri guided us through the main aspects of the game, introduced many of the heroes we'll be playing -- which include Arthas of WoW, Kerrigan of Starcraft and Diablo of ... well, you know -- and even provided play-by-play announcing while showing us a couple of sample battleground gameplay videos. The second day of BlizzCon will feature a panel with nitty-gritty details on the game. In the meantime, flip through these 150+ moments from the overview panel to get a sense for what Heroes is all about! (You can also get a glimpse of the kind of damage that an Elite Tauren Chieftan can deal, and see what Uther Lightbringer would look like if he accidentally got locked in a Starcraft character's dressing room.)

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Breakfast Topic: What live event do you wish BlizzCon would hold?

We're just days away from the big event, and if you're anything like me (or our not-so-crabby friend up there), your e-spine is increasingly tingling as these final days tick inexorably away. We're no doubt about to indulge ourselves in two gloriously exhausting days stuffed to the gills with huge announcements, exciting events, informative talks and all-around great entertainment -- plus, some of WoW's most famous and talented players will be on the game's biggest stage competing live for honor, glory and the satiation of their near-unquenchable virtual bloodlust. Aye, there'll be tournaments and competitions galore at BlizzCon this year, just as there have been in years past -- including a live raid in which two of the world's top guilds race to drag Garrosh and his cronies down into the Orgrimmarian mud. Pixels shall be felled, victors shall be crowned, and all of WoWdom shall rejoice! It's just that ... well, sometimes, don't you kinda wish that in addition to the organized PvP tournaments and live raids, BlizzCon also featured other kinds of live gaming events? What if there was a competition among our greatest pet battlers? Or an online fashion-runway contest in which players strutted out their most fabulously, uniquely dressed and transmogged characters? Or a carefully staged scenario in which a bunch of unsuspecting PvE-only players were dropped into a zone and told to farm 50 herbs as quickly as they could, only to realize the hard way that standing in their way was a similarly sized group of the world's most accomplished PvP gankers? If you could add one live event to the BlizzCon schedule this year, what would it be?

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Encrypted Text: Has dual spec ruined the rogue experience?

Every week or two, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Scott Helfand (@sveltekumquat) will be your shadow on this treacherous journey; try not to keep your back turned for too long, and make sure your valuables are stashed somewhere safe. Four and a half years. To many of you, it may feel like a lifetime ago -- and to most of the rogues we play, it probably was. My own stealthy toon, yet to encounter a certain rouged chapeau that would change her (and her humble puppetmaster) forever, was only at level 50, tripping and tumbling her way through Tanaris, oblivious to the game-shattering changes that had just been introduced. By the time she reached max level, almost half a year later, she took for granted the existence of something that many players were still hailing as a miracle. Dual spec. Oh, how it shined! How its siren call beckoned! Never more must a beleaguered rogue trek to a faraway NPC and back again to swap from their Hunger for Blood/Mutilate raid build to their Mutilate/Preparation PvP build. So much hassle removed! So much freedom gained! A win for everyone ... right? Let's take a closer look at how dual spec changed rogues forever -- and whether it was truly as much of a boon for our class as we might think it was.

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Encrypted Text: If you could ask one rogue question

Every week or two, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Scott Helfand (@sveltekumquat) will be your shadow on this treacherous journey; try not to keep your back turned for too long, and make sure your valuables are stashed somewhere safe. The BlizzCon 2013 schedule was released last week, and I spied with my ninja eye one notable omission: For the first time in several years, there will be no open Q-and-A session or discussion panel devoted to talking about WoW's classes. In fact, the only Q-and-A session apparently scheduled for BlizzCon expressly forbids class-specific questions. Well, ain't that a Shiv in the pants. On the plus side, this means I don't have to take the fall for the fact that we're about to snap a streak of three consecutive BlizzCons in which WoW Insider's resident rogue columnist boldly strode up to a microphone during a Q-and-A and asked the game designers a question about our class. (Chase Christian asked the devs in 2011 how they planned to keep rogues distinct from monks (they have); in 2010 about whether rogues would ever be able to wield something other than a dagger in their off-hand (they now do -- if they're in combat spec); and in 2009 about whether Vanish would ever be fixed (believe me, today's Vanish issues ain't nothing compared to yesteryear's). On the minus side: What are we going to do with ourselves during BlizzCon if we can't spend our time becoming progressively more frustrated during the course of an hourlong Q-and-A session, watching the minutes tick inexorably by, never to return, as players of blatantly inferior classes take up the panel's precious time with their clearly inconsequential questions? I'll tell you what we're gonna do: We'll create our own Q-and-A panel -- well, minus the A's, at least for now. We've got a decent audience here, right? We've got a comment section, no? Let's do this.

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Encrypted Text: 8 pointers for leveling your lonely rogue

Every week or two, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Scott Helfand (@sveltekumquat) will be your shadow on this treacherous journey; try not to keep your back turned for too long, and make sure your valuables are stashed somewhere safe. There comes a time, in the lives of many WoW players, when they realize they can no longer delay the inevitable. Their primal urges call out to them. Though they had resisted so strongly for so long, they know, deep down in their hearts: It's time to give in to that sinfully sweet siren call. It's time to level a rogue. To those of you who have recently elected to join the rogue legion -- and to those of you who are contemplating this devious journey -- I have some guidance to offer as you embark. I have seen many of your ilk level rogues before you, and will see many more do so after you. I have seen the questions they ask, and the myths they wrongly believe. I am here to stab you with truth. Let us begin.

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Encrypted Text: Combat and Subtlety under Siege

Every week or two, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Scott Helfand (@sveltekumquat) will be your shadow on this treacherous journey; try not to keep your back turned for too long, and make sure your valuables are stashed somewhere safe. When we last left our devious, poison-festooned heroes, they were assassinating the heck out of every raid boss in sight, much as they have been this entire expansion. Assassination has been the spec of choice for raiders of all stripes in Mists -- but might Patch 5.4 change the balance? The answer may depend as much on you as on the gifts that WoW's designers wrapped up and handed us for the new patch. Combat and subtlety both are looking like perfectly good options in almost every situation. Unless you're with a group that is seriously trying to squeeze every last drop of damage out of its DPSers, and you're already playing your spec perfectly, your main criteria for which spec to use should rely on 1) whether you enjoy it and 2) whether you've got the right gear for it.

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Encrypted Text: Siege of Assassination

Every week or two, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Scott Helfand (@sveltekumquat) will be your shadow on this treacherous journey; try not to keep your back turned for too long, and make sure your valuables are stashed somewhere safe. Alright, then. Now that introductions are out of the way, let's roll up our sleeves, sharpen the knives we've got hidden within them, roll our sleeves back down again, and get to business. As you may be somewhat aware, some patch or other happened a few weeks ago. All's I know is, my rogue passed out on a Monday night and when she woke up on Tuesday, her strikes felt suspiciously more sinister. In all, nearly three dozen class-specific changes greeted us when Patch 5.4 went live (and a few more drifted down from the Azerothian heavens in the form of post-patch hotfixes). Nearly all of them were buffs, bug fixes or quality-of-life improvements of some sort. That sounds pretty outstanding. But the real question is: What will all of these changes actually alter about the experience of playing a rogue? How many of these differences are noticeable?

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