developer-q-and-a
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Live developer Q&A Friday, September 5
Blizzard has just announced a live developer Q&A taking place Friday, September 5, at 10:00 a.m. PDT on Twitch.tv. Community Manager Lore will be moderated the Q&A with Lead Narrative Designer Dave Kosak and Lead Game Designer Cory Stockton as panelists. The focus of the Q&A is, of course, Warlords of Draenor. You can expect information about garrisons, questing, new features, and general world design. Given the absence of Celestalon, it's doubtful questions about class design will see much traction. Though the Q&A isn't until Friday, you can begin submitting your questions on Twitter with the hashtag #WarlordsQA.
Heroes of the Storm dev Q&A
The latest Heroes of the Storm dev Q&A is here, and you can watch it above when it goes live at 11am Pacific. This week, as the Tech Alpha runs on, the developers are talking about the talent system. Joining Kevin Johnson this time, we will have Dustin Browder, Game Director, Richard Khoo, Senior Game Designer, and Matt Cooper, Game Designer. As the talent system is a key part of the game that separates it from the Item Shop methodology of other MOBAs, it will be interesting to see the insights and design challenges that the developers have faced. You can send in your questions to the developers on Twitter at @BlizzHeroes by using the hashtag #HeroesQA. Following the dev Q&A, there'll be a live match, shoutcasted by Dustin Browder and Kevin Knocke.
Upcoming Hearthstone and Diablo 3 Q&As
Blizzard is holding two upcoming Q&As for Hearthstone and Diablo III: Reaper of Souls: Hearthstone Q&A on Google+ this Friday between 1:00 pm and 1:30 p.m. CDT Diablo III Q&A on Twitch.tv on Monday, March 24 starting at 11:00 p.m. CDT To get your questioned answered for the Hearthstone Q&A tweet them using the hash tag #HearthstoneDay. For Diablo III, use #D3QA when tweeting to @Diablo. There isn't any information on who to tweet at about Hearthstone, but including @PlayHearthstone in your question couldn't hurt. Hearthstone recently came out of beta and launched a mount practically everyone wants, and Diablo III's first expansion is about to release. Lots of exciting things for Blizzard games right now, and it's clear that they realize the community has lots of questions about the future of things. There isn't any news on a WoW Q&A, however things are pretty quiet right now over all. Almost as if there is a calm before a storm...
Heroes of the Storm Developer Q&A highlights
Yesterday, Senior Community Development Manager Kevin Johnson sat down with Game Director Dustin Browder and Senior 3D artist Phil Gonzales to answer the community's questions on Blizzard's upcoming Hero Brawler. They covered several key topics, and provided some nuggets of new information. If you'd like to watch the interview in full, you can check out the video on WoW Insider. But let's go through and summarize the key points they covered. This isn't in the order it happened in the video, because it seemed more logical to categorize it by topic. Overall Design and Philosophy It is going to be free-to-play! Beta is not ready yet, they're working to get it out as soon as they can. There isn't an exact date yet. Internal testing is ongoing. One of the biggest defining qualities for Heroes is the importance of the different maps. This is something that separates it from other MOBAs, you'll want to take different heroes and different strategies and so on. Also, there's heroes with extensive lore behind them, that's a hugely important element, and they aren't afraid to challenge any aspect of the design to make it fun.
Heroes of the Storm Live Q&A with the developers
Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard's upcoming hero brawler, is hosting a live Q&A session with the developers today at 11am Pacific. You can watch the stream right here, and we'll embed the VoD when it's available, to catch up on all the latest Heroes issues and developer responses. Joining the livestream today are Dustin Browder, Game Director; Phil Gonzales, Senior 3D Artist; and Kevin Johnson, Senior Manager, Community Development. These guys are primed to answer all your burning Heroes questions, so don't hold back! You can check out the questions submitted, as well as sending in your own to @BlizzHeroes, via the #HeroesQA hashtag. What would you like to know? And if you can't watch the livestream you can check out all WoW Insider's Heroes of the Storm information while you wait for the VoD.
Greg Street and Marco Koegler Korean Q&A on WoW and its future
Some very interesting things were revealed in this Q&A from Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street and WoW Technical Director Marco Koegler. The interview was conducted in Korea, so there's a bit of down time while translations are being made between interviewers and interviewees, but the hour-long video is worth watching for a few meaty tidbits. In particular, Ghostcrawler has essentially stated that Garrosh will not be replaced at the end of patch 5.4. Oh, his days as warchief will be over for sure, but the patch is intended to end with his defeat at the hands of the players. These actions will set in motion a chain of events which will lead to the new warchief's implementation--but not in patch 5.4. So it seems that the mystery of who will next lead the Horde draws on! Other bits of information worth noting include the confirmation that patch 5.4 will be the final raid patch of Mists of Pandaria, which leads us here at WoW Insider to speculate on the timeline of the next expansion. Considering that traditionally new WoW expansions have been announced at Blizzcon--still a few months away--and given that the next warchief will not be revealed quite as soon as we expected, it seems reasonable to speculate that there might be a non-raid 5.5 patch in the works to take us through to 6.0. However, there is no mention of that in the Q&A and really, it's just idle speculation on my part. Still, I'm now more fascinated than ever to see what the future holds in store for us denizens of Azeroth! How about you?
Developer Q&A on Thursday, April 25
Yesterday evening the WoW official blog announced there there will be a CoverItLive Q&A session at 5:30 pm PDT with Blizzard developers Dave Kosak, Ion Hazzikostas, Brian Holinka, Cory Stockton, and Greg Street on the subject of Mists of Pandaria's gameplay and design. Familiar community managers Bashiok, Crithto, Daxxarri, Rygarius, and Zarhym will be your friendly neighborhood moderators for the event. The session is scheduled to last around 45 minutes, though I'm certain many more minutes worth of questions will be asked! I'm excited to see this event come around, Blizzard has hosted a few CoverItLive chats in the past and they're always very interesting to see. The real-time interaction is fun and gratifying, and we always learn new things about the game and Blizzard's approach to development. For those of you who may not have seen one of these before, you can check out WoW Insider's transcripts of previous live developer Q&A's to get a sense of what to expect: Mists of Pandaria preview, Oct 2011 Class Balance and Design, Nov 2011 Customer Service, Dec 2012 Get your questions ready for Thursday, and we hope to see you there!
LOTRO confirms player skill trees, expansion in the works
While it didn't take much reading between the lines to realize that Turbine has an expansion in the works for Lord of the Rings Online this year, the team confirmed the terminology in a dev chat. The devs hinted that the full announcement would come around the game's sixth anniversary next month. Players had many questions regarding the promised but vaguely detailed revamp coming to characters. Turbine revealed a few more details in the chat: "Three trees per class. Some degree of blending at a higher cost than sticking with a pure build. Bonuses granted based on an early-level specialization choice that grows as points are spent. You can have multiple specs. You can respec." Other interesting nuggets to chew on from the Q&A session include the news that player housing will include crafting facilities, virtue acquisition may see a significant change, and that applications for the player council will begin tomorrow.
Encrypted Text: Hot rogue news from the developer Q&A
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. I went all the way to BlizzCon this year, stood in line to ask the developers about rogue utility in person, and didn't really get an answer that anyone was satisfied with. Rogue utility came from our stuns, which every melee class now has in spades. I hung my head and accepted that rogues were going to suffer through another expansion without any improvements. I had been hoping that Ghostcrawler, WoW's lead systems developer, would have more news to share. But then, at first light on the fifth day after BlizzCon, Ghostcrawler appeared atop the hill on his brilliant crab Shadowfax. His white robes shone brilliantly in the bright dawn, and his nerf bat was raised high over his head. With him rode 1,000 answers, ready to rush down the hill to trample our questions, which were rallying in the valley below. As he parted his lips, a beautiful song poured forth: "We are reworking poisons."
Mists of Pandaria live developer Q&A transcript
Blizzard held a Mists of Pandaria live developer Q&A this evening. It was moderated by Community Manager Zarhym, with most of the questions being answered by Cory "Mumper" Stockton and Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street. The questions ran the gamut from serious to silly and offered a lot of great insight into the upcoming expansion and the inner workings of the development team. Highlights include, but are not limited to: The new Pandaria faction hubs New guild levels and perks New talent system Pet Battle system, including a possible spectator mode The possible abolishing of prime glyphs Ghostcrawler's feelings on #OccupyGregStreet Matticus. Just ... Matticus. The developers have already expressed interest in holding more of these chats, and I know I'm all in favor of it. For more information on the content of this evening's chat, check the official site, or stick with us after the break for a complete transcript.
DDO's Update 11 arises with the artful Artificer
Today marks the latest evolution of Dungeons and Dragons Online, as Update 11: Secrets of the Artificers went live on the servers and the steampunk community collectively lost its composure. Update 11 adds a completely new high-level quest hub called House Cannith, where players can adventure out into a new wilderness area, dive into a trio of dungeons, tackle a pair of raids, and finish off the day with a trip to House Cannith's famed crafting hall. The cornerstone of this massive patch is the addition of the Artificer class, a steampunk-infused hybrid ranged damage-dealer with a snazzy look that would fit in fine at any geek convention in the world. To celebrate the advent of the Artificer, Turbine's Kyle Horner and Steve Muray sat down to compose a back-and-forth dev diary about the development and dark secrets concerning the class. The duo thinks that it will appeal to trigger-happy players who love their "pew pew." VIP players (subscribers) can start enjoying the new content today, but the rest of the playerbase is going to have to wait until the 15th to purchase the class and quest content from the DDO store.
Shifting Perspectives: Developer Q&A touches on resto druid issues
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This week, we turn our attention the most recent developer Q&A ... and we all know what happened the last time we did that. I spent the weekend being a trifle distracted (and then heartbroken) by the Women's World Cup, but at least we can feel good about the winner. Oh, and for all those of you who utilize musk deer glands in your health regimen, please remember to check them for steroids, in much the same fashion that one would check flour for boll weevils and rice grains for moths in one's pantry. This has been a public service announcement by your friendly local World of Warcraft blog, which takes an interest in this matter because a commenter once accused it of fomenting unrest in North Korea. What the hell is this column supposed to be about? Oh, right. Anyway, the final developer Q&A was published this past Friday, and within it were a few nuggets of interest to restoration druids. We didn't get any questions that specifically dealt with our spec, so I am not required to Hulk out over the lack of answers that Blizzard has traditionally provided to such questions, so let's spend today being happy and relatively sane.
Shifting Perspectives: Why the tank Q&A sucked
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we started writing this column last Wednesday. Don't get me wrong: It's not that I don't like the developer Q&A sessions. They're a great idea, and although they don't make up for Ghostcrawler's absence from the forums, they're a nice insight into the developers' thought process and a peek at the issues that matter most to players. The effort's appreciated even when players ask pointless questions (of which the need to do so appears to be a congenital disorder) or use the opportunity to grandstand about issues no one cares about. But the tank Q&A was ... not Blizzard's best effort. To borrow a phrase from Harry Knowles, I love hard-working Blizzard, I'm blown away by creative Blizzard, and I'm in awe of big-dreaming and overreaching Blizzard. But I freaking hate lazy Blizzard.
Stargate Worlds Developer Q&A: Episode 8
How time flies. Since June of 2007, the Stargate Worlds Developer Q&A podcast has been a great resource for fans of the upcoming MMO, and the latest episode brings even more information to the masses.Covering topics like Stargate addresses, target lock in combat, captureable towns on contested worlds, instanced worlds, and the ability to play as dark or light factions, among others, one of the hallmarks of this podcast series is the direct connection community members enjoy with the developers of the game. Fans get to ask questions directly of particular devs, and those devs answer just as directly, with no unnecessary spin. Don't you wish every development house were this transparent?
