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WarCry talks with Tigole
WarCry has a quick interview with Jeff Kaplan, a.k.a. Tigole, lead designer in charge of world design for WoW, mostly on BC instances. Head over to WarCry to see the full interview. Here's the question that caught my eye: WarCry: In many ways, Karazhan mirrors instances like Zul'Gurub or the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj in terms of raid size compared to the 40-person raids. How did the development of Karazhan compare to the development of these previous raids? Are there any plans for future 10-person raid dungeons? Jeffrey Kaplan: While there are definitely philosophical tuning differences between 5-, 10-, 20-, 25-, and 40-person instances, we don't have a vastly different approach in our dungeon-creation process. The same basic elements that make a 5-person instance great -- pacing, story, varied creatures, varied abilities, punctuating boss fights, good itemization, accessibility, and understandability -- will also make for a great 25-person experience. Karazhan was a lot of fun to work on, and we really took our time developing and polishing it. Karazhan, more so than Zul'Gurub or the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj, had a very storied history in existing Warcraft lore, and we wanted to deliver on the high expectations. There are definitely plans for more 10-person content. It's interesting to see that they think of a raid as fundamentally the same design problem as a 5-man. And more ten-man content, which we suspect Zul'Aman is going to be, is good news in my book. However, I think the approach of treating dungeons as similar to one another, regardless of size, is somewhat flawed. For instance, I'd say in a 5-man, trash mobs are almost more important to make interesting than bosses; in a raid, on the other hand, trash is an obstacle, and bosses are really what you come for.
Apple to release latest Leopard beta to developers who couldn't make WWDC
A little green and blue TUAW birdie has just informed us that Apple is planning to release the Leopard beta that WWDC attendees received last week to the rest of qualifying ADC members. As to when developers can fire up their browsers and download managers, the only language we have to go on is 'soon.'We're also told that this secondary release is happening quite a bit sooner than it did at last year's WWDC, so I guess this might be a win for developers, all things considered.
The masterminds of WoW on gaming
Have you ever wondered what the names and faces behind WoW do in their off time? In the recent interview 1up had with Shane Dabiri, Rob Pardo, Jeff Kaplan, and Tom Chilton, we get to find out a bit about that -- at least in regards to some of the games that they're playing right now. Two of them were really no surprise to me: Guitar Hero II and God of War. Those two have been all over the gaming media and are a lot of fun to play, so it makes total sense. The two titles that caught me off guard were several mentions of Viva Pinata and Rob saying that he plays the PopCap game, Peggle. They also covered some great background information from their gaming roots, to some ways they think WoW has changed the genre. Check it out!
Stratics Chat: Live with the Devs
As promised, I'll be reporting on anything and everything going on in the Stratics chat. I'm hopeful that the devs will pick some of the truly tasty questions that have been offered up to answer. For those who want to join us on IRC for this, you can get all the pertinent information here. For those of you who are unable to get on IRC but still wanting to keep up with the action, just refresh this post periodically. I'll add my running commentary here via edits as the chat progresses. (Please note that all timestamps are EST.) Pre-show: Had a lovely chat with TotalBiscuit from WoWRadio and caught some of his Devchat pre-show while waiting. Great guy -- and a great site. If you haven't checked them out, be sure to do so! 5:45 pm: Drink? Check. Snack? Oh man. I knew I forgot something...5:50 pm: Wow, this channel is packed. There are easily several hundred in here. Of course, considering the guests of honor, that's really no surprise.6:00 pm: Brannoc has said they'll begin shortly. So far, so good. Eyonix, Drysc, Neth are here as well as Kalgan and Tigole. More official people seem to be joining.6:07 pm: They're going through the introductions now. -- Ah, first question. Wants to know when Azeroth will begin getting a significant revamp as it's a ghost town now.6:09 pm: Tigole says that they're looking at revamping some older zones at some point. Also planning future expansions, mentions Karazhan and CoT as examples of future content plans. (The rest lives behind the jump)
Stratics dev chat: live coverage
Well, it's time to get some answers, hopefully! Here I'll be covering Stratics' Q&A chat with WoW lead developers Kalgan and Tigole, as well as some of the CMs. I will keep this post continually refreshed with everything the devs say, so feel free to reload for updates.Edit: The chat has been postponed until a week from today: Tuesday, May 22, at 6:00 PM Eastern time.5:55: Chat starts in five minutes. Drysc, Eyonix, Kalgan, Tigole, and Nethaera have just joined the room.5:59: Kalgan left, but I'm sure he'll be back. Several people are present with nicknames like "HELP_Shamans."6:02: I estimate there are about 900 people watching the chat. That's quite a few. Looks like there are some set-up issues, as Eyonix has now left too, Kalgan isn't back, and nobody's said anything yet.6:10: Here we go! Welcome to the first ever Stratics house of commons chat with the developers of World of Warcraft! We'll begin with a brief introduction from our guests and then jump straight into the questions. The full logs will be available at http://wow.stratics.com shortly afterward.6:12: Introductions time.Nethaera: Good afternoon everyone. I'm Nethaera and one of the World of Warcraft Community Managers.6:20: The developers are experiencing some minor technical problems, it should be corrected in a moment.
Get your questions in for the Stratics chat
I wrote a week ago about Stratics hosting an IRC chat with WoW's lead designers, and now they day has come. You've still got several hours to submit your questions to Stratics' army of question taker bots; the chat will start at 6 PM Eastern time (3 PM Pacific). In fact, since I'm such a nice guy, if you don't feel like going over to IRC yourself and sending in your question, post it here and I'll submit it for you, as long as the bots keep accepting questions. If you do want to join in the madness, point your IRC client at irc.stratics.com, port 6668. The chat itself will take place in #StraticsHoC, and discussion can be had in #worldofwarcraft. And don't forget, I'll be covering the chat live as soon as it starts, so check back on our home page for updates.
IRC Q&A with the devs at Stratics
A week from today, WoW Stratics will host a live IRC question and answer session with Blizzard developers Tom Chilton (Kalgan, pictured) and Jeff Kaplan (Tigole). Kalgan and Tigole are the WoW lead designers in charge of game systems and balance, and world design, respectively. The chat will last an hour and start at 3:00 PM PST on Tuesday, May 15. Stratics will be collecting questions for 48 hours before the chat and screening them ahead of time; no questions will be fielded during the chat. If you ask me, that somewhat defeats the purpose of a live chat, but I'm not complaining; it's nice to get any insight from the designers. And I can understand why they'd do it this way; the amount of shouting that would go on during a live Q&A would probably prevent very much communication from going on.Only a few people (presumably server ops and the developers) will have voicing in the main channel, but there will be a separate channel available on the same server for simultaneous discussion. And if you can't make it, Stratics will almost certainly put a log up on their server. All the IRC details, as well as instructions on how to submit a question, are on Stratics' site. I will also be in attendance at the chat, and I'll be live-blogging it for WoW Insider, so you'll be able to tune in here next Tuesday for live updates. But until then, what would you like to ask the developers?
Kalgan on Retribution
Everyone wants to DPS. And if a Paladin wants to DPS, he's likely to look at the Retribution tree. However, that tree has been somewhat de-emphasized as of late; the developers have out and said that the Paladin is a tanking/healing hybrid, and its DPS is meant to be somewhat sub-par. Of course, this implies that Ret is not a very strong talent tree: if Pallies are meant for healing and tanking, it stands to reason that Holy and Prot will probably be stronger trees than Ret.Indeed, many players are currently dissatisfied with the state of Ret, and Kalgan (a.k.a. Tom Chilton, the WoW designer responsible for classes, among other things) recently stopped by the forums to chat about Ret a bit. Here's what he had to say (the responses are scattered through this thread):However, while I don't disagree that there aren't many highly rated ret pallies, it's worth pointing out that there also aren't many highly rated prot warriors, destro locks, balance druids, survival hunters, enhancement shamans, etc. While trying to get each spec to be arena viable in the different formats is a noble goal, the reality is that it isn't an immediate goal for every spec to be optimized for every aspect of the game (arenas, battlegrounds, solo-ing, raiding, heroics, etc). In the case of arenas, it seems to me that getting each class reasonably represented in highly rated teams is a more important goal, and unfortunately the paladin class happens to be somewhat grossly over-represented in this regard. So...there's too many Paladins in arenas, therefore they can't buff Ret, because that would cause even more Paladins? Hm...
TUAW Interview series: Brent Simmons on the Leopard delay - does it change anything?
Apple's announcement that Leopard has been delayed until October was quite the shocker, especially since we apparently have the iPhone to thank. This of course elicited nearly every response you can think of from every walk of life, but we don't often hear from what I feel is one of the most important building blocks of the Mac OS X community: 3rd party developers. Sure, developers blog about stuff like this on their own, but not everyone is down for sifting through posts about the inner workings of Mac OS X for the insightful opinion pieces on what things like a Leopard delay mean to Apple and its users. And that isn't a bad thing, especially since it inspired me to bring the developers' thoughts to you in an interview series with some of Mac OS X's biggest hitters, including Wil Shipley (co-founder of Omni Group and Delicious Monster), Paul Kafasis (CEO of Rogue Amoeba), Gus Mueller (of Flying Meat software) and Allan Odgaard (of Macromates). I wanted to get their thoughts on Leopard, the iPhone and where Apple is headed as a company in light of Mac OS X delays and Apple's gadgets which would (or should) make great venues for their products. Thankfully, all the developers responded positively and offered some great insight on these issues. These guys have a unique perspective on the state of Apple and its products, and I'm thankful that they all took the time to lay it down as only a Mac OS X developer can.First up (only because he was the first to reply) is Brent Simmons of NewsGator fame. Read on for thoughts from the man who brought RSS and blogging to the Mac masses with NetNewsWire and MarsEdit (which was acquired recently by Red Sweater Software).
Developers unleash exclusive offers for MacHeist participants
One of the appeals of MacHeist that a few participating developers cited for their participation is residual sales. Things like upgrade licenses, extra plugins and add-ons can all be big boosts to a 3rd party developer's revenue, and some of MacHeist's participating devs have certainly hit the ground running. Yesterday I received my confirmation emails and licenses from RealMac Software (RapidWeaver) and Dave Watanabe (NewsFire), both with exclusive offers for MacHeist customers. First, RealMac Software is offering a 10% discount on theme packs, and Dave is offering a 'lifetime upgrade' add-on for NewsFire for a mere $11. We've also known from early on that John Casasanta has had a version 4.0 upgrade just around the corner for iClip, and MacroMates had an offer on the table since day 1 of at least 60% off an upgrade license to an upcoming version 2 release of TextMate.It will be interesting to see how all this plays out for these 3rd party developers in the coming months. I know I'm already falling in love with TextMate, and even though I use WordPress, ecto and Dreamweaver for most of my website needs, RapidWeaver is tempting me with its sexy ease of use and purty themes. The 3rd party devs, it seems, have already made a revenue statistic out of me.
