WOW designer kicks off Austin conference

sábado, 10 de mayo del 2008 a las 04:46

guardado en Wow Gold

"AUSTIN, Texas--The Austin Game Conference (AGC) is all about online gaming, and right now, online gaming is all about Blizzard's massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft. So it's only fitting that this year's AGC, the fourth annual event and the first to span three days rather than two, would kick off with a keynote speech from World of Warcraft's lead designer, Rob Pardo. Before a ballroom packed with hundreds of attendees, Pardo detailed the Blizzard design process that birthed hits like Starcraft, Diablo, Warcraft, and, of course, World of Warcraft. ""We have a lot of goofy mantras,"" Pardo said. ""Things like 'purity of purpose,' 'concentrated coolness,' obvious ones like 'easy to learn, difficult to master.' When you have a large studio and a lot of designers, it's kind of important that everyone understands your values and when you're developing that design culture, if you don't have these shared values, it's very hard for all the designers and developers to understand what you're trying to achieve."" The first Blizzard value is a donut, with the inner ring representing the core market for a game and the outer ring being the casual crowd. While Pardo explained that it's important to appeal to both casual and core markets, he noted that as the group of people playing a game grows, the casual market tends to grow much faster than the core segment. The healthy donut is achieved with decisions guided by a series of mantras, the first of which is ""easy to learn, difficult to master."" ""The first thing we always do is we design depth first and accessibility later,"" Pardo said. ""And I think this is kind of unintuitive... We try to come up with [answers to] what are the really cool things, the things that are going to attract players to this game and get them to play the game for two to three years.

Where's the depth coming from. And then we think about accessibility."" For World of Warcraft, there were four features Pardo said were key to giving the game depth. The team wanted to make the classes as distinct as possible; they then made the game's dungeons specifically to serve the core market and act as a bridge for more casual players to get further into the game. Other features that the team spent time tuning for added depth included player-versus-player action and more interesting raids and end games with encounters ""that are much more like something you might see in Zelda."" " "With World of Warcraft's subscriber base nearing 7 million, it's little wonder that its first expansion is generating no small amount of interest. However, that interest has turned to doubt, following recent reports that the game has only entered alpha testing. world of warcraft power leveling But while the game's developer and publisher, Blizzard Entertainment, would only say that the game was undergoing ""internal testing,"" it did today reiterate that its ""goal is to ship the expansion pack by the end of the year."" If the Burning Crusade does make it to stores by New Year's Eve, it may spark a new holiday tradition. Following reports in the European press, Blizzard confirmed to GameSpot that it is aiming to release new World of Warcraft add-ons annually. ""Our ideal scenario would be to release new expansions every year, and that's what we're aiming for,"" a rep said. wow powerleveling While confident, Blizzard was also cautious about an annual expansion scheme. ""Given the nature of game development cycles, we may not always be able to hit our target release goals,"" the rep continued. ""Regardless, our priority will always be on ensuring that our products meet our expectations and those of our players, and we won't release a product until we feel it's ready."" Blizzard's been working like crazy to fix the servers.

wow powerlevel They've been going at the servers about 20 at a time to fix them, as well as retrofitting them for the Burning Crusade expansion. And I can't wait for that expansion. I just recently started playing WoW and my girlfriend and I are hooked. All the annoying 10-15 year old run-ins aside (sorry to those who are 10-15 and don't act like idiots), it's a great game. wow gold My main problem was that I wanted to be a ""Blood"" Elf. With the BC expansion, I can do that, so I'm set The whole ""One Expansion a year"" thing might not be perfect, but it's a great idea. People would get bored of the game if they didn't expand on it. serveur wow The rise of the level cap to 70 will give everyone a chance to keep growing and all the additions will give us new things to do and see. " .