Get your questions in for the Stratics chat
by Eliah Hecht 
May 15th 2007 at 11:27AM
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.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Corrodias May 15th 2007 11:41AM
I'm curious about the tools that the developers use to edit the game content. Specifically, i suppose, i'm curious about the unpolished areas (the ones we're not supposed to go to), like the area west of Tirisfal Glades. You've got some smoothed terrain, but also accordion-shaped cliff faces and spikes or holes. What sort of editing process leaves artifacts like those behind?
Corrodias May 15th 2007 11:43AM
...Even if that's not directly related to the -designers-. Maybe it is, maybe not. That's all i'm wondering about, anyway.
Shookers May 15th 2007 12:01PM
Can you ask the bots the following question for me:
Considering that Quality Assurance is something blizzard is very proud of, why were so many raid-dungeons allowed to ship with release that were very clearly, buggy, untuned and unpolished.
thunder May 16th 2007 8:03AM
Shookers, that question wont be asked because anyone could tell you that in the IT world a product is never flawless. The larger the project is, the more bugs there will be. regardless of testing. Thats what patches are all about.
My question involves blizzard's development and support timeline for the World of Warcraft. As an invested player seeing a game that is thriving still after 2 years its easy for me to tell myself that the game will go on for much, much more content in patches and expansions. This isn't always the case, and I'd like to know if I can expect blizzards next game release to be targeted to out-do the world of warcraft. Will we see a phase out of WoW over 10 years? 5 years? 3 years? is there a minimum server population level at which point servers will disconnect. Does blizzard have an expiration date for the world of warcraft? or will we be playing our current favorite game until we're all old and gray?
(perhaps you can sumarize)
Baluki May 15th 2007 1:57PM
I guess the only question I have for them is basically:
Shamans: WTF?
Honestly, they can't REALLY be completely happy with the shaman class right now. It's obvious to just about everyone who's played a shaman to 70 and beyond that there are serious issues. I'd like to know if they're planning on making ANY changes (I'd be happy with "perhaps, but we can't say right now").
Gigantor1960 May 15th 2007 2:46PM
Do any of the developers play a Holy or Discipline Priest on any significant level. If so what are thier thoughts/feelings on the Holy tree.
Also where do they see Priest developement going in the near and long term.
Ham
Ahmet Usta May 21st 2007 6:49AM
Is there any plan to rebalance PRE-TBC raids to be playable by lvl 70 players? We will be really glad if some TBC mod will adapt to old raids for 10 man or 5 man runs with some good new loots.
Beorin May 21st 2007 10:40AM
My question is: Are the developers evaluating threat mechanics or threat scaling? Static threat values for abilities remain a concern, with the damage output for most classes steadily increasing with progress. Already, DPS classes find it difficult to deal damage to their full potential because of a threat ceiling. Many players foresee these difficulties becoming worse.