The masterminds of WoW on gaming
by Krystalle Voecks 
Jun 13th 2007 at 11:02AM
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!
Filed under: Blizzard, News items, Interviews
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
rafe.brox Jun 13th 2007 11:29AM
Oh, god, not Peggle!
One... more... board....
Junzim Jun 13th 2007 11:51AM
I was always a little sad about what Kaplan did to UO. His contribution to UO was to make it gear-centric when it had been skill-based.
What he 'learned' from UO and applied to WoW was to avoid the looting which made UO so great for PvP: If you were going to lose your best gear, you simply didn't wear your best gear, meaning that no one had great gear in PvP - you just didn't risk the stuff.
As a result GM blacksmithing weapons and armour were the preferred equips which meant that there was always a strong player economy.
UO got a lot of stuff right.
Janessriel Jun 13th 2007 6:05PM
Confused about UO:
From what I can glean of UO, it was open PVP, with that looting of the dead guy open to all. So if that was the case, why would you want to get any good gear at all, since you run the risk of losing it at any time?
I'm just asking blindly here, I've never played UO and all I know about it is the little I've read and heard of. Just needing some clarification on that point, since it seems counterproductive.
Birthmark Jun 13th 2007 6:22PM
Oi Naxx was the leytness. And they admitted themselves it was the best raid instance they ever made cuz they put the most time in it. I wish they would have delayed the expansion by about 6 months so my guild and other guilds could have finished Naxx. And I wish they didn't reduce raid sizes to 25 so my guild could have stayed together and kept pwning the new endgame. But instead the first endgame they give us is 10 man karazhan splitting us apart even more. If they wanted to start us out with a new smaller raid instance it should have been 20 man instead of 10. Then we could of made 2 teams easily. The logistics of trying to run 3 or 4 10 man teams is just crazy.
And it's obvious that they focus on the most elite guilds the way they talk. All they care about are the 2 dozen or so guids that cleared Naxx out of the entire global playerbase. But it was interesting to see the history of WoW and other games I've never played before but heard about like EQ and UO. Damn those games looked really crappy. Gives me a better appreciation for WoW lol.
And it's cool that they can watch us play in live time and some of them are even in our guilds but don't tell us who they are.
I feel really dumb right now after hearing that whole deep breadth thing. My guild TOTALLY believed all that crap and would scream at people on vent to not stand close together in phase 2 for months lol. But that makes me frustrated at how stand offish the devs are. Why does everything ahve to be some great mystery? Why can't they tell us that clumping together has zero effect on deep breadths? They just let everyone do something wrong without saying something?
I think they should create official "how to" videos for every end game encounter. That would help casuals beat hard content and wanna raid more. Just an idea.
Tuwori Jun 13th 2007 7:42PM
@ 4
I'm sure you don't mean that last comment about the how to vids, but i get the feelings behind it, so no flame required.
I thought this vid was awesome, as a 50 days /played priest who recently quit, it just gives my past passion a human quality I felt was being sucked away from me. GG
demian linn Jun 13th 2007 8:14PM
thanks for posting this, guys. Although a link to the video would be appreciated :)
http://gamevideos.com/video/id/12155
you can watch or download higher res versions of the video at the above url.
Wudamonkey Jun 14th 2007 12:54AM
@Janessriel Its not that confusing UO, was a game like guild wars or DAOC where there were gear gaps and very very small gear gaps between the average gear and the best gear. Majority of the best gear in UO was crafted by players and very common. In wow terms everyone was walking around in white geat with maybe 2 or 3 greens.
The the expansion came that kalgan (tom chlinton) worked on and they decided to introduce unlootable epics. So the first few guilds/players to get the epics ruled pvp, because regardless of skill they were hitting everyone 3x harder than normal. Then UO players started leaving in masses and the game started dieing out.