ESL interviews Tom Chilton
by Zach Yonzon 
Jul 16th 2009 at 6:00PM
Jay Harding from ESL TV was able to catch up to Blizzard Lead Designer and the resident PvP guru Tom Chilton at the World of Warcraft Arena Tournament Regional Finals in Cologne, Germany last June and got to squeeze a decent length interview. Because of the focus of the event, Chilton talked a lot about PvP changes, particularly the impact of the upcoming Patch 3.2. Chilton, also known as Kalgan, expressed Blizzard's intent on trying to keep different comps viable while taking small steps to curb the dominance of extremely popular comps such as RMP and cleave, which he stopped short of calling a "faceroll comp" (still goes to show he was thinking it, though!). Highlights from the video include:
- Resilience - the change to Resilience in Patch 3.2 will make the greatest impact in Arena PvP, slowing down matches and likely impacting the effectivity of "burst" comps.
- The nerf to the 2v2 bracket is intended to equalize class representation since 2v2 isn't always a good bracket for all classes. Chilton mentions that "as the bracket size comes down, you lose a lot of those different synergies between different classes"
- Chilton says, "there's room for competitive Battlegrounds," and that "rated Battlegrounds is something that (Blizzard) has been thinking about for quite a while." He says they'll provide more information in the future.
- Isle of Conquest is intended to be epic, they want to "bring back a little of that crazy, big battle feel" and intergrating some features of existing Battlegrounds with new ones.
- Kalgan and his girlfriend will kick your butt in 2v2.
Filed under: Fan stuff, Blizzard, Interviews
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Wither Jul 16th 2009 6:26PM
Regarding competitive battlegrounds:
One of the greatest assets of BGs at the moment is a quick game for a casual player. Along with the changes to each game so they last around 20 minutes, this makes them ideal for logging on, playing for a bit and then logging off.
One of the problems is, if you encourage premades to compete against PuGs, which is exactly what rated battlegrounds will do, then the casual attraction of BGs is lost. It would be flooded with hardcore guilds desperate to earn rating and the associated rewards. Such premades would capitalize on winning matches against unprepared PuG teams, reminiscent of twinking. Casual players would soon start to disappear.
What Blizzard really need to do is separate PuG teams from premades in different queues, similar to how the new XP option is going to do. Then, by all means, provide a rating system.
That aside, currently the most common complaint in battlegrounds is balancing.
First, they need to balancing team numbers properly (AV is notorious for imbalanced games, but often others suffer very badly too).
Second, they need to balance team compositions properly (so often I play WSG games with no healers and five rogues).
Then, they need to balance gear.
Then we can start to talk about rated battlegrounds.
So I think Blizzard are getting WAY ahead of themselves. There's some serious problems with battlegrounds that need to fix before they think about making them competitive.
yokumgang Jul 16th 2009 6:58PM
Wall of text crits you for over 9000.
The willingness to read fades from you.
Arcane Intellect fades from you.
Molten Armor fades from you.
You die.
yokumgang Jul 16th 2009 7:00PM
Actual idea:
What if you put the rated players into the 'twink' bracket? Like they could turn off XP gains at 80 and get into rated brackets; otherwise, you simply play BG's the same way we do now, no ratings, just honor and tokens.
Dart Jul 16th 2009 7:01PM
I agree with Wither, especially about balancing.
I know people just want to pick up and play BGs, but starting a 11 v 40 AV is terrible. Might as well just not even play.
Chris Gardner Jul 16th 2009 7:54PM
Girlfriend? I always thought he was gay. Seriously. Well, anyway, Tigole has to be. hehe Was there any truth to the rumors that Jeffrey Kaplan was dating Alex Afrasiabi?
Komorado Jul 16th 2009 7:59PM
He seems like a really nice guy.Its good to see the human face behind blizzard sometimes and know there players just like you :P
Clbull Jul 16th 2009 8:07PM
To be honest, I think that they should place Ratings on max level battlegrounds (the 80 and perhaps the 70 and 60 brackets,) to avoid the issue of twinking (although the 3.2 changes already do that.)
I'm not entirely sure how to fix the premade issue though, but I think the better gear/rating system would lure more players in general to battlegrounds. Arena wasn't fun because of many class balance issues, the problem with making a team and the fact that gear from Arena is not available unless you have a somewhat ridiculous amount of rating (around 1800 - 2100+)
With higher Ratings (obtained mostly from completing battleground objectives, and a small amount from kills calculated weekly), you can purchase High end Arena Gear (current season) for a decent amount of Honor (not a huge amount.) But I think it shouldn't be stupidly hard to get said gear through BGs.
havitech Jul 16th 2009 9:16PM
Battleground ratings could be the best thing to happen to PvP. Not that the bar is set very high, but still.
Hopefully, they are based on individual activity in Battlegrounds, and not premade success. The best thing about battlegrounds is that you can jump right into them.
Keleron Jul 17th 2009 1:13AM
This actually makes me really happy. I have long felt that BGs, not arean, should be where the best loot is. While I am not sure how they "rating" will go, the idea that I can get the best PvP gear via BGs makes me ecstatic. Arena was only a means to an end for me. I enjoy it well enough, but scheduling with my partner can be difficult at times and the match ups are sometimes frustrating. Two clothies vs rogue team.. I had 18 in a row one day.. we dropped over 100points. It was horrible. Anyway its obvious that arena is not as popular as it was in the past and this makes perfect sense. If its an opportunity to progress at my own pace and my schedule I am all for it.
Vaglas Jul 17th 2009 3:22AM
Wasn't this the guy who was in charge of balancing the classes in classic and TBC? the one who forced any hybrid to have to heal to be effective end-game and make warriors supper powerful because he felt like it? Forgive if I'm wrong, exaggerating or being stupid but Why blizzard would want to keep a man employed that balanced classes for himself rather than the playerbase?
Wither Jul 17th 2009 5:33AM
In the video, he tells you the nature of his job and it's possibly worth repeating. He's not "hands on" in anyway, due to his seniority he spends the majority of his time talking to departmental heads of various design teams, quality assurance and public relations. His role is to understood the information they give to him, prioritise that information and then give every team some direction.
While it is theoretically possible for him to set his own special agenda, it would be very hard for him to do this whilst making it look like it the requests of various departments and not raising any suspicions. If all the departments that report to him felt said he was ignoring the feedback they sent to him, he would fired.
Whether you trust the guy or not, you would have to admit that it would be very difficult, and so very unlikely, that he "forced" particular design choices because he simply felt like it.
Jon Do Jul 17th 2009 8:55AM
The reasons the people I know stopped casual PvP / BGs was:
- Problems dragged on for years and years and were never fixed
- It was unbalanced
- Added Arena ratings to gear
Back in the day, our favorite was BG PvP, especially AB and AV. The classic problem is already in the comments - imbalanced starts - that was a problem back when I started AVs in vanilla 3 years ago! Blizzard never fixed the problems. It got old. We left.
Balance is obviously never going to happen either. It was a problem in vanilla, too. Partly it was gear related - in vanilla, raiders owned everyone, in TBC it was people in Arena gear. Not only that, but classes / specs are imbalanced too. It wasn't so bad in BGs, but then we were forced into Arenas...
The final straw was when they added Arena ratings to gear, forcing us into Arena late in the cycle, into an envronment we didn't like with people who out-geared us and had months of experience. We tried it, and didn't like it. But now our honor was worthless because we couldn't use it to buy gear. We were slow to get gear anyway because we didn't Arena, but once we *couldn't* buy gear, there was no incentive.
Bottom line: You need a goal (gear works as a goal) and a hope (that you will get better gear therefore can compete better). With incentives removed, and fun fading, tired of bugs and imbalance, we quit.
Vaglas Jul 17th 2009 1:35PM
@ withers
If he wasn't/isn't hands on with class balance back then, then I can 'sort of' understand if things went wrong with it. I totally agree with you that the system you described must've been hard on him and the restrains that put on him would've made it very difficult. I only started playing mid-TBC and heard alot of Kaplan hate in my first guild, just like GC can be hated alot today.
Now if he -was- able to do these things with the classes without getting fired. It'd still be a very douchey thing...but wow is a game, nothing to get angry over.
Imrlyawesome Jul 30th 2009 3:09PM
lol, Hunter/Warrior/Pally is too easy? This guy just hates Hunters, it's so obvious.