Posts with tag jobs

This panel will be starting at 10:00 a.m. PDT / 1:00 p.m. EDT and will be live blogged here.

The live blog after the break!

Update: Live blog over. Very interesting panel for those looking to get into the industry.

Blizzard Europe recently updated their jobs site with a host of new positions which strongly suggest more EU expansion, this time in Italy and Poland. The last major EU release was a localised Russian version of the game which came out last year.

According to the site, Blizzard Europe is looking for Customer Support Representatives in Italian and Polish, along with Customer and Billing Support and Customer and Technical Support. Under their Web Team, they are looking to fill Web Editor positions in both languages, while under Community they are looking for Online Community Representatives. All these positions are based in either Paris, France or Cork, Ireland.

Update: We asked Blizzard about these positions and have been told simply: "no comment".

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

There's an old adage in sports that's often bandied about whenever someone gets confused about their role on the team: "Players play, coaches coach." It doesn't really work for us ("Officers office, members . . . memb"?). However, it's true that officers are officers and members are members. Members can slack, but officers have to maintain, support, and improve their guild. This week's e-mail comes from a guild leader who's tried everything (short of giant hammers) to motivate her lazy officers, but to no avail, and she's at the end of her rope.

Dear Scott,

I'm a co-GM of a mid-sized, fairly stable guild that has been remarkably stable and solid over the years. We have a solid group of core members who are active, we've progressed steadily through the WoW raiding content, and we have an active social calendar as well. As far as the day-to-day business and guild harmony go, from where the members sit -- things are really great.

The problem is, our officers have been getting less and less responsive in taking leadership, and because of it, most of the work seems to be falling more and more on myself and my co-leader. And as more and more of the work falls on us, and the staff we delegated to help us with it doesn't give us that help, we are burning out badly.

I've often thought I'd do just about anything to work at Blizzard. I mean, with offices that look like this, working on one of your favorite games - who wouldn't? But then I think about my many years spent in the trenches as both rep and management at various IT/Internet jobs, and I'm no longer sure that I'd do anything to work there. You see, the one group I don't envy are those on the front lines of customer service. Much like the story from Thursday in which we learned about a rep having to deal with a kid and his suicide threat when he ostensibly didn't get what he wanted, CSRs, GMs and CMs deal with very frustrating situations every day.

But there again, it is Blizzard, and I'd be lying if I said most people I know wouldn't give their [insert requisite body part] to work there, just to experience the culture and be part of the company that makes some truly awesome games. The sheer coolness of the company and a lot of their outward facing policies seems like being part of that team would more than make up for any abuse you might get as a trade-off. How about you? Would you be willing to step onto the front lines, taking every nasty, mean comment you're dealt with a smile - or carefully constructed snark? Would you be willing to work at Blizzard on the front lines? Or is that a bit too much of a figurative bulls-eye than you'd want painted on yourself?

William Dobson over at our sister site Massively.com picked up this story earlier today. A poster on the f13 forums revealed that a corporate recruiter claimed they'd been given specific instructions to not consider World of Warcraft players for jobs. And we're not talking here about people actively playing WoW at work -- just whether the person plays the MMO at all. The theory behind using WoW play as a disqualifier is that WoW players are somehow unable to focus 100% on their day job.

There's part of me here that wants to say "screenshots or it didn't happen," since I can't imagine many corporations spending time and effort weeding out WoW players. I could see one or two HR folks preaching "Addiction!" and otherwise chewing on bitter apples. But several companies independently telling that to their recruiting folks, of their own volition and without prompt? I'm not so sure. If this recruiter is being honest with the forum goer, then I'd guess the recruiter her/himself is responsible for the WoW player ban.

Of course, that being said, I'll acknowledge this comes after the FCC commissioner claimed WoW can cause college drop outs. Maybe this recruiter happened to be talking to someone who had just heard her speech. But, still, I'm not convinced there's need to be worried about corporate conspiracies looking to pit WoW players into joblessness.

It seems like far too often we take the contributions of our fellow players for granted. Whether that happens when moments are tense or we forget that the other four people in our instance (or 24 people in our raid) are real folks, Bellwether of Dark iron set out to change that on the official forums today. She posted a well considered list of the roles that everyone should be thanked for in the game, just for doing their jobs. Here are some of her comments:

To Warriors:

• Thank you for standing in front of me and letting things hit you.
• Thank you for shouldering the massive repair bills that come with your job.
• Thank you for preventing my death.

To Shamans:

• Thank you for every single totem.
• Thank you for Brain Heals.
• Thank you for Ankh and saving us from having to run back

We like to keep you updated on the opportunities to make some money off of all that WoW experience you have, so when we saw an announcement on the Blizzard job postings site that they're looking for fiction writers, we had to let you know. Not too often do people get a chance to write for their favorite game making company. The announcement says that if you get this job, you'll be working with their intellectual property (read: writing cool stories about all your favorite Blizzard characters), do lots of creative writing, and work on story development.

And what sets this announcement apart are two little gems from the "Pluses" category of the announcement: "Experience creating and running pen and paper RPG campaigns and/or live-action RPGs" and "Experience in playing massively multiplayer online role-playing games, especially World of Warcraft."

So get out your 10 sided die and roll a 9 or above to work for Blizzard. Well, that and a bit of those uber-writing skillz. And who knows? Maybe one day you'll be writing a story about the Rise of the Lich King.

Good luck!

We've heard before about how different activities in World of Warcraft can actually help you be better at your job, but now the BBC has posted an article examining how game mechanics from games like WoW can actually help your company help you work better. According to the ESRB, the average gamer isn't a teen after school any more-- he's 33 and has been gaming for 10 years. And because so many more professionals nowadays know the basics of gaming, employers are starting to apply those rules to the workplace to make everyone more productive.

One mechanic used is a form of "virtual currency" in terms of emails and meeting time-- send an email or hold a 15 minute meeting, and it costs you a token, while tokens can be earned in all kinds of ways. Not only does it keep employees on task, but it adds an extra layer of strategy and thought to the normal workday. Another game mechanic used by employers, says the BBC, is the idea of guilds and leveling rewards. "Guilds" in the workplace are tracked along a point system, and the best guilds get the best projects and rewards.

Very interesting stuff. While it sounds like good news for employers, I'm not sure how successful ideas like this would actually be among non-gamer employees-- at some point, how good you are at your job would be determined not by your industry ability, but by your game-playing ability, and that doesn't seem like a good outcome. But if employers find employees are willing to use these mechanics to make themselves more productive, everyone could benefit.

Thanks, Lienn!

Many of us who play online games often have a faraway dream of somehow working in the industry. Productivity gurus constantly tell us we need to do what we love if we're going to have real job satisfaction. It's one of the reasons I applied to work at WoW Insider, to combine my passion for writing and my obsession with online games.

Now you can check out the reality on Blizzard's official job listing site. You might just find something that justifies those 3:00 am raid wipes.

First up is a call for a Mobile Producer. A few months back, we posted this mock up of WoW on an IPhone. It was derided as unmanageable, but I think Blizzard disagrees. And who's going to argue with their success? As well as this report I found predicting the mobile game industry will be worth $11.2 billion by 2010.

But let's move on to some juicy Starcraft 2 job openings.

Apparently Blizzard is looking for a few good people to work on unspecified projects for mobile platforms. Might this have something to do with a mobile WoW-related app? Of course, it could also be something completely unrelated. Still, pretty much ever since the iPhone was announced, there's been speculation about a possible "WoW Lite" for it that would let you check the AH, maybe chat with your guildies, and so forth. I know I'd certainly be a bit more tempted to grab an iPhone if I knew it was going to have some WoW capabilities. On the other hand, this could easily oppose my girlfriend to the device...

I think all I'd want in a WoW Lite client would be AH, chat, tradeskills, and maybe a talent calculator. After all, I still don't think it'd be possible to do much "real" gameplay on a small screen with no mouse/keyboard, even if the platform could handle it (which I doubt). What would you guys like to see WoW Lite include, if such a thing every got made? Oh, by the way, the image above is a quick Photoshop I did when the "WoW on iPhone" rumor first came out, not some sort of secret spy photo. The job postings are copied after the cut; see if you can make anything of them.

A long-standing bug regarding Shaman having difficulty curing Rogue poisons will finally be squashed, though not until 2.1.0. From Ommra:

Ok, so I had the wrong information on when this bug was fixed. Apparently it didn't get fixed in the last patch (as you noticed), but will get fixed in 2.1.0 instead.

The change will be that the difficulty of dispelling the rogue's poison is based on the level of the player instead of the level of the weapon the poison is applied to.

That makes sense, but I have trouble seeing how weapon level is ever going to be higher than player level, making this almost look like a nerf on the face of things. I'm sure it's not, though -- anyone want to explain?

In other news, perhaps Blizz took my jab at their web design on Sunday a little too seriously -- they're now on the lookout for a new web designer:

Blizzard Entertainment has an immediate opening for a Web Designer. The ideal candidate is well versed in HTML, JavaScript, and Photoshop and experienced in all manner of web-design elements, such as the design and layout of buttons, links, menus, and text. The Web Designer's primary duties will be to help design and implement the HTML pages for our growing websites. A lot of focus will be spent on supporting existing and future Blizzard titles. The Web Designer will also be responsible for daily web updates and maintenance of existing Blizzard sites. The ideal candidate will also have a strong working knowledge of Blizzard games. For more information on this position, please view the job description at: http://www.blizzard.com/jobopp/web-designer.shtml

Even though we've heard Blizzard announce time & again that there will be no World of Warcraft for the XBox 360 or any other consoles, a new job listing on Blizzard's website for a Senior Producer position, with one of the requirements listed as having "a proven track record in producing high-quality console games", has some gamers hopeful again that WoW may indeed surface on one of their favorite consoles.

The ad also specifies that the idea candidate must have "recently shipped at least one AAA game in a producer role for one of these console platforms: Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, or GameCube.", so apparently they're looking to cast a wide net, whatever their plans might be.

Personally, I'm not much of a console gamer, but I still can't imagine any way WoW could truly ever work on a console, at least without the addition of a mouse & keyboard; there's simply too much typing to do. Perhaps there's a way to accomplish this that I don't know about, but I just can't see one being able to have the true WoW experience in a console setting. Then again, what do I know?