What a great reading, thank you! As a developer myself, I understand exactly what the author went through.
Darn now you have me checking patch notes from vanilla given this backstory.
Absolutely one of the BEST articles I've read in a very long time. Having 20 years experience in I.T., 15 of those years in a corporate environment, I related to so much that was said here. What "regular gamers" don't realize is all the meetings-for-meetings that happen behind the scenes before a digital product can be turned over for the public eye to experience. And all the obstacles and attitudes that come into play during its development.On the subject of Scholomance (aka "the keep microdungeon"), I had NO idea that all those mobs were unintended! Ha! I started playing WoW the day WotLK was released (ha! Talk about downed servers!). And it wasn't until mid-2009, when my I.T. work schedule somewhat normalized, that I had finally leveled a Hunter high enough to make a Death Knight. And my goal, from the inception of making that Death Knight, was to solo Scholomance. I was not able to solo Scholo until my DK hit 70, and that was still with a lot of effort back then (pre-Cataclysm). But I miss the old Scholomance immensely, as it was the most immersive dungeon out of everything that had been released (outside of the ICC and Black Temple raids). I miss the little light fixtures you could click on to get to hidden bosses/content too. While I still very happily queue for Scholomance whenever it becomes available on a new toon I create (and I have many), the re-work of Scholomance since MoP is not the same epic experience as it used to be. And it is so much shorter now than it used to be, degrading some of the story lines that used to be portrayed in it. I now fully understand why it had to get re-worked, and how much of an impact on performance it had. But a little part of me deep down wishes that it could have been segregated to uphold that epic experience somehow, or made into a raid instance instead.
There's something magical about the vanilla WoW design - really fascinating read, especially since vanilla Scholo was one of my favorite dungeons.
This was a very interesting read. I must admit it made me a little sad however. So much effort was put into Scholomance only to have it later stripped down and streamlined in later expansions that desperately needed to pretend they had more content to offer. We will never get to play the original unless we go to Classic whenever that comes out.It also makes me sad because it feels like more and more we need someone on the inside of Bliz pushing for content to be finished and looked at and improved upon. Both Legion and especially WoD had places it was obvious content had been stripped out or ditched, WOD is infamous for how much is known to have been thrown in the bin to the point that people called it another half-pansion like Cata was.
Like so many commenters, I found this fascinating. From fairly early on, I've wanted to know the how of entertainment rather than just the who, and this fits that need nicely. Maybe not every complaint about gameplay would be soothed by knowing why things worked the way they do, but a reveal of internal mechanics would be like finally getting to see how those Titan machines fit together.
i agree 100%. i miss all those old 25-35 min dungeons. almost mini raids. not for the faint of heart.
This was a great read, thanks so much! I'll definitely support the Kickstarter project.
Original Scholo is still one of my favourite dungeons, along with original Sunken Temple.I miss these huge, daunting dungeons.Thank you for all your hard work, game devs, who put in so much work for us to enjoy a game.
This was very interesting, and I remember the patch that made Scholomance actually runnable.That being said, two things stand out to me.1) If Blizzard was making it's devs stay past midnight AS EXPECTED CULTURE, then the culture at Blizzard must be even worse than EA. In no sane development environment will that work, which I guess they learned once they realized they screwed up every dungeon and micro-dungeon in the game. Reasonable hours lead to quality products.2) John Staats said he created several different gold mines, barrow dens, etc., but I guess they never got added to the game since EVERY MICRO-DUNGEON IN THE GAME IS EXACTLY THE SAME! Even in Legion you can see the same copy+pasted caves, barrow dens, ruined castles etc. as throughout all of WoWs history. BfA is looking at lot better, mostly because it only has 2 or 3 micro-dungeons, but those 2-3 are the exact same cave we saw in north-east Un'goro, in western Wetlands, in eastern Arathi Highlands, all over Northrend, Pandaria, etc. They even have the same stupid "you can't jump up this tiny cliff even though it looks like it's only 1 foot high and going around means going through the entire rest of the cave to find the one quest mob that is always on top of the tiny peninsula" thing going on.
I've been waiting for a book like this to come along, but I thought I'd have to wait until WoW was over and done with to get it. I cannot wait to crack this one open in December - this is going to be a great read!
This was a great read, how often do we get to see how the sausage is made in the Blizzard world? Not often.
I remember spending hours in Scholo with my old guild.... this was what we raided before we were good enough for Molten Core / Onyxia...We used to take pretty big groups down there... back when you could bring a raid group into any dungeon...Good times.
For years I've been wanting a Behind the scenes of WoW's development kinda book and this seems like it fits the bill. I also hope he covers a lot of "Paths not traveled" and judging by the AMAs, he might cover some. Like for example, we know there's been some expansion ideas that got kicked around and maybe even solid dev time that were cancelled and reworked into what we know now. I'd love to learn more. This is fascinating! I supported the Kickstarter for the hardcover version. It'll be $49 well spent.
That was simply amazing!
A grammatical error here and there, but all in all it's certainly authentic and interesting to read, I love this kind of writing, quite engaging. Alas, I cannot currently afford an extra expense so hopefully sometime in near future I'll be able to grab one! Great job to Staats!