You shouldn't even mention Metzen. The guy is a hack and a plaguerist. He does nothing but take the work of his underlings and claim all the credit for it.

Got any proof? Any at all?

By the way, you're a moron if you think Jeff Strain only designed campaigns.

He designed the Warcraft 3/WOW engine as well as the multiplayer in WC3. He also created the basis of the WOW multiplayer code. I doubt that's even been improved since his departure.

Hmm, I was talking about his work on StarCraft (Since many people seem to think that Blizzard's work started going downhill from there.. indeed, I thought WoW apparently sucked, which is why we know Blizzard isn't as good as it used to be?)

Although, if the code hadn't been improved since his departure, as ludicrous as that sounds, I guess it would be his fault that the game sucks

Sincerely,
Jeremy Dunn
This comment was edited on Jan 27, 04:00.

You shouldn't even mention Metzen. The guy is a hack and a plaguerist. He does nothing but take the work of his underlings and claim all the credit for it. By the way, you're a moron if you think Jeff Strain only designed campaigns.

He designed the Warcraft 3/WOW engine as well as the multiplayer in WC3. He also created the basis of the WOW multiplayer code. I doubt that's even been improved since his departure.
This comment was edited on Jan 26, 08:39.

I'd like to add that if they lost anyone who worked on Diablo 2 I would consider that a major bonus. What a shit game. Easily the worst game of their career.

You're all acting like all this shit is new or something, that this is the first MMORPG to have massive downtime in its first few months, that it's new that quests are broken, shit is bugged etc.
EVERY MMORPG has these issues at the beginning. You all know this.
But here's what I don't get. YOU'RE ALL STILL BENDING OVER AND ALLOWING BLIZZARD TO SHOVE THAT 15 BUCKS A MONTH STRAIGHT BACK UP YOUR ASS.

Yes we all know that, but we are staying/stayed because of our chars. We believed "this is Blizzard, they will fix it in a matter of days or weeks, since even other, more shittier developers did it in a few weeks and days aswell, at least the lag and instability of servers", but they didnt and when we realized it, we already had a 40+ char on this game and didnt want to simply quit and make that 40+ feel like it was completely wasted time. Plus, the whole concept of this game is far more appealing than any other MMORPG. Im not quite sure what it is, I think the nice atmosphere and the quests.
This is the only reason why people stay. And you know what? MMORPG developers know this, but Blizzard is the first to exploit it that bad. I thought SOE would be bad already, but Blizzard is the king now.


________
I'm not... gonna... cry... you... dumb... doo-doo brain!
This comment was edited on Jan 24, 03:28.

Okay, I got another way of looking at this that I think might show you what the hell I'm talking about. We all think StarCraft is a good game, right? A great game even? A game made when Blizzard was at its pinnacle, right? Okay, lets look at the core team and see who did what, according to the credits. Lets start with those guys who left Blizzard.

Bill Roper- Producer, "Manual Design and Layout"
Mike O'Brian- Programming, Battle.net Programming, Strike Team
Patrick Wyatt- Programming, Strike Team
James Phinney- Producer, Senior Designer, "Script and Story", Scenerio Design, Strike Team
Jeff Strain- Campaign Editor (I wouldn't even consider this guy part of the "core team")


Looks pretty bad; the game lost two of it's producers, one of it's senior designer, two programmers (One of whom was working on B.net), the guy who made the campaign editor and three members of the SC strike team (The Strike Team, of course, is the team that ultimatly decides upon whether or not the direction of the game is what it should be.)

Looks like a big hit, doesn't it. (Heh, I didn't realize James Phinney was on that list as well. He must have joined Arenenet later, which is why he's listed so far down the page, not up with the founders. His loss makes things look a bit worse.) However, lets look at the rest of Blizzard's core team who are still working there.

Allen Adhem-Executive Producer, Strike Team
Mike Morhaime- Producer, Programming, Strike Team
Chris Metzen- Senior Designer, "Script and Story", Scenerio Design, "Manual Design and Layout", Manual Artwork, Strike Team
Bob Fitch- Lead Programmer, AI Programming, Strike Team
Samwise Didier- Art Director, Artwork, Manual Artwork, Strike Team
Glenn Stafford- Audio Producer, Music, Sound Design, "Voice Production, Direction and Casting"
Matt Samia- Director of Blizzard Film, Cinimatic director, Cinematic 3D Artist, Storyboard Artist

Ultimatly, those who left ammount to less than half of the original SC coreteam. Blizzard still has the Executive Producter(One of the original founders to boot), the Lead Programmer, the Art Director, the Audio Producer and the Cinimatic Director. Not to mention Metzen (Jeeze; did the guy ever sleep?) who was one of the senior designers, and Mike Morhaime, one of the other producers and original founders of Blizzard. And look, five of the original eight strike team members.

Sure, Blizzard has lost people over the years (I dare you to show me one company who hasn't), however, to say that those people were solely responsible for Blizzard game's being the quality they are is a disservice to the people they worked with.

Sincerely,
Jeremy Dunn

The Schaeffer Brothers have left. They made Starcraft. The ArenaNet crew left. They made Battle.net AND Diablo 2.

Enough said. I suppose they're unimportant too. All hail the great Tigole, who by the way was just a QA boy prior to Warcraft 3.

You are GROSSLY misinformed.. The Shaeffer brothers founded Blizzard North; they had nothing to do with StarCraft. (Seriously, try to find them in the SC manual) The Arena.net crew did play a big role in Battle.net, but they worked for Blizzard Ent, not Blizzard North and, like http://www.arenanet.com/about/team.html says, they never worked on Diablo II in any capacity to credit them with "they made Diablo II" (They wouldn't have done anything beyond cross-company crunch time help, and aid with Battle.net implementation). Jeeze, disagree with me if you want, but get you facts straight!

Oh, and a lot more than just Tigole are still at Blizzard. A LOT more.

When the freaking Team Leader and Lead Programmer of a project leaves, you know the project went down the toilet at some point. In this case, that project was World of Warcraft.

Fine, beleive what you want to believe. One guy is responsible for an entire project, encompassing over 200 people, being not being up to your standards (Even though this guys apparent "big thing" is that he made the StarCraft campaign editor. He wasn't even the leader programmer on SC, let alone it's team leader.) Whatever, you guys are going to see Blizzard as an evil, heartless organization that's a shell of it's former self no matter WHAT I say.

Sincerely,
Jeremy Dunn

This comment was edited on Jan 24, 03:00.

What boggles my mind is the amount of servers they have. 80 god damn servers. Imagine taking care of 80 servers.
Must be heaven for the support team.

Not to be rude, but 80 servers is fucking peanuts. My company has about 300, although probably far less users accessing them at the same time (maybe 40-50.000 peak), and I don't even work for a company that has IT as its primary business (we're a power company).
Combine that with the fact that their servers are all (supposed to be) the same. I actually have to support something that's classified as a server that's still running Windows Ninety Fucking Five.

But if you, as Blizzard, are having problems keeping your 80 servers under control, maybe you need to hire more support personnel that actually know what the fuck they are doing.
It's probably not really hardware related, though, all the issues seem codebased if anything and more like the woes every company goes through when it first shifts to MMORPGS.

You're all acting like all this shit is new or something, that this is the first MMORPG to have massive downtime in its first few months, that it's new that quests are broken, shit is bugged etc.
EVERY MMORPG has these issues at the beginning. You all know this.
But here's what I don't get. YOU'RE ALL STILL BENDING OVER AND ALLOWING BLIZZARD TO SHOVE THAT 15 BUCKS A MONTH STRAIGHT BACK UP YOUR ASS.

And then you complain.

I probably just don't "get it".

Creston

This comment was edited on Jan 24, 01:46.

Let's look at who Blizzard lost to Arena.net:

Mike O'Brien, Founder and Programmer, was also a company director of Blizzard, where he worked for four and one-half years. He was most recently the team lead and lead programmer of Warcraft III, and personally developed the game's 3D rendering engine. Mike was the original creator and architect of Battle.net and was lead programmer on that project. He was also a senior programmer on StarCraft and Diablo, as well as the author of the network code for both games, and was a programmer on Warcraft II. Mike was featured as one of the 25 most influential people in the game industry in PC Gamer's September 1999 cover story, "Game Gods."

Patrick Wyatt, Founder and Programmer, was previously Blizzard Entertainment's Vice President of Research and Development. He was most recently the team lead and lead programmer of Battle.net. Previously, Pat was a senior programmer on both StarCraft and Diablo, and wrote the multiplayer code for both games. He was also a producer and senior programmer on Warcraft II, for which he wrote both the networking and multiplayer code, and producer and lead programmer for Warcraft I. Pat also worked on Lost Vikings, Battle Chess, Rock and Roll Racing, Death and Return of Superman, and Justice League Task Force. Pat was employed at Blizzard more than eight years.

Jeff Strain, Founder and Programmer, was the team lead and lead programmer of Blizzard's massively multiplayer role-playing game, World of Warcraft. He was also a senior programmer on both Warcraft III and StarCraft, and a programmer on Diablo. Jeff was the creator of the StarCraft Campaign Editor and was employed at Blizzard for four years.

James Phinney, Game Designer, started as a programmer at Chaos Studios, which later became Blizzard Entertainment. He worked on Warcraft II and Diablo, then as lead designer and producer on StarCraft. James also wrote the story and dialogue for Shiny Entertainment's Sacrifice.

When the freaking Team Leader and Lead Programmer of a project leaves, you know the project went down the toilet at some point. In this case, that project was World of Warcraft.

News flash: You have no friggen clue what you're talking about. Name me ONE of the founders of Blizzard besides Bill Roper.. ONE. If you can't, then how on EARTH do you know they left Blizzard? If you CAN, then check your WoW manual.

The Schaeffer Brothers have left. They made Starcraft. The ArenaNet crew left. They made Battle.net AND Diablo 2.

Enough said. I suppose they're unimportant too. All hail the great Tigole, who by the way was just a QA boy prior to Warcraft 3.
This comment was edited on Jan 24, 01:03.

Look at the fetid diarrhea all of these ex-Blizzard teams have sprayed out. Goblin Commander: Shit. That stupid fucking Diablo clone set in medievil Japan: Shit. Guild Wars: Shit baked in the sun for 4 days with maggots and puke and smegma.

WOW itself is the only MMORPG worth playing. Technical issues aside, it's Blizzard's best game since Starcraft. What ruins the game is petty, small-minded class (cock) envy. The fanbase consists of intellectually and emotionally stunted rejects who want more for themselves and less for their preceived competition. As usual, the community is killing the game, the worthless, greedy, knuckle-dragging, slope-browed, most-likely-underbathed pissant subhumans that they are.

Fart.

What about Arena.Net? http://www.arena.net/about/index.html Then there was Click Entertainment...

Can't deny that the brain drain has been significant.

Significant in what way? There are still plenty of the original founders and core members there. Every company is going to lose people. (Look at Valve and id; both of them have lost all but one of their original founders (granted, Valve only had to lose one guy to accomplish that, but you get the point)

Sure losing those three guys to Triforge (Later became Arena.net) wasn’t a good thing, some of them were there since before WarCraft I, and it would be silly to say they wouldn’t have SOME sort of impact. However, it does a disservice to the rest of Blizzard to say that they were in any way responsible for EVERTHING that went right at Blizzard. Especially when there’s a ton of guys still there who have been there as long (or longer) as those three.

Bill Roper was a big loss in that he was pretty much the visible face of Blizzard (Along with providing the voices for the original Orcs and Humans :D), however, he was not the only guy in charge there. It’s basically pissing on Michael Morhain and Allen Adhem (Who, without them, there would be no Blizzard) to say Blizzard can’t cope without him. He’ll be missed of course, but it’s not like he was the only piller at Blizzard. The loss of the Arena.net and Flagship guys most certainly had an impact on Blizzard, but to totally disrupt it to the point where nothing of worth remains? I highly doubt it.

Of course, how much weight each person at Blizzard pulls is ultimately unknown to you, me, and every random Internet troll. And I’m sure we’ll all just disregard the constant “It’s a team effort” and “There’s really not a single key person” comments as untrue pleasantries and industry courtesy, no matter who it comes from: the Arena.net guys, Bill Roper, Chris Metzen or pretty much EVERY Blizzard employee who has ever been asked about it.

Ultimately, it’s irrelevant. My point is that saying that all of the “big dogs” are gone is utter bull. Many of the core people are still there. IMO, the spirit and course of Blizzard is still there and if losing a handful of people every now and then means that the Blizzard we know no longer exists, then the Blizzard “we know” died with each and every game they made. WarCraft I’s Blizzard was not WarCraft II’s Blizzard; War2’s Blizzard was not StarCraft’s Blizzard, etc. etc.

However, yes, the current server situation is utter bullshit. Hopefully they’ll get it fixed; if not, they’ll lose money in the long run. No skin off my back, I guess.

(Oh, and as for Click Entertainment: it was founded by 2 (TWO!) guys from Blizzard North; who weren’t even in charge of anything apparently. Blizzard North then went on to make Diablo II. Click seems to have disappeared in the time since then. I think it’s safe to say they weren’t a significant impact on Blizzard North’s creative abilities. (Was Diablo II a better game than Diablo? I’d say so. Was the Diablo series good to begin with? Eh, I’ll leave that up to you.))

Sincerely,
Jeremy Dunn

News flash: Blizzard may have developed World of Warcraft but the Blizzard that made WOW isn't the same Blizzard that made the Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo series of games that we all know and love. Most of the people who were in charge of making those games (with the exception of Tigole) left the company before WOW even went into development.

News flash: They weren't the only people that made Blizzard what it is today. They weren't the only people working on the warcraft series, the diablo series, the starcraft game. You actually think they were the only talented people at Blizzard?

World of Warcraft still has the Blizzard spirit (keywords: light hearted, humorous, fun, intuitive, great art direction) even though some people left. You're just pissed off because they're having technical problems (and I would probably be a little pissed off too).

They're new in the MMORPG genre, so I'm sure it'll only get better from here when they get some more experience.

By the way, they're working on a way for people to transfer characters from a high pop server to a lower pop server...

I'd like to see a team-based FPS/vehicular game using the same sort of online design (re; persistancy)as Guild Wars.

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"Sometimes I dream about....cheese. Here, have a medkit"
- Half Life 2 NPC

"or do you still think "most of the people in charge of making the game" equates to Bill Roper, the Blizzard North founders, and a small handful of artists and programmers out of several hundred employees that have worked at Blizzard? "

Quite frankly, yes.

Everyone knows it is always a handful of special people who do something and everyone else is a "hanger on" or "worker".

Blizzard North were the special people. The ones still there were the groupies.

You know how you tell? The good ones have the confidence to leave when evil takes over the corporation. The rest of them know they don't have what it takes.

What about ArenaNet? http://www.arena.net/about/index.html Then there was Click Entertainment...

Can't deny that the brain drain has been significant.

Complaints are just words. I wouldn't start gloating until people start leaving the game.. for what other MMORPG I don't know. Maybe they'll take a break from it all and lower their anxieties. It seems their desire to play and the fact that these problems are preventing them have changed their very personalities. Just look at Ray. He was always a fairly low key, mild mannered guy on here. Put down the WoW pipe Ray and step away from the keyboard.

Thinking a 20% overall population hit might actually be good for everyone involved,

Harbinger

Well, this is all hilarious. Server issues, tech support problems, empty promises, unbalanced classes - I guess WOW is just yet another MMORPG after all. What a surprise. I could gloat and point out more failings, but I'll save that up for another time.

Note: Playing in the EU beta at the moment and having a fairly good time. No server issues, but then, the server I'm on - EN2 - is freaking desolate. Should have stayed on a German server, but I had hoped the community on an English server would be less newbie-ish - hah! Instead there just is no community at all. On a further sidenote, the German translation of the client is an atrocity.

Is this the same EQ2..where TS goes down at least once or twice a week and the crafting zones seem to go down about every other day?

I never had a single issue except that one weekend last month. I just started crafting 2 weeks ago so not sure about the crafting zone thing. The time i have been there has been flawless. *shrug*

----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Sometimes I dream about....cheese. Here, have a medkit"
- Half Life 2 NPC

News flash: Blizzard may have developed World of Warcraft but the Blizzard that made WOW isn't the same Blizzard that made the Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo series of games that we all know and love. Most of the people who were in charge of making those games (with the exception of Tigole) left the company before WOW even went into development. Bill Roper and most of the 'big dogs' formed their own company, Flagship Studios.

News flash: You have no friggen clue what you're talking about. Name me ONE of the founders of Blizzard besides Bill Roper.. ONE. If you can't, then how on EARTH do you know they left Blizzard? If you CAN, then check your WoW manual.

Mike Morhain? One of the "big dog" founders.. He's still there. Allen Adhem? Another big dog founder; and another guy who is STILL there. Bob Fitch? Blizzard Programmer since the original WarCraft: Current location? Still there. Chris Metzen: Story guy since WarCraft II? Still there. Glenn Stafford, the one responsible for music and sound since the original WarCraft? Still there. Brian Fitzgerald: Another programmer that's been there since WarCraft I and is STILL THERE.

Should I go on to those who have been on the team since WarCraft II and StarCraft, or do you still think "most of the people in charge of making the game" equates to Bill Roper, the Blizzard North founders, and a small handful of artists and programmers out of several hundred employees that have worked at Blizzard?

Sincerely,
Jeremy Dunn
This comment was edited on Jan 23, 05:31.

Constructive criticism of Wow all the way down to name calling. Doing good guys....

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$1 tax for the national debt?