#0 - March 8, 2009, 11:36 a.m.
Whos in charge
#5 - March 8, 2009, 6:48 p.m.
The class and item designers are part of my team. However, our decision-making process is very, very collaborative and consensus-driven. We don't make any major changes unless the whole team is on board. Our decisions are also informed by input and collaboration with other designers and the rest of the WoW team. My job is not to force anyone to make certain decisions. I just try and keep us organized and on schedule and help maintain the overall vision for the game. Blizzard just doesn't operate with a great deal of hierarchy. We're a team and our folks are empowered to make decisions.
#66 - March 12, 2009, 1:30 a.m.
Q u o t e:
I say employ more designers who play the game day in day out and then report back to GC. That way GC doesn't have to rely on the skewed opinions of WoW players. If there were people playing WoTLK day in day out,
I don't pretend to know every nuance of every class. I know a lot, but I have to look up a lot of stuff too. I won't claim to have full tier 7 gear and a 2200 arena rating with every possible spec in the game. Nobody can (though that might make a fun achievement...).
We have a lot of designers, and they play the game every day. They are also in contact with players around the world who are experts in their class. Not all communication occurs on these forums. We also employ a lot of people to find bugs in the classes and test out things like dps and healing. We also are able to extract a lot more data out of the live game than you might suspect. And, we read a lot more forums than this one.
There is definitely a misperception sometimes that our greatest or only source of information comes from these forums. They are *a* source of information.
#74 - March 12, 2009, 4:42 a.m.