That was a most fascinating read. I do look forward to this Kickstarter. Thanks for sharing!
A few grammar mistakes, but otherwise very well written. I will definitely read the book!
Re-add Original Scholomance please, I miss it dearly. :<
"Fans might be surprised by this comment but encounter designers didn't have time to perform "legit" playtests on live servers (and internal server were rarely stable enough to sustain the six-hour exercise)."
This sort of inside perspective about games I've played for years is always absolutely mesmerizing.
Man this read was great! I'd love to buy the entire book - it'd be the first book I'd read in like six years.
A very fascinating read! I will definitely back this Kickstarter! =)
fantastic dungeon, I wish they could make some of the vanilla dungeon relevant for mythic+.
Too bad they've been reusing the same microdungeons for years now. Can't imagine he's happy about that.
Interesting read and goes to show that even some of the developers (even if it's only one) can be on the side of the players about things being too long or too hard. Or even regarding lack of variety.I miss the original Scholomance. I ran it once while leveling in TBC and often went back to solo it at max level during later TBC and WotLK. The new one is okay but every time I see a corridor blocked off and remember what was down there, I get sad because of what was removed to create the shorter dungeon. I just don't see why Blizzard didn't tweak the dungeon to have a linear route with everything off that route being optional with no quests in those areas to draw players there that don't want to go there. With the release of vanilla servers at some point, Blizzard could add in the original dungeons back even if you can't get them via LFD. They could require you have to run to the entrance and talk to an NPC to get into it like the old LFR raids. They can just have something like "The Deadmines (Vanilla)" and "The Deadmines", too, or they could have them in a separate queue from other LFD dungeons. So something like a vanilla dungeon LFD queue for those who want a long run with a warning the dungeon could potentially take 2+ hours to do and then the normal dungeon queue we have now.That said, I miss many of the original dungeons. Scholomance. Shadowfang Keep. Deadmines. Stratholme. And especially Scarlet Monastery. Sunken Temple as it was can bite me and I hate Maraudon. I often forget it even exists.
Great stuff here. Hopefully it will give people insight into just how hard making a game like WoW really is. And why things don't always go the way they want.
That was a great article. I look forward to reading the whole book. I wonder if we'll ever get an 'official' Blizzard equivalent.
Geeez this was an awesome read! I've been playing WoW since Vanilla and it's very cool to learn how they've done such a game.
I love how it's pretty much the story of one dev genuinely caring about *his* dungeon,he genuinely wanted it to be great both for the team and the players.I still love WoW nowadays,but before the Activision Blizzard merge and profit being the one single driving force,there was something great about having most things hand crafted by the devs with a lot of love and care.Just look at gear for example,now items have an ilvl value,and secondary stat ratios,and just get a stat budget.Back in the early days of the game,each item was made individually,sure,it led to some pretty crazy imbalances and other silly consequences,but it felt really special
This is pretty neat but I don't quite get why there's a kickstarter for something that is going to make this guy lots of money?I'm confused.
LOVE old Scholo, so many memories. Would really enjoy being able to run the original again. Great story to read through, thanks for being a pest!
So I don't know the story here, what happened in the end with the chandeliers and the frame rate? "Don't look up, your computer will slow down" sounds familiar, but it could've been from a different dungeon than Scholomance.
This was truly a pleasure to read. I don't work in the gaming industry, but my work is similarly creative, technical, and digital-based, so I can relate to just about everything John has written here. (Especially making more content just because he enjoyed making it; I do the exact same thing.) I really appreciate his honesty and frankness about the creative, technical, and interpersonal challenges that went into creating this game. I'm excited to read the full book, and I hope that a lot of other players will at least read this article; even though John is talking about extremely old content, I know the current developers still have to deal with all the same challenges and more nowadays, and they're still imperfect people just like the rest of us. Hopefully seeing more of the "human" side of WoW's development will help reduce the toxicity and abuse constantly being thrown around.