When devs said they have done every single 25HC when it was progression I was thinkin

[adamzz]

If you dot not understand why the video I linked was the source for gliff's statement then you are not connecting the dots hard enough. Also my source that blizzard has been only testing 10 man internally is blizzard themselves. And before anyone asks or wants to comment, yes they do critical fail completion tests of boss mechanics with a god mode like state enabled but that is little to do with the actual testing of a fights balance. Which a rough balance pass is done internally on 10 man.

That video has literally nothing to do with Primordius.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Is it really so shocking that developers play their own game that they put so much passion into?

[adamzz]

Main issue for me would be, can you actually handle the entire process?
Lets say you helped develop an encounters heroic mode, you spend days on end testing and tweaking it till you have it in a suitable place.
Then your guild reaches said boss.
Obviously they need to learn the mechanics and tactics etc.
Could you deal with 50-100 wipes eventho you know the attempted route is flawed to begin with?

You could tell em the solution, end your misery sure.
Once that can be called a lucky guess, if it happens more often people might find out who you are.
And once that cat is out of the bag you can expect your entire server to come bitch and moan about everything ever.

If i was a dev in charge of encounter design i doubt i would raid anything above pugs/lfr.

You know, the devs are not really the the testers. In a big company like Blizzard they have testers hired to specifically test the stuff, I'm pretty sure that they don't have pre-planned tactics for the bosses either, the tactics used on boss fights are something the players come up with and there is more than one way to defeat a boss.

The only tests I can see the devs maybe do themselves are testing if the raid mechanics even work, but even there I'm sure they hire specific testers.

There are several companies that you can work with, those companies will then hire you out to game devs as a beta/alpha tester. That is what REAL beta testing is.

The beta testing you get invited to randomly from blizzard isn't really a beta test, it's a beta preview.

[yeryerdude]

Is it really so shocking that developers play their own game that they put so much passion into?

Not at all, Blizz do hire a lot from the community and I think having a passion for making fun games is a pre requisite for working there. As cynical as many of us are its pretty obvious when you see some of these guys at blizzon how passionate they actually are about the games they are making.

[Kaleredar]

I'm now awaiting the complaints bitching that "maybe if Blizz didn't waste so much time playing their game, they'd be able to make more content."


It's coming. Mark my words.

[Dracodraco]

Just because he plays in a Top-25 US guild does not mean that he has much of a clue about the general balance of the classes, though - unless he spends time comparing to other raids, he might just be playing with a particularly skilled shadow priest while he himself is a damn sucky mage (completly hypothetical example). A lot of the comments he has been spewing out has me thinking this is the case, to be honest, as he seems reluctant to admit faults that the community as a whole can easily identify (lack of raid cds AKA utility for some classes, particularly low or high DPS on some encounters for others).

[DrStiglit]

Maybe if Blizz didn't waste so much time playing their game, they'd be able to make more content.

I know, right!

[SorryGurg]

Watcher (Ion) commented on this topic as well in one of the interview videos they posted on the site a while back, talking about how he raids in a 25-man heroic guild in his free time. He spoke about how some friends know who he is, but most don't, and being the lead encounter designer he finds it interesting to see how the raid leaders in his group cope with the mechanics he helped design, while he keeps quiet about it and follows.

(Then sometimes when they get stuck for ages he's the guy who mysteriously comes out with very knowledgeable answers... somehow!)

Just so you know this is not true. Ion Hazzikostas is Gurgthock, the guild master and raid leader of Elitist Jerks and the scarab lord of Mal'ganis US. Not only does Elitist Jerks still have something like 15 of their raiders from when they were doing 40 mans in vanilla, but nearly every single person that raids knows exactly who he is and what he does. There is a reason that elitist jerks was so heavily moderated and it was such a haven for strong discussion, in many aspects it was the easiest and most direct access to having a dev read your thoughts. He got the job in large part due to his direct communication through email to the devs during vanilla pertaining to his game design theories and boss encounter ideas plus his ability to communicate well as he graduated from Harvard law. He was then hired on at some point before The Burning Crusade with I believe his first large task being arena.

As was linked in the ZA speed run, it's not a secret. There are a few more elitist jerks videos around with vent on also where it's clearly indistinguishable that it's Ion leading.

[Fluttershy]

I would like to know how he manages to do do his job when top 25 guilds raids 10+ hours a day for a few weeks of a new tier.

Quite a lot of free time there.

[SorryGurg]

I would like to know how he manages to do do his job when top 25 guilds raids 10+ hours a day for a few weeks of a new tier.

Quite a lot of free time there.

Because Eltiist Jerks isn't a true progression guild anymore? They approach content on a 12 hour a week schedule, in a carefree setting raiding when they can.

[Mammoon]

When dev say stuff like that I think 1 of 2 things:

1) Yeah ok................

2) Then clearly you are not in charge of fight design or balance, because if you actually raided this stuff you would be making changes.

[unholyness]

From what I remember reading over the years, some devs play at work as much as they can "testing", as well as actual testing, and then play it at home, then some devs only play at home, and some barely play at all.

A couple of the leads are in top 100 guilds, some are casual.

Also to be fair, it's only the top 5, maybe 10, that actually go in without tactics, they get it done, and tactics are released, thus now everyone knows what to do, so having someone who designed the instance doesn't actually benefit, that plus the fact they don't make themselves known, it would be pretty damn hard for them to be a raidleader without someone figuring it out.

It's good that they play in normal guilds though, for sure.

A lot of the dev's raid heroic progression and a lot of the dev's that were working on Titan were dev's from the beginning, hardcore raiders. Sad to see Titan get shelved but it is obvious why, WOD, the casuals expac to make them feel like they arent bad. Take out hit,expertise, and reforging, rename flex to normal but leave it flex difficulty, rename normal to heroic, but leave it normal difficulty.

All of the dev's we got to bs with at the hilton at blizzcon, were hardcore progression raiders, i didnt mean one that raided normals.

- - - Updated - - -

I know, right!

I would be glad to have new content with heroic cleared but the percentage of people clearing heroics are so miniscule, so what would people do with new content when they cant even clear the current content?

[Thandorr]

I picture the devs as folks who are the former hardcore, top tier raiders who, in the natural scheme of adult life have found it necessary to re-prioritize their time and now develop the game they used to devote great lengths of time playing! It's self-replicating (at least in my mind): player plays game, player stops playing and becomes developer, new player starts playing, repeat process.

[nekobaka]

Considering the issues we have with bosses that are only internally tested (Ra-den), I highly doubt that they somehow have an uber team of professionals working for them, but rather they just have particular developers that raid like the rest of us.

Game developer != Professional game player, just fyi

That is the general consensus from the days of Classic. WoW also has an active community of members who spend extra time in order to share information with others which is in large part due to intended game design and why Blizzard has said they do not spell out every single action for us. Something that some players hate about WoW and calling it elitist because it involves using community tools, which is really just an excuse to hate others.

I would rather have a development team that dabbles in the game they design in different aspects than a team that cant play the game they design.

[Dangg]

Just so you know this is not true. Ion Hazzikostas is Gurgthock, the guild master and raid leader of Elitist Jerks and the scarab lord of Mal'ganis US. Not only does Elitist Jerks still have something like 15 of their raiders from when they were doing 40 mans in vanilla, but nearly every single person that raids knows exactly who he is and what he does. There is a reason that elitist jerks was so heavily moderated and it was such a haven for strong discussion, in many aspects it was the easiest and most direct access to having a dev read your thoughts. He got the job in large part due to his direct communication through email to the devs during vanilla pertaining to his game design theories and boss encounter ideas plus his ability to communicate well as he graduated from Harvard law. He was then hired on at some point before The Burning Crusade with I believe his first large task being arena.

As was linked in the ZA speed run, it's not a secret. There are a few more elitist jerks videos around with vent on also where it's clearly indistinguishable that it's Ion leading.

Seems like you are right.

http://www.curse.com/news/world-of-w...-elitist-jerks

If possible tell us a few words about the player behind your character. What are you doing IRL etc.

I'm 28 years old, and I am a lawyer currently living in Washington D.C.

[Mawnix]

The other 24 people in the raid still have to get to know the boss aswell remember that.
And just because the made the boss, dosen't mean they can play flawless on every try.

Indeed. On a multitude of occasions the devs have outright said "We weren't expecting the community to figure out how to down the boss like this".

[MrExcelion]

Gurg being Watcher makes sense, and explains why EJs not raiding super serious hardcore these days (but still clearing content). That's a good story, Blizzard hiring on a player like that who eventually runs the whole PVE schbang.

I have a feeling EJ is going to get a lot of apps now from people wanting to raid with Watcher =p Great guy.

[Kraineth]

I'm not really sure you understand what makes a fight difficult in WoW these days.

A good raid group learns exactly how a boss works very quickly in the progression stage and can mostly develop their own strategy. The majority of wipes that any group has is more to do with mistakes that individuals make rather than just plain not doing the fight correctly. Sure a dev can give you some insight on how a fight works and their intended way og handling a mechanic, but that's not really something that a few wipes can't figure out either.

It's not like encounter design is something super mysterious where inside info can help you progress fast, you kind of have to be a good player to begin with, and by that point having a dev tell you how to do a fight wouldn't really speed things up anyways.

[Dracodraco]

Just so you know this is not true. Ion Hazzikostas is Gurgthock, the guild master and raid leader of Elitist Jerks and the scarab lord of Mal'ganis US. Not only does Elitist Jerks still have something like 15 of their raiders from when they were doing 40 mans in vanilla, but nearly every single person that raids knows exactly who he is and what he does. There is a reason that elitist jerks was so heavily moderated and it was such a haven for strong discussion, in many aspects it was the easiest and most direct access to having a dev read your thoughts. He got the job in large part due to his direct communication through email to the devs during vanilla pertaining to his game design theories and boss encounter ideas plus his ability to communicate well as he graduated from Harvard law. He was then hired on at some point before The Burning Crusade with I believe his first large task being arena.

As was linked in the ZA speed run, it's not a secret. There are a few more elitist jerks videos around with vent on also where it's clearly indistinguishable that it's Ion leading.

If this is true, stuff like http://www.wowhead.com/item=105601 (hvitserk's formidable shanker) makes so much more sense. I'm not a rogue, but a quick search around the net gives me absolutely nothing on Hvitserk as pertaining to rogues (or anything else WoW related) - even the only comment on the dagger is from a wikipedia article about a norse king's son who lived more than a thousand years ago (and would have absolutely nothing to do with the boss, lore... Anything) - not really linked to anything.
Meanwhile, EJ has a rogue in their roster from back in TBC atleast named Hvitserk. Seems like (unlike the famous contributors to WoW who got items named after them, such as Landsoul, Frostheim and Zeherah, off the top of my head) he got the item named after him for being guilded with Watcher. Had been scratching my head over what that name was referring to :s.

[SorryGurg]

If this is true, stuff like *snip* (hvitserk's formidable shanker) makes so much more sense. I'm not a rogue, but a quick search around the net gives me absolutely nothing on Hvitserk as pertaining to rogues (or anything else WoW related) - even the only comment on the dagger is from a wikipedia article about a norse king's son who lived more than a thousand years ago (and would have absolutely nothing to do with the boss, lore... Anything) - not really linked to anything.
Meanwhile, EJ has a rogue in their roster from back in TBC atleast named Hvitserk. Seems like (unlike the famous contributors to WoW who got items named after them, such as Landsoul, Frostheim and Zeherah, off the top of my head) he got the item named after him for being guilded with Watcher. Had been scratching my head over what that name was referring to :s.

That's not because of Ion. I know of at least one other dev in Elitist Jerks, Woden (who is the other troll at all the ring of X leveling boss guys that started in BC in Nagrand), that's the head of itemization. He's the one doing all the names. Just off the top of my head here more EJ members with stuff about them in game. Most of this is just MoP but you can go back very far and anything that isn't named after something in game will either be an EJ member, an EJ poster, or a big part of the community like Zeherah.


wowpedia Gonk

item=90577
item=90576
item=105529
item=103818 (Donators to EJ Guild)
item=104623
item=44313
item=67142[/
item=87452
item=90578
item=71781
item=105850
item=87521
item=87503
item=87507
item=87463
item=87442
item=87518

Sorry can't post links yet.