Jeffrey Kaplan - Strike team lead

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Strike Team is pretty much the cleanup crew. The debuggers, quality assurance, and folks who handle number tuning.

Most of the big names on that list are probably already working on 7.0, we're dealing with the strike team now.

[Tharkkun]

It's a group that isn't involved directly with the day to day development of a specific game. They essentially give their stamp of approval on a concept, zone, game, etc before it goes live. Almost like a focus group of beta testers within Blizzard itself.

[TheTaurenOrc]

Tigole was the lead designer of WotLK - the expansion that made (all) hybrids viable.

Shhhh... can't you see the rose tinted glasses are now for GC

[Gimlix]

Tigole was the lead designer of WotLK - the expansion that made (all) hybrids viable.

I thought Tigole was the lead from vanilla and tbc? but i am not sure of course ^^

[Deleted]

I don't care if it's Jaw Wilson, or Tigole, or that Red Shirt Guy who leads and strikes and codes and writes...just don't put in charge the guy who pushed mists of pandaria.

[tehdef]

I don't care if it's Jaw Wilson, or Tigole, or that Red Shirt Guy who leads and strikes and codes and writes...just don't put in charge the guy who pushed mists of pandaria.

Bro. He's still there. Get over it, life moves on. Just try to enjoy the game and have fun.

[Dejablue]

What I understand is that it is a team that is outside of the development minutiae. They give a fresh perspective.

Analogy: In audio recording there are producers that focus the artists (developers) and then there are mixers that give a fresh perspective on the details and how they interact and then finally mastering engineers that give a total overall perspective, a macro perspective that they polish.

The strike team AFAIK is either mixers or mastering engineers in this analogy.

[Arbs]

Strike Team is QA (Quality Assurance), the Strike Team does QA for all Blizzard games not just WoW.

If you notice Nite Moogle answered my tweet about it last night, when I asked.

"if you're asking about the one in the credits, we get input from designers on other teams during early development."

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The strike team's responsability, is to enter the room whenever Jay Wilson makes a suggestion and drag him out of the meeting room.

Bravo sir, 10/10.

[Beet]

Tigole was the lead designer of WotLK - the expansion that made (all) hybrids viable.

This.

I wish Tigole would get on twitter. That's a brain I'd love to pick. Same with Rob Pardo, but hes too busy living on his private island now.

[Kahmal]

Tigole was the lead designer of WotLK - the expansion that made (all) hybrids viable.

Also the expansion that made 5 man content a joke, something WoW hasn't recovered from yet.

[NoiseTank13]

Tigole was the lead designer of WotLK - the expansion that made (all) hybrids viable.

I can guarantee he fought it every inch of the way.

This was the guy who spawned the 'raid or die' meme back in the old official forum era. If he had it his way we'd all be stuck with prot warriors as the only tanks, and hybrids only as heals.

[Lesane]

Tigole was the lead designer of WotLK - the expansion that made (all) hybrids viable.

Most hybrids were already viable in TBC, with the exception of Ret Pallies and Elemental Shamans maybe. They just weren't viable in the "OMG I WANT TO TOP DPS TOO EVEN THOUGH I'M A HYBRID" way that WotLK introduced.

[Deleted]

Tigoles views were the PoV of EVERYONE, devs and players, about MMOs at the time.

When you talk about the past of MMOs, you have to factor in, that they were a niche product, compared to more "classic" gaming approaches aka. SPRPGs, RTS or FPS. Vanilla WoW was expected to be the same and was designed with the target audience of the MMO player of that time in mind, read: A person who sees no problem with a boss designed to be unkillable, like Kerathym.

Originally, Blizz expexted WoW to amass 400k players within 1.5 years. That happened within 4 weeks. Tigoles views changed, you can count on that

Ret pallies design proves that his principles still live on! Being paladin since vanilla beta, i really dont want him to have any meaningful position in wow team anymore... or furor while we are at it... 2 server crashing buddies with hate towards paladins and love for warriors :P