Intresting news in my opinion, what do you think? (New senior designer at Blizzard)

[Stellan]

Getting a new lead designer is a good idea but I don't think WOW will be fixed until they get rid of the present group of lead designers. There have simply been too many mistakes made in WoD. Blizzard needs to clean house before they are ever going to be able turn WoW around.

[MoanaLisa]

Edited the thread title for more clarity.

[Dejablue]

The /r/EQNext subreddit is deleting threads about this, lol

http://viigaming.com/home/viewnews.php?s=

[Haselden]

Well honestly alot of the original devs were from EQ. Hopefully, this guy can bring good idea's to the table.

[Schmeebs]

if senior game designer means anything alike senior software developer at my company, hes not a lead, just gets better pay/perks, 'maybe' more responsibility, but he isn't necessarily over anyone

[SMBComix]

Does it really matter who's in charge? Everyone at Blizzard's kind of in a hive mind state.

[MoanaLisa]

if senior game designer means anything alike senior software developer at my company, hes not a lead, just gets better pay/perks, 'maybe' more responsibility, but he isn't necessarily over anyone

No, he's quite clearly not a lead designer. He's a senior designer. He's also not going to be put in charge of the whole thing. He'll report to the lead designers who report to Chilton.

[LilSaihah]

We will have to see what he does. His experience looks to be similar to Metzen's, so he may be working to that end. He has great community management and communication skills as well as direction and management skills.

He was directly responsible for directing Kingdom of Amalur and was also working on Project Copernicus, an ambitious MMO.

I first knew of this guy in Vanguard. He was responsible for making it the most successful it ever was. SOE inherited a failure of an MMO and this guy came in, implemented the "lost" patches, the final raid zone (City of Brass) and made the game actually start having players and generate money, albeit not enough to keep it afloat.

He took a failed game and almost did the impossible.

He was also very active on the forums and spoke directly to the players. Very intelligent and very insightful and honest about the limitations and realities of what was literally possible and where his intended direction was headed.

If he can help Blizzard with insight into what worked for Vanguard, if he can help do for WoW what he did for Vanguard, we are in store for a great resurgence of WoW.

That sounds pretty cool to me. I'll stick with cautious optimism, but if half of that's true, sounds like a pretty amazing pick.

[xanzul]

So who in the Food Chain is he replacing and who is he 'above' so to speak? Just to get some context.

No one is being replaced as this is a position multiple people hold.

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Well either hes taken a lower job or chiltons been 'reassigned to other projects'.

Chilton is lead game director. I assure you he is not being replaced and certainly not by someone who has never even worked on Wow before. It is far more likely that Blizzard would promote from within to fill that position if they should ever choose to.

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Not sure, but doesnt senior just mean "more experienced"? IE, there can be a lot of senior designers not just 1?

But that doesn't fit the "hurr durr Q1 proves wow is dying heads are going to roll" narrative people have been spamming on these forums lately.

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What happened to EQ Next?

Also, if this guy's better than Chilton and Afrasiabi, then welcome aboard, dude. You physically can't make a worse expansion than WoD for casual players, so you've got that goin' for you.

SOE was recently sold off and its new owners have been laying off a significant amount of developers and support staff including those for EQ Next.

[threads]

hopefully he replaces crap class designer from this xpac.

[xanzul]

hopefully he replaces crap class designer from this xpac.

Do you seriously believe only one guy is class designer? Really? It is no wonder most of the "feedback" on this site is shit.

[SMBComix]

EQ Next kinda gameplay is exactly what WoW needs.

I really don't think this engine is capable of more than it's already proven to be capable of over the last ten years.

[threads]

Do you seriously believe only one guy is class designer? Really? It is no wonder most of the "feedback" on this site is shit.

yea the guy commented on how crazy the combo point change for rogues is and said that's why their dps sucked

[xanzul]

yea the guy commented on how crazy the combo point change for rogues is and said that's why their dps sucked

I remember that and what he said was completely taken out of context purposely just so people could bitch and whine about Blizzard.

[Mustardisbad]

Sweet, will be excited to see what he can do

[NeverStop]

Blizzard should hire Ghostcrawler back. Celestalon is terrible.