Blizzard's Work-From-Home Policies, Windows Central Interview, WoWCraft Ep 48

[Nightstalker]

I foresee Shadowlands ready by summer, since they can work more productively at home!

That will only happen once Twitter is shut down. Some of the devs tweet too much nonsense during what you can assume is actually work time.

[Tatakau]

I thought they worked from home anyway.

[Absintheminded]

Oh hogwash. These idiots think we'll believe whatever they feed us about the story. The horde was fine until Thrall gave Garrosh warchief. They should have just went along with the then-current minor plots like the Apothecary, Burning Blade, and the Grimtotem. More or less everything after Wrath storyline wise for the Horde was horseshit.

[Ringthane]

Like so many other big companies?
Yeah, so evil.

Who took a dump in your cornflakes?

I wish I could go back to the mid 2000's, when people actually knew internet lingo like "inb4", and didn't just get triggered at every little thing they read.

[NecroVane]

The parallels between this story and Garrosh were intentional to emphasize the theme that "Ours is a cycle of Hatred." The story shows that the underlying structures of the Horde is what enables the tyranny in the first place, and it's within this nuance that they sought to show growth and ultimately the fundamental change in the Horde Leadership.

Uh, sure, let's go with that and not "blizzard is lazy and cant write for shit". Nevermind that the alliance has one central king that is passed as a hereditary title, and so should be MORE inclined to tyranny and inept leadership than the horde's system of passing the leader to a chosen successor. Nevermind that the alliance has plenty of hateful people within it, and has taken plenty of aggressive actions that could be perceived as acts of war and are never portrayed as the villains, but sure "cycle of hatred, but where only one side is actually perpetuating it and is narratively blamed for it and has to suffer and change as a result of it because HORDE BAD ALLIANCE GOOD HORDE BAD ALLIANCE GOOD!". What a crock.

[CaptainV]

Honestly I dont think there was alot of good excuses for BFA's narrative, they can try to justify it but really they should make more story-centric patches if they really wanna do it that way. At the very least they need more filler patches that aernt always tied to a raid tier, some might even be useful in hyping up raids as opposed to just releasing and killing a boss in a single raid.

Examples:

Cinematics team:

More cinematics designed to be setup for future raids aswell as story, set the narrative pacing so that everything builds up to a fluid pace rather than making things chaotic and convoluted.

The issue with BFA was that its basically 3 expansions in 1.

BFA 8.0 to 8.1 was basically BFA itself, 8.2 was Azshara and 8.3 was N'zoth, sure you can say that means BFA was basically 3 expansions, but thats the problem, its 3 mini expansions instead of 1 *big* one.

Sometimes a good story requires pacing to slow the hell down and that means not rushing too many things at once.

Instead of N'zoth+Azshara we should have had 8.2+8.3 be world revamps set around BFA with more of a ramp-up of the war... Sylvanas being used as a major antagonist but also showing signs the Alliance had its own antagonists too, justifying some of her cruelty, ramping up Genn/Tyrande and Turalyon/Alleria into one team of darker alliance chars building up in 8.2 to some kind of revenge, we set in motion a full alliance horde war and 8.3 becomes the climax of that, Wrathion tries to stop it, but its too late, by the end, something happens, N'zoth is freed and the next expansion is about N'zoth and Azshara.

Azshara could be a 9.0 antagonist with her story ending in 9.1 while N'zoth is the 9.2 and 9.3 villian of the story, this would have given both antagonists some screen time to shine.

Instead of one patch storylines they should instead make it 9.0 to 9.1 is shadowlands and shadowlands epilogue, 9.2+9.3 are the next content buildup and expansion reveal.

[Justpassing]

I wish I could go back to the mid 2000's, when people actually knew internet lingo like "inb4", and didn't just get triggered at every little thing they read.

Our time has passed, old friend.

[Muajin76]

I foresee Shadowlands delayed till 2021 due to the coronavirus outbreak

Meanwhile, the coronavirus is delayed while Chuck Norris finishes filming.

[vincink]

I foresee Shadowlands delayed till 2021 due to the coronavirus outbreak

Doubt it. Unless basic utilities shut off-- which is not likely, considering basic utilities in most first-world nations are mostly automated and can run with little supervision under typical circumstances-- working from home should have little to no effect on Blizzard's productivity, which is the same story for just about every technology company out there. There may be a brief dip this week as employees get their computers and devices set-up, and as the Internet recovers from the inevitable explosion that will occur when everyone on the entire planet hops on to 1080p 60fps video conferencing at the same dang time.

[Sigxy]

"There is a lot more story to tell in regards to the burning of Teldrassil and the repercussions from it. The characters involved have a long way to go and many lessons to learn."

Uhu... so what lessons do you have to learn you think, Night Elves?

[Ragu4]

I wish I could go back to the mid 2000's, when people actually knew internet lingo like "inb4", and didn't just get triggered at every little thing they read.

I typed 1337, a few of my coworkers I've been gaming with legit didn't know what that meant. I felt sad. It's an awful relic of the past. Gaming truly is as mainstream as sports now. I cannot wait for Corona-chans embrace.

- - - Updated - - -

Doubt it. Unless basic utilities shut off-- which is not likely, considering basic utilities in most first-world nations are mostly automated and can run with little supervision under typical circumstances-- working from home should have little to no effect on Blizzard's productivity, which is the same story for just about every technology company out there. There may be a brief dip this week as employees get their computers and devices set-up, and as the Internet recovers from the inevitable explosion that will occur when everyone on the entire planet hops on to 1080p 60fps video conferencing at the same dang time.

Damn, good point. I hope my somewhat podunk Texas internet will hold out.

[muankan]

remember, we've had in 2005, as Zul'Gurup come out, an ingame 'virus' spreading around which killed the hole server ....

[cerberus1838]

Honestly I dont think there was alot of good excuses for BFA's narrative, they can try to justify it but really they should make more story-centric patches if they really wanna do it that way. At the very least they need more filler patches that aernt always tied to a raid tier, some might even be useful in hyping up raids as opposed to just releasing and killing a boss in a single raid.

I agree. The narrative dropped the ball with legion by burning through Argus whilst only really hitting a surface level of the area and conclusion. They decided to do the exact same thing is time round with N'zoth AND completely remove the original storyline by wrapping it up abruptly. The Zandalar raid was good and Uldum established some new things and I was even happy with Nazjatar but they clearly cut corners and in respect to the narrative made it feel even more disjointed.
They said that don't like to focus on too many characters but maybe they should just have the stories be a bit more separate so they don't have to ignore huge character developments. It is almost as if they said "we got too many characters and can't keep our narrative straight while also introducing more" and then brought up Teldrassil, the entire catalyst for the expansion which got ignored. They setup storylines in that then just went "eh lets push out this warfront and be done with it". Now they're gonna just have a small zone chain in Shadowlands where everyone who died in teldrassil is now in Shadowlands.
It would have been so much better to see the "Battle for Azeroth" take part on many different fronts and have zone revamps because of it. I'm assuming the original plan was to have warfronts be persistent Ashran style areas while also allowing people to quest in the areas to develop the story.

It seems like all the teams working on wow are having trouble to actually implement their plans and keep on top of the content cycle. It's clear they are developing narratives and systems but then only shipping with them half finished. Island expeditions and Nyalotha were clearly supposed to be procedural and they will probably spend most of Shadowlands perfecting that system in the Torghast/tower of the damned. With the idea that they can reduce development time by pushing out a swarm of assets, cobble together procedural with them and then work on the game from that perspective.
I have hopes for the future of the game but it would be nice to see them focus more on one thing at a time. Mechagon in my mind was a success in that they can make a smaller dense zone (would of honestly liked mechagon even less spread out but having multiple levels and being primarily inside the island like the dungeon) which has constant amounts of content to play through. It would be nice to see all zones having that effort being put in and going back to older zones through revamping them (Silithus).

Anyway here's hoping they actually try and finish some narratives and design plans for Shadowlands. I probably won't play on release but it would be nice to see the fanbase talk about how they really nailed procedural dungeons in Torghast and class design mid 2021.

[Ophenia]

Doubt it. Unless basic utilities shut off-- which is not likely, considering basic utilities in most first-world nations are mostly automated and can run with little supervision under typical circumstances-- working from home should have little to no effect on Blizzard's productivity, which is the same story for just about every technology company out there. There may be a brief dip this week as employees get their computers and devices set-up, and as the Internet recovers from the inevitable explosion that will occur when everyone on the entire planet hops on to 1080p 60fps video conferencing at the same dang time.

Internet Providers have already began thinking about limiting the bandwidth assigned to Youtube/Netflix and shit like that to give more horsepower to companies teleworking capabilities.
Since the outbreak, the Internet usage have increased by 70%

[Aeula]

That interview shows that Danuser is incompetent at his job and should be fired.

[Kathranis]

I wish I could go back to the mid 2000's, when people actually knew internet lingo like "inb4", and didn't just get triggered at every little thing they read.

Phrasing and grammar is important and the user's lack of any punctuation makes it look like they're saying "in before Blizzard does X" instead of "in before someone says Blizzard does X."

[iosdeveloper]

just make a warcraft series
your fanbase is too old for meaningless grinds and no new fans are coming

[Eggroll]

Lol at this interview. Holy shit.

Does he actually think a lot of the nelf players enjoyed "The Burning of Teldrassil"? What a sick, sadistic fuck he must be.

Also: "Ours is a cycle of hatred". I mean, if she actually wanted to break the cycle, she could have turned the Horde leadership into a council (if the warchief title was the problem at all) as she had the power to do so as Warchief - instead of committing a genocide.

Also: When is the 2nd most popular Alliance race getting a new capital again?

- - - Updated - - -

"There is a lot more story to tell in regards to the burning of Teldrassil and the repercussions from it. The characters involved have a long way to go and many lessons to learn."

Uhu... so what lessons do you have to learn you think, Night Elves?

Yeah, what lessons could the nelves possibly have to learn other than "Kill every Horde on sight"?

Oh yeah, "Never rely on your so called "allies".

- - - Updated - - -

They said that don't like to focus on too many characters but maybe they should just have the stories be a bit more separate so they don't have to ignore huge character developments. It is almost as if they said "we got too many characters and can't keep our narrative straight while also introducing more" and then brought up Teldrassil, the entire catalyst for the expansion which got ignored. They setup storylines in that then just went "eh lets push out this warfront and be done with it". Now they're gonna just have a small zone chain in Shadowlands where everyone who died in teldrassil is now in Shadowlands.
It would have been so much better to see the "Battle for Azeroth" take part on many different fronts and have zone revamps because of it. I'm assuming the original plan was to have warfronts be persistent Ashran style areas while also allowing people to quest in the areas to develop the story.

I think it's generally a bad idea to bring in too many major lore characters, the player character should never be too close to them and not interact with them on a best buddy basis. It's horrific that they waste burn through so many villains as if they have a check list who to get rid of next as unexitingly as possible. What a waste, really, especially as they themselves don't seem to be very creative and with poor imagination and pacing.

[Ealyssa]

Phrasing and grammar is important and the user's lack of any punctuation makes it look like they're saying "in before Blizzard does X" instead of "in before someone says Blizzard does X."

For clueless people who lived in a cave for the last decade maybe. The rest knows what inb4 means.

[deplorable]

"The parallels between this story and Garrosh were intentional"

weren't blizzard the ones telling us there were no parallels for months?