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https://imgur.com/XwyReNw https://imgur.com/XwyReNw The above is a fairly interesting flowchart detailing where all of the core employees moved on to after lea

https://imgur.com/XwyReNw https://imgur.com/XwyReNw The above is a fairly interesting flowchart detailing where all of the core employees moved on to after leaving Blizzard. Some have met success, most have folded. To me, the only employee that ever mattered was Chris Metzen. He was the one who developed the core of all of their stories and personally approved every quest in WoW. If you're going to try to get players to emotionally connect to characters and story arcs, I would think that the writer would be the best place to figure out how.

moomin 6y ago
Disagree, the greatest story in the world won't save bad mechanics. I mean, Dark Souls has a lore people obsess about, but there's plenty of people with an emotional attachment to it with absolutely no clue what's going on.
- mattmanser 6y ago
  A good example is Elex. It's got a good world/story, fun factions, it looks pretty good, exploration is interesting and fun. But the combat is horrific. Balancing is terrible. You'll find high level enemies right next to low level ones. The actual gameplay is so bad. And you'll see it repeated over and over on the reviews on the steam page. Some people claim it gets better if you stick with it, and I did because I was playing it over a holiday. My experience was they're wrong, it never gets better.
- Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
  Likewise, interesting and fun mechanics don't necessarily create a fun game. Take EVE Online. I love the ideas of the game. There are no rules (As long as you're not hacking/cheating) to what players can do. You can scam people. You can kill noobs (Though if you're in high-security space, you'll be instagibbed by CONCORD, essentially the space police). And the fact that losing your ship means its GONE means there's always a demand for crafted goods. Skills are learned over time whether you're playing or not, so you don't need to grind. But...the actual gameplay is boring as hell [0]. [0] https://youtu.be/4c6jafaiPh8?t=66 https://youtu.be/4c6jafaiPh8?t=66
  - moomin 6y ago
    (ALWP) I mean, obviously plenty of people do love Eve Online, but the micro-mechanics shown in the video are awful. Compare to Dark Souls (again) where pretty much every combat is interesting (and has better be because you’re gonna redo it a lot until you crack it). OTOH, I found the mechanics of the recent Spider-Man game kind of fun, but the macro game is just endless repetition. Which feels true of a lot of AAA games these days.
    - pdimitar 6y ago
      The PS4 Spiderman is a gorgeous game with amazing combat and parkour! Me and my wife both cringed really hard to the repetitiveness and the blandness of the characters however. Tons of plot inconsistencies!
      - moomin 6y ago
        Grief, yes, I found it ridiculously hard to actually care about the characters. They should have had a plot where the villain was sucking all of the interesting out of people. Just travelling through the city was way more fun.
zacharycohn 6y ago
The name text in that image is too small to read..
- fareesh 6y ago
  Open the image in a new tab then you can zoom-in as much as you want. imgur is not showing the full zoomed in version
BossingAround 6y ago
> If you're going to try to get players to emotionally connect to characters and story arcs, I would think that the writer would be the best place to figure out how. I was fairly attached to WoW while never paying much attention to the superficial stories and quests. I did at first, but it honestly wasn't great from what I remember (the first WoW), and so I just focused on the gameplay and team work rather than the story. Personally, I read books for the story, and play games for the mechanics.
- yazaddaruvala 6y ago
  I would just play WoW focusing on similar things to you and then watch a youtube video for the lore :)
xenihn 6y ago
How involved was he with Diablo 2? I don't know specifics, but I was disappointed by everything in Diablo 3, including the story, and I think that's due to the lack of the Blizzard North people.
Fnoord 6y ago
Caveat emptor: Flowchart is from 2011. Runic Games, for example, folded, and the Schaeffer brothers parted ways. Max founded Etchra. Otherwise informative, thanks for linking.
throwawaynothx 6y ago
I played wow in korean without being able to read any of the quests. just to have my warlock pet names in korean. story is not a big part of wow. ffxiv however..
nkrisc 6y ago
How old is this? Under Carbine Studios it says unnamed MMO but I have to imagine that is Wildstar and this is just very old.
- delinquenz 6y ago
  The chart says April 2011

moomin 6y ago

Disagree, the greatest story in the world won't save bad mechanics. I mean, Dark Souls has a lore people obsess about, but there's plenty of people with an emotional attachment to it with absolutely no clue what's going on.

mattmanser 6y ago
A good example is Elex. It's got a good world/story, fun factions, it looks pretty good, exploration is interesting and fun. But the combat is horrific. Balancing is terrible. You'll find high level enemies right next to low level ones. The actual gameplay is so bad. And you'll see it repeated over and over on the reviews on the steam page. Some people claim it gets better if you stick with it, and I did because I was playing it over a holiday. My experience was they're wrong, it never gets better.
Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
Likewise, interesting and fun mechanics don't necessarily create a fun game. Take EVE Online. I love the ideas of the game. There are no rules (As long as you're not hacking/cheating) to what players can do. You can scam people. You can kill noobs (Though if you're in high-security space, you'll be instagibbed by CONCORD, essentially the space police). And the fact that losing your ship means its GONE means there's always a demand for crafted goods. Skills are learned over time whether you're playing or not, so you don't need to grind. But...the actual gameplay is boring as hell [0]. [0] https://youtu.be/4c6jafaiPh8?t=66 https://youtu.be/4c6jafaiPh8?t=66
- moomin 6y ago
  (ALWP) I mean, obviously plenty of people do love Eve Online, but the micro-mechanics shown in the video are awful. Compare to Dark Souls (again) where pretty much every combat is interesting (and has better be because you’re gonna redo it a lot until you crack it). OTOH, I found the mechanics of the recent Spider-Man game kind of fun, but the macro game is just endless repetition. Which feels true of a lot of AAA games these days.
  - pdimitar 6y ago
    The PS4 Spiderman is a gorgeous game with amazing combat and parkour! Me and my wife both cringed really hard to the repetitiveness and the blandness of the characters however. Tons of plot inconsistencies!
    - moomin 6y ago
      Grief, yes, I found it ridiculously hard to actually care about the characters. They should have had a plot where the villain was sucking all of the interesting out of people. Just travelling through the city was way more fun.

zacharycohn 6y ago

The name text in that image is too small to read..

fareesh 6y ago
Open the image in a new tab then you can zoom-in as much as you want. imgur is not showing the full zoomed in version

BossingAround 6y ago

> If you're going to try to get players to emotionally connect to characters and story arcs, I would think that the writer would be the best place to figure out how. I was fairly attached to WoW while never paying much attention to the superficial stories and quests. I did at first, but it honestly wasn't great from what I remember (the first WoW), and so I just focused on the gameplay and team work rather than the story. Personally, I read books for the story, and play games for the mechanics.

yazaddaruvala 6y ago
I would just play WoW focusing on similar things to you and then watch a youtube video for the lore :)

xenihn 6y ago

How involved was he with Diablo 2? I don't know specifics, but I was disappointed by everything in Diablo 3, including the story, and I think that's due to the lack of the Blizzard North people.

Fnoord 6y ago

Caveat emptor: Flowchart is from 2011. Runic Games, for example, folded, and the Schaeffer brothers parted ways. Max founded Etchra. Otherwise informative, thanks for linking.

throwawaynothx 6y ago

I played wow in korean without being able to read any of the quests. just to have my warlock pet names in korean. story is not a big part of wow. ffxiv however..

nkrisc 6y ago

How old is this? Under Carbine Studios it says unnamed MMO but I have to imagine that is Wildstar and this is just very old.

delinquenz 6y ago
The chart says April 2011