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WoW's lead designer leaves WoW to work on Blizzards new MMO
coffee
Member Posts: 2,007
Jeffrey Kaplan one of the lead designers of World of Warcraft is moving on to work on the new "Unannounced" MMO. ( http://www.diablofans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17163 )
I wanted to take a moment to let the community know that I?ve switched roles here at Blizzard to work on our upcoming, unannounced MMO. World of Warcraft has been such a central part of my life these past six and a half years, and it?s success would not have been possible without the tremendous community around it, so I wanted to say thank you to all our players who?ve shared this amazing experience with us so far. Also, while I have served as the spokesperson and Game Director for World of Warcraft on Wrath of the Lich King, by no means would WoW be where it is today without the dedicated team that we have in place. The WoW development team is comprised of some of the most talented and experienced game developers in the world, and it was an absolute honor to serve amongst them, and they will continue to make WoW better than ever. I still plan to be very involved with the future course of World of Warcraft, but will leave the day to day operations of World of Warcraft to my partners in crime, Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack.
When all is said and done, WoW is still my favorite game. I play it every day. None of that passion is gone. If anything, it fuels the challenge of making our next MMO even better. We know we have some big shoes to fill. So thank you to everyone who has been so supportive over the years, and likewise, thanks to those who have given us pointed feedback on all areas of the game. Without all of the feedback and participation, WoW would not be the game that it has grown to be. Azeroth truly belongs to you and we?re lucky to have shared in your journey. And as always, I?ll still be lurking on the forums and in the game.
Mostly, I just wanted to say thanks. It has been an absolute honor.
Jeffrey Kaplan
Comments
I hope the game is not going to be anything like WoW. However have an expirience lead designer is a good step in the right direction.
Well I wish you luck in your new venture, but hope that you have learned from your past work and please make a game that's going to be worth playing and that has some decent challanges as this was far too easy for my style of play. I tested Wow and have to say that I was very disappointed indeed and if you guys end up making Wow2 or something very similar then please let us know then I will not to bother wasting my time again.
I am sure there are plenty of companies taking a close look at the sandbox market rather than the stale themepark style games we continue to see in the market place today. I really hope you people look at the current marketplace and do at the very least some decent research as to how many people are crying out for a sandbox game of quality that will release as a finished product rather than the pile of rubbish we have had to put up with.
And again good luck with your new appointment.
Bandit.
Asbo
Well, atleast wow will become better now. As for the new mmo.... won't be buying. He is game director, not a lead designer, big difference. A lead designer actually has skill, knowledge of game design, ability to script and some even have art talents.. a director just opens his mouth and acts big, much like a movie director. Think he spends more time talking about himself and doing interviews than actually working, ask anyone in the office there at blizzard off the record, they will tell you he really isn't needed.
This is pretty old news, but it should've been expected anyways. He obviously did something right with WoW, so Blizzard would be crazy not to move him to their next project.
In a way I think this is a good thing... WoW is certainly going in a 'different' direction nowadays, and I'd like to see someone come in with a fresh look at where WoW needs to go to get back on track. It's doubtful anything will happen... but I can hope.
I am still betting the new MMO is coming sooner rather than later since WoW is at a cross road - new expansion with significant additions or a milk-the-cash-come expansion (and there is a limit to how many times you can pull that off).
They have a strong team around the new MMO now. Will be very interesting to see what comes out.
i dont know how the next game could be any better then WoW! i mean come on! HOW?!
oh i know, you create your character, enter the world. a pop up window appears and says CONGRATS YOU WIN! thee end
i was going to say you have to press a button to win and get the pop up but that might be to difficult for a WoW player
Chiram... You have the best darn sig in the universe... I see that, and I can't even read the posts anymore. Impossible to focus in the face of nom.
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"
You know how well that would sell....thats how I see most of the gaming community today...they want it all done for them and immidiately be the winner with everything already done and presented to them on a silver platter. This would sell better than WoW!!! ROFL
It's a Starcraft MMO, one of the worst kept secrets around at the moment. TBA on August 24th.
Unlikely Kaplan is an habitual Raider, part of a large guild on EQ and has gear grinding in his blood. When Chilton eventually follows him over I'm thinking a WoW with a graphical overhaul.
Unlikely Kaplan is an habitual Raider, part of a large guild on EQ and has gear grinding in his blood. When Chilton eventually follows him over I'm thinking a WoW with a graphical overhaul.
Could've sworn I read somewhere that Blizzard did say it was an entirely new IP so I'm looking forward to seeing what they create. I also think that it'll start out with the ease that WoW has transformed into but end up putting a new twist on how raids and instances are done. I'd love to see all instances and raids abolished and then replaced with some new design to open world raids.
Like I havn't yet experienced Wintergrasp, but what I've read of it obviously its PvP and each side gets a chance at defending the castle. Do huge zones like so as a raid and have tons of branching paths but a small group can only go so far before it becomes too hard for them. Using the phasing technology make it gradually become harder and harder as more players show up, and ultimately to get to the end it'd take several hundred players all working together but not necessarily in the same spot in the zone.
So you'd have say 50 players go down this path, and another 50 go that path, and 100 go forward, while another 100 or so stick back aways from the groups to take care of a new style of patrolling spawns that would run down into the paths that the groups have headed. Of course there would be branching paths that would force the groups to break into smaller ones and each leads to a boss. To ultimately finish it, the 2 large groups on each path would have to finish off all their bosses and the 100-man couldn't proceed and fight their bosses down multiple paths and such. {Yeah I just threw that together as I was typing this out}
Still have very rare boss drops and add in participation points as well as PvP Honor and players can use those as well to purchase gear. Oh and all the while the other faction is in there fighiting to keep ya from winning and vice-verse whomever is raiding that zone at the time. Make tons of zones like this...I think it'd be interesting...
Unlikely Kaplan is an habitual Raider, part of a large guild on EQ and has gear grinding in his blood. When Chilton eventually follows him over I'm thinking a WoW with a graphical overhaul.
I think there are two big legacy's that Kaplan will be remember for
1. He kept things tight. Games like AOC and Warhammer failed largely because they fell behind schedule and were pushed out the door 'unfinished'. Kaplan kept WOW's content coming smoothly, mostly on time, but always polished. That is an incredibly important part of game design that many games fail at
2. He was raid-centric. We have seen his influence wane the past few years from what WOW started as ( Raid2play). It's uncertain if Kaplan changed and saw the error of his ways, or if he was simply out-voted and the game moved to a much more casual and fun game. The guy is pretty smart.. I'm sure he saw the amazing growth potential by making the game more casual-friendly and went against his own prefered gamestyle.
The new game will be amazing just because it will start out with developers who learned their mistakes in WOW. Not making Azeroth flyable? vehicle combat? phasing technology? pigeon-holeing certain classes (rememeber when all druids had to basically be restro?).
There is a lot of wisdom from WOW being transfered to the new game.
Unlikely Kaplan is an habitual Raider, part of a large guild on EQ and has gear grinding in his blood. When Chilton eventually follows him over I'm thinking a WoW with a graphical overhaul.
I think there are two big legacy's that Kaplan will be remember for
1. He kept things tight. Games like AOC and Warhammer failed largely because they fell behind schedule and were pushed out the door 'unfinished'. Kaplan kept WOW's content coming smoothly, mostly on time, but always polished. That is an incredibly important part of game design that many games fail at
2. He was raid-centric. We have seen his influence wane the past few years from what WOW started as ( Raid2play). It's uncertain if Kaplan changed and saw the error of his ways, or if he was simply out-voted and the game moved to a much more casual and fun game. The guy is pretty smart.. I'm sure he saw the amazing growth potential by making the game more casual-friendly and went against his own prefered gamestyle.
The new game will be amazing just because it will start out with developers who learned their mistakes in WOW. Not making Azeroth flyable? vehicle combat? phasing technology? pigeon-holeing certain classes (rememeber when all druids had to basically be restro?).
There is a lot of wisdom from WOW being transfered to the new game.
Pigeon holed classes is a class balance problem. I think that's going to be Tom Chilton's domain for the most part. And he apposes 1V1 class balance with his preference for group vs group balance. Which of course means there won't be any balance, .. Ever.
I think instead of learning from mistakes WoW will embrace the things they believe got them so many subs in the first place. So you can forget world pvp, they more than likely go directly towards to Battleground instanced pvp route. Make every server bubblegum to increase subs, so I'm guessing universal pve servers with Battlegrounds.
Tom Chilton never learned from what he did at Ultima Online he just kept on banging away, like the same idea would work better a second time. Instead he successfully made ANOTHER good mmo a boring heavy gear based game.
I don't expect an old cat like Kaplan will change much either. Although I would rather see a game with some sort of hard to attain end game at least the level of BC over the EZ mode watered down garbage wow is now. But anything Blizz puts out that has Kaplan and Chiltons brand on it might as well have a neon sign for hardcore gamers to go F yourself.