Talking to a Blizzard Dev. Saturday

[Twystyd]

My friend Sam codes for Blizzard and is coming to visit myself and some friends Saturday evening, here in Sacramento. The girls are going out for dinner and us guys are going to geek out and talk shop. If anyone has any intelligible questions they would like answers to, I'll fire away. I leave for Chico later that night to go kill a bunch of brain cells for halloween but can post answers next week. I'll be back whenever I suppress my hangover Monday.

[Amit]

is there going to be a sidekicking system lik COH?

[Twystyd]

Hmmm, what's sidekicking Amit?

[Zeratulx]

1)Will they add more horde content, seriously horde content is lacking soooo much compared to alliance, sorta like albs to mids in daoc.......... we dont wanna go down that route again.

2)Also do they plan to add more daggers in for the rogue class. The dagger drops are far between and too few.

3)When will they implement that you can buy other race mounts that are on your side, i.e. undead buying a wolf mount, the only way to do it now is by rolling a orc toon and sending him the cash have him buy it and send the mount back to you.

4)Mages have been over nerfed and are bland and lame, they need more umpph to them, not in the lines of fire power, but in versatility. Warlock>>>>> Mage when it comes to diversity, mages are a one trick pony.

5)Warlocks to get their Infernals and Fellhunters, kthnxbye.

6)They need to make the quest rewards more based towards specific classes rather than a general audience, ie if im a rogue, why the hell is my quest reward a cloth belt with +int.... also while we are on the topic of loot, why is 90% of leather drops that I see more for druids than rogues, I know druids only use leather also but damn, ever instance I have been on up to level 50-55 has nothing but druid leather drops. Im sure once I hit BRD/BRS/Strath/Scholo things will change but jeez.

7)Finally........Blizzard and WoW to CRUSH Mythic Ent. and DAOC kthnxbye.

[Twystyd]

1)Will they add more horde content, seriously horde content is lacking soooo much compared to alliance, sorta like albs to mids in daoc.......... we dont wanna go down that route again.

I know this one. Yes over time they will and understand alliance is more developed. This however will not happen before launch. I know several of the 'content' teams were shuffled over to de-buggin issues. At this point what you see is what you get besides minor alterations. Sam claims they just had more time to work on alliance content.

[Amit]

in city of heroes they have code so that if you are lvl 5 and your friends are lvl 25 you can still play with them by becoming a temporary "Sidekick" of one of them. for as long as you are sidekicked and near your mentor you are his lvl -1. you do not gain more skills etc but you do damage and have a hit rate as if you were near their lvl. your exp gain remains as if you were killing mobs your lvl so it itsnt twinking. this allows

1)rerolling to be easier
2)grouping with friends who may be higher

imho it was the best feature of COh

[Twystyd]

Thanks. I'll ask Amit. It is not in play at this time.

[Kirt]

you can group with high lvl''s etc. get xp you can hit high lvl mobs but for caster lots of resist and damage is very low

[barbos]

Diablo 3 ?

[Twystyd]

LOL, I'll ask Barbos.

I'll also try to get info on hardware and servers -

What hardware are they running for the application front end?
What OS are they using?
What are they using for a backend DB?
What sort of backup do they have in place for the DB?
How many clusters do they have?
What are they using for load balancers?
Where are the servers going to physically reside come release for each region?
What size internet pipes will each region have?
Names of Servers?

I believe I read they are using Linux and Oracle but I'll double check.

[Sirion]

4)Mages have been over nerfed and are bland and lame, they need more umpph to them, not in the lines of fire power, but in versatility. Warlock>>>>> Mage when it comes to diversity, mages are a one trick pony.

I should bodyslam you for saying that sir. The only diversity the Warlock class has right now is which curse to cast on the mob before I run in and kill myself while hellfiring them to their DOOM. And the Succubus pet slaps her ass and moans, it's funny the first... 75 times, but after that, it gets kinda old.

1) Ask about racial traits.
2) Ask about high level skills that were suppose to be put in (level 30-60 skills).
3) Ask about their views on the dishonor system, and if they have plans to make it so defending yourself from a zerg of rabid level 1 gnomes is going to be dishonorable, or instantly make you the king of the horde. I personally vote for option two.
4) Ask if they are planning a FFA pvp server.
5) Ask if there are any plans for a Roleplaying server.
6) Ask if they have any job openings for cute single men in their early 20s that don't involve any sort of gay sex or technical skills and/or knowledge.
7) Ask about the difficulty of talent respecing in retail.
8 ) Ask about the changes in effectiveness of taunts/aggro management.
9) Ask if they are ever planning to put in "Epic" or I guess they are called "Life" quests.
10) Ask if they can name a city after one of my beta characters.
11) Ask if one of the hot secretaries that works there will have my babies.
12) I suppose high level daggers do need to be addressed... I will agree on Zera with that one.
13) Ask how long they think it will be before Hero classes are implimented (Free content or expansion?).
14) Ask how long before they think Mythic will be crying over losing 50% of their customer base.
15) Ask them if they are planning on putting in more quests and for God's sake redoing the Night Elf zones. (Not the looks, I really like the looks, just for heaven's sake the quests and the locations... What the hell is Darnassus again?)
16) Hell yea, Diablo 3 ask that one too ><

Man... Just print out this post and give it to him. He can email me the answers if he doesn't have time to give you all the answers.

[Xarkon]

i head it is hard to find off hand weapons at higher/lower levels is this true?

[Zoidmeister]

Keeping it simple:

1. Why the 5 man group limit - 8 seems more practical especially since raid groups not eligible for quest completion.

2. Economy imho is a bit tight - any chance of this improving before retail?

3. Idea from DIE guild: PVP bounty rewards for bringing heads in for most wanted - bounce it off him.

4. Can he get me a dev job at Blizzard? 13 years of soft dev here.

[Sirion]

Yes to the 8man group question, also, ask if they are going to continue to cave into bullshit whining about things such as finishing quests in instances with raid groups. No offense, but in retail I don't know if I want to play one of the primary grouping classes, I shouldn't have to make a group suck in order to get my quests done, and if I have 10 people I play with, it should be just fine for us to get our quests done as a group.

[bruenar]

Tell him to fix their damn netcode!