Alexander

“Another marketing myth Blizzard dispelled after Diablo II was released was the danger of missing holiday sales. When Diablo II slipped into the next year, our sales were still as strong as we had predicted for Christmas. After that Blizzard stopped bending over backwards trying to ship before the end of the year.”
― John Staats, The World of Warcraft Diary: A Journal of Computer Game Development

“Mark and Shane, the team leads, were very conscious of not burning everyone out because of their experience on StarCraft. They had both been associate producers on the project and vowed to avoid pushing Team 2 as hard as the StarCraft devs were pushed. StarCraft’s dev cycle was nightmarish in that the goal posts were always moving. Whenever they crossed the finish line, Allen Adham found room for improvement, saying the game wasn’t polished enough, and asked everyone if they could hunker down for a few weeks longer. Whenever the next deadline was reached, another issue would arise and it was extended again, prolonging the crunch of late hours. The light at the end of the StarCraft tunnel always turned out to be a mirage. Each “final” sprint collided directly into another. And then another. Fans camped out in Blizzard’s parking lot and counted the cars, reporting on websites how many people were working at night. StarCraft’s drop-dead due dates were missed again and again until it was over a year later. Shane reminisced how people slept in sleeping bags on the floor. Showers and meals were skipped. To this day, few people who served on the StarCraft team play the game. Both Shane and Mark agreed that people weren’t as productive when exhausted and it just wasn’t worth it. Allen Adham’s nerves had been so worn out he left the company he founded until Blizzard convinced him to help out on WoW years later. In the wake of StarCraft’s quality-of-life costs, Shane and Mark vowed they’d never push a team like that, and their solution was to start the late nights early.”
― John Staats, The World of Warcraft Diary: A Journal of Computer Game Development

“Artist and EverQuest veteran Roman Kenney was well-known for being the most creative exploit-finder in the company. When game designers blocked off unplayable zones with killer mobs, Roman figured out ways past them. For instance, he once performed an action that caused his character to dismount from a flying taxi, dropping him from the flightpath into an off-limits, high-level zone below. His hijinks didn’t stop there. After retrieving his corpse (he died from falling damage) in the forbidden area, he found partially implemented vendors who sold weapons that were better than what was available in the newbie zone loot tables. He clicked on the high-level weapons, linking the stats in world-chat, and asked if anyone wanted to buy them. People enthusiastically made offers thinking he had looted them off mobs. He purchased the weapons from the vendor and resold them for a huge profit. The game designers were amused at his ingenuity, even if it sullied the game’s economy, so they quickly removed dismount actions from our flying taxis to prevent further such excursions.”
― John Staats, The World of Warcraft Diary: A Journal of Computer Game Development

“One of the more amusing ideas was an “Australia server” for all the abusive and law-breaking players: Instead of canceling their account and losing customers, we would sentence offensive players to an exile server unsupported by the GM staff.”
― John Staats, The World of Warcraft Diary: A Journal of Computer Game Development