View Full Version : Just a friendly reminder...
Friends Call Me Butch
10-04-2008, 22:26
Not a single one of the original Blizzard North guys from the original Diablo:
max schaefer
eric sexton
kenneth williams
david brevik
erich schaefer
peter brevik
doron gartner
jon morin
robin van der wel
richard seis
ben haas
kelly johnson
matt uelmen
michio okamura
hugh tom byrne
patrick tougas
christopher root
mark sutherland
karin colenzo
...currently work in Irvine. Nor do any of the Blizzard North guys mentioned here except 2 or 3 currently work in Irvine:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/diablo-ii/credits
Of course, if this game exists, it may still be great, and will certainly be well-polished with all of the AAA marketing money can buy. It will just have absolutely nothing to do with a single person from the main team that made the first one.
Carry on!
Butch
SmittySixTen
10-04-2008, 22:53
Hence all the "Top Secret" jobs available. (http://www.blizzard.com/us/jobopp/)
Diablo won't be resurrected in DIII since Bill Roper isn't around to do the voice anymore :)
lackdanan
10-04-2008, 23:32
I dont want to act like a blizzard's fanboy (well, I'M a blizzard fanboy mmm... :p ), but when i see what some ex. blizzard north employees have done recently (let's say...Hellgate london ?), this argument proves nothing.
Yeah, remember? The former Blizzard north employee, mainly lead by Bill Ropper, are proud to release Hellgate-London, the new and best hack&slash in the universe blablabla... Guess what ? I was decieved. A LOT. Bad balance, buggy, and having to pay a monthly fee to profit the full game? And this was the baby of the "so all mighty" Blizzard notrh employee?
No, people move, want to try new thing. Some have success, others fail (Hellgate london, back again).
Another exemple? Castaway Entertainment, founded by some ex former Blizzard north devs, just suspend their operations. They were working on a diablo-like project (Djinn). ()
There is no secret in making a good game : good ideas, hard work, more hard work, no time limit/deadline forced by some ****ing publishers and A LOT (should i repeat ? A LOT !) of polishing. Regarding the ideas, you need some creative artists, that's not something reseved to the personn you have mentionned above. I would even say that with fresh blood, comes new/unexpected ideas and innovations. Hard work and polishing ? well, just look others Blizzard's games (Starcraft, Warcraft, WoW). Dead line ? Blizzard is probably one of the few studios not being worried by its editor (Vivendi) for an now-and-immediate release...
They get all the ingredients for making Diablo 3 a HUGE game. Let's trust them as we have trust them for Warcraft 3 ,WoW or Starcraft 2. By the way, Metzen is still there, so i m not really worried about bad lore/scenario/story.
And the day of Diablo 3 release (because i'm sure, 29 june will be THE day of the announcement of Diablo 3 :p), we will all be crying and yelling about how godly the game is. (And for myself, i will laugh so hard about Hellgate and his greedy-****ty paiment system... :) )
Hope to see some of you at he WWI :)
Regards from France.
Mick.
Friends Call Me Butch
10-04-2008, 23:58
The former Blizzard north employee, mainly lead by Bill Ropper, are proud to release Hellgate-London, the new and best hack&slash in the universe blablabla...
Mick.
1 - Roper wasn't at Blizzard North during the making of either Diablo or Diablo II
2 - less than 1/3 of the original "Diablo" Blizzard North crew and less than 1/4 of the "Diablo II" Blizzard North people ended up at Flagship
Blizzard definitely has the resources and talent to make a great game based on almost any IP. But, in terms of non-LOD Diablo II (and excluding the cinematics), the guys who did 100% of the programming, 100% of the player character art, 100% of the music, 100% of the background art, 100% of the game and level design and 100% of the non-concept story aren't there now. Obviously, for the Flagship guys, Blizzard's Quality Control and ability to take as much time as needed wasn't there either!
100% of the programming
actually, my source now tells me that one of those fifteen guys is still there - so, 93.3333333333333333% of the programming :wink3:
thats why it's been taking so long he's writing D3 all by himself :(
LouisLeGros
11-04-2008, 05:35
He needs to work faster!
He should be working double shifts! If he already is he should be doing triple shifts!
MonsterOfTheLake
11-04-2008, 05:41
thats why it's been taking so long he's writing D3 all by himself :(
;D
Poor guy :(
BoxCarWillie
11-04-2008, 15:29
well after long years of programming; thins of the money he will be makign of it;
lol all these 'secret' job listings are console mmo driven positions...
1 - Roper wasn't at Blizzard North during the making of either Diablo or Diablo II
Wrong.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0974546/
Just look at the game credits for further proof.
Zarniwoop
27-06-2008, 20:56
If it's a console MMO then blizzard is dead to me.
Friends Call Me Butch
27-06-2008, 21:22
Wrong.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0974546/
Just look at the game credits for further proof.
My source confirms that Roper's office was in Irvine until after the release of "Lord of Destruction", when he moved North. A few people in Irvine worked on one or more of the Diablo releases.
Office in Irvine between 1996 and 2001 = not part of Blizzard North.
Bill Roper didn't work full time at bliz north, but he spent a couple of months there working full time on d2 before it launched, and the bliz north guys considered his help very valuable on shaping the final product. I have that in personal communication from Dave Brevik (http://hellgate.incgamers.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=2311&cat=513) and heard much the same from Erich Schaefer (http://hellgate.incgamers.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=2312&cat=513), so I don't doubt that bill was instrumental in the success of D2.
As for the bliz north designers not working on D3... that is a real issue. I'm not so concerned about the whole honor role of programmers and artists, but almost everyone who created diablo as a game and gameworld is gone. Dave brevik and Erich/Max Schaefer were the original creators of D1, and they're all at Flagship now, and the 9 founders of Flagship were all instrumental designers and concept guys from D1, D2, and D2X.
http://hellgate.incgamers.com/gallery/data/513/641.jpg
One thing that gives me hope for D3 is that Chris Metzen is still the main story guy at blizzard, and he was one of the main collaborators on the diablo world and plot. Erich/Max/David invented the game, but they were more about gameplay and function; they weren't real big on writing the story themselves. That came about through collaboration with people in Irvine.
And now, a couple of quotes on that subject from an interview I did with Dave Brevik last summer. This has never been posted anywhere, so enjoy.
Flux: At some point during the design process for Diablo II the ideas for the greater demons and hell and the Soulstones, and...
Dave: Right. We'd shoot the **** about all sorts of stuff and eventually one of the ideas was, "let's have Diablo be one part of the evil, and there will be other parts and other sins and such, and we'll make other equivalents, so Diablo will be this one, etc... So that was more of a process of our guys and some of the guys down south at Blizzard. Suggestions came from them, some from us, and it was a collaborative effort after that.
A lot of the story stuff we kind of directed, but eventually a lot of the story stuff came from the guys down south since they did the cinematics, and the cinematic team had their own ideas.
Flux: That was more Diablo 2, with the cinematics driving the story?
Dave: The D2 thing was really controversial, since that's not the direction we wanted to head. The problem was we all wanted cinematics that reflected the game a little bit better, but we didn't have a cohesive plan. We liked the idea that you shoved this thing, this soulstone into your head in the end and you become Diablo. The only way to beat it is to contain it. And we loved that whole idea, and then we wanted to continue that story line, and we wanted to show all these heroes, and there were too many combinations and ifs and what's and so it ended up that the best workable idea was this separate story line and parallel to the game so rather than having all the heroes be part of the cinematic.
Because you don't play a specific character in the game we didn't want it to be well, "Why is the barbarian the guy that's going through the movies?" We didn't want to have five different movies (for the five different characters in Diablo II) and what if we did expansions and had more character classes and it's just a big mess. It tells a story about what's going on, but it's parallel to the in-game storyline. When we got to Diablo II things were a little bit more defined. The guys down south at Blizzard helped, and by then we'd come up with the names of some of the stuff. The Horadrim and these other societies, and it started to grow up by the end of D1 and by the start of D2 we knew what direction we wanted to go with it.
Flux: The D1 manual was really nice. It had stories and legends and monster info and more story than the game.
Dave: Oh absolutely. (laughs) Because we came up with the story after we came up with the game! (laughs heartily) The game was halfway over and we were like, "Well, we should probably put a story in here!" That was really more the reason than anything.
The problem with Flagship Studio and Hellgate:London... they delivered their game and failed to live up the hype, so who cares in they're not there anymore to create Diablo 3 ?
They had their chance, now it's time to bring the real deal !
I think Diablo's sucess is more a result of the Blizzard worth ethic than the developers themselves, as evident by the fact that no matter how often Blizzard's key players get shifted the games they make continue to be landmarks, as rare as they are.
Awesome flux- thanks for posting! Good read
TraderScope
27-06-2008, 23:29
With this logic Donald Duck would be dead just like his creator Walt Disney..But the legacy continues, develops and changes, because with new blood, comes fresh ideas.
It won't ever be the same again, in all good and bad too.
I dont want to act like a blizzard's fanboy (well, I'M a blizzard fanboy mmm... :p ), but when i see what some ex. blizzard north employees have done recently (let's say...Hellgate london ?), this argument proves nothing.
Hellgate was horrible! I can't even understand how the devs of my all time favorite childhood game made this. If it is Diablo 3 I have no doubt that the quality of game will be equal or greater then what we have all come to expect from blizzard. The devs that left to make their own game certainly didn't bring any of that with them.
Hellgate was horrible! I can't even understand how the devs of my all time favorite childhood game made this. If it is Diablo 3 I have no doubt that the quality of game will be equal or greater then what we have all come to expect from blizzard. The devs that left to make their own game certainly didn't bring any of that with them.
hellgate was very viable in concept and theory and design. I followed it as closely as anyone, and got to play it 3 or 4x before the beta began. It was rough, but fun, and I was sure they'd find a way to improve the problems and make the long term play more fun. How that didn't happen, I do not know. I've not played very much since the release, and my highest level chars were in the low 20s during the beta, but what I've heard is that it's now very grindy past the teens, the end game sucks, and the higher level skill advancement is totally flawed.
So I"m not sure what to think about HGL. They tried to do something different, hybriding FPS to RPG, setting it in the weird future instead of the traditional warmed over "middle ages with magic and monsters", making a vast variety of different weapons instead of just a few basic ones with differing damage/speed, etc. All viable innovations, but somehow they didn't come together into a complete game.
It'll be interesting to see what path the new d3 team has followed with their game design. If it'll just be D2 with more stuff, or if they're going to try to change some of the basic game/genre paradigms. I'm more curious about that sort of functional stuff than the flashy eye candy/projected feature lists they'll reveal to the general media, but we won't find out about the nuts and bolts for some time after the debut.
Yeah, I love how they implemented the Horadric Cube, more innovative ideas like that will be welcomed.
hellgate was very viable in concept and theory and design. I followed it as closely as anyone, and got to play it 3 or 4x before the beta began. It was rough, but fun, and I was sure they'd find a way to improve the problems and make the long term play more fun. How that didn't happen, I do not know. I've not played very much since the release, and my highest level chars were in the low 20s during the beta, but what I've heard is that it's now very grindy past the teens, the end game sucks, and the higher level skill advancement is totally flawed.
So I"m not sure what to think about HGL. They tried to do something different, hybriding FPS to RPG, setting it in the weird future instead of the traditional warmed over "middle ages with magic and monsters", making a vast variety of different weapons instead of just a few basic ones with differing damage/speed, etc. All viable innovations, but somehow they didn't come together into a complete game.
It'll be interesting to see what path the new d3 team has followed with their game design. If it'll just be D2 with more stuff, or if they're going to try to change some of the basic game/genre paradigms. I'm more curious about that sort of functional stuff than the flashy eye candy/projected feature lists they'll reveal to the general media, but we won't find out about the nuts and bolts for some time after the debut.
I will agree that the base ideas and theme of the game was new and interesting, but one its biggest flaws is the lack of change as you progress through the game. The terrain was very well detailed and laid out, however it quickly gets old when it is the only thing you see. Ruined upper cityscape, inner tunnels, small hell platforms to inner temple, and 2 unique areas for quests which was a park and inside of a brain. The base weapon and armor models only change as far as colors and a few added on gadgets such as scope or clip. The monsters follow the same style by only changing in color and name. Half way through the game I think I have seen less then 15 different npc models.
They kill the feeling of progression with entering a new landscape only to throw you back in the one you came from. (Imagine going from Act 2 back to Act 1 but now called Act 3) The dialog and storyline is choppy, unclear and little sense of purpose. The leveling of the character is also not in line with the pace of the quests. I don't bother with any side quests and still feel a bit too powerful with the creature progression, or the end random bosses (in no way connected to any storyline) are grossly overpowered.
It had a good chance, but sadly that flagship was unable to even sail out of bay.
in my opinion the fact that none of the original team would be working on it means nothing, Blizzard would NOT make a bad game, which is why they in turn take far longer to develop and release their games, to insure that the game is fun and has good re playability, even if announced now we know we'd have a very long wait until we are playing a new game, but we also know it would be great
I think the lack of difference in the tilesets was a mistake. The designers wanted to be true to the setting, and they were, but that resulted in endless drab bricks/sewers/warehouses/etc, all of them pretty interchangeable. They did groundbreaking work on level randomization in a 3d engine, but since that just resulted in more of the same (look) players didn't appreciate it.
Better is to just throw away linearity and work in wacky levels of totally different looks. Like D1, with a new look every 4 levels, or WoW with all differnet themed dungeons. Or else be consistent, but have acts, like D2. If the whole game looked like act 1, it would have gotten old.
Most complaints about hgl seem to come down to the old "too little time/money" but I'm not sure that's entirely it, since the devs were pretty happy with the product; they just didn't gauge player reaction that well, and ignored the complaints from beta testers.
It didn't also didn't help that the 2 main fansites weren't real vocal about the problems. Our site was pretty neutral about editorializing on the quality; I was in my last semester of college and had to largely withdraw from our HGL site a couple of months before release and even if I had stayed I doubt I'd have been leading crusades against the game problems. The other popular English language site, hellgate guru, was staffed entirely with fanboy cheerleaders who worshipped everything FSS did (which was a good strategy on the whole for the admins, since several of them got CM jobs with FSS), criticized other sites and their admins (me) when we said or did anything not totally approved by FSS, and they had nothing critical to say about the game at all.
It's difficult to retain objectivity about a game you follow for years in advance, especially when you know most of the guys making it, and you want the game to succeed so the site you've put so much effort into will be popular as well, but I think fansites have to make an effort to be journalistic, or to allow free discussion on their forums (since so many gaming companies stifle dissent on their official forums). It's for the game and the community's own good.
I made a post about HGL issues in the community forum. If anyone from this thread has more thoughts on it, and the lessons it might apply to D3, feel free to join in.
http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?p=6570151
Totally agree about Hellgate Guru and the other fan sites. They weren't exactly helping. I purchased Helllondon.com and designed a site just before beta and tested it. I was highly disappointed but held off in hopes that it would get better, but it didn't. What a waste of time I put on designing that site. Luckily I figured it out before I put any more work into it.
mouseman
28-06-2008, 07:31
Yeah I still don't know what happened with HG:L.
I waited the game for a year, got into beta test through mythos, enjoyed it and hoped they'd fix the gameplay somehow. They didn't.
I just don't know what's off.. The story, sci-fi setting, merging fps with rpg, randomized 3D areas, realism, gameplay innovations (upgrades, breaking down items) and EVERYTHING seems fine and looks fine, but put together.. it just doesn't work and I don't know why.
I really think FSS could've used quality control or more critical beta testers. The main let-down for me was this: The game is set in near future, but it doesn't feel familiar. The dialogues, quests and in-game story is from a b-grade fantasy rpg. You really couldn't sense the despair or the feeling that you fight for the humanity - and the repetitive gameplay didn't help with that. The game had good qualities, but it needed something else than just skilled programmers: quality control, beta testers, historians, experts on storytelling and cinematography (journalists, writers) and all that.
This has made me wonder: what is so different with D2? Why I still play it? What needs to be done with D3? The reason why Blizzard games sell so well is probably because they realise that making games is a lot more than programming different elements together. So the non-programming part of Blizzard should be given a lot more praise and because they still focus on that part, I'm not worried about D3.
Anyway, I wish best of luck to FSS and hope someone will mix FPS and RPG again: it was a thrill starting up a marksman!!
I don't think being vocal was the problem.
What's the point if you try to voice your concerns but no one listen ?
Patch 2.0 is coming and the core game is still repetitive, 8 month after release...
The naysayers were ("were", because they already left by now) very vocal on the official forum, but nothing really changed.
Guess it's not the fans fault ;)
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.0 Copyright © 2013 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.