Reddit´s AMA former Blizzard QA+GM employee

[moor2]

Link to original reddit thread: I am a former Blizzard Entertainment employee who was laid off last year. AMA you want! : IAmA


Are you happy with the direction Blizzard is taking with World Of Warcraft?

Honestly I never really cared about WoW too much, but since I actually just started playing again in over a year, I have seen the many changes they've made to it and I'm overall pretty impressed. Coming from the internal side of things and knowing how many issues we had to deal with as GMs with the old game, it's great to see how automated a lot of the issues have become. I like that players are now able to solve most of their issues themselves. I still feel like most of the issues lie within the GM department, though.


Do Blizzard employees have to pay the monthly fee for WoW?

Nope.


Is there any hope for a Warcraft 4?

You know, I think there was some talk of that going around, and I don't think they would be opposed to the idea, but I think they want to focus on new titles right now to gain more exposure.

Where does the auction house cut go?


Good question. No ****ing idea.

I assume it goes into the abyss, but I want to believe it goes the the user, with the userID 1.

I'm sure someone is making a ****ing fortune.


Did you ever busted any people using bots or gold sellers? If so how you dealt with them?


Oh yeah all the time as a GM. That was the best part, IMO. With bots you would get a report from a player, hop on the game to check it out, and get a Senior to visually confirm that it was a bot and then slam them with the ban hammer. Same thing went for gold sellers. Those were even more fun because gold sellers got their gold from compromising someone's account, taking all their shit and selling it, then taking the gold and selling it to other players. What we would do is follow the gold trail, through logs, and take back any gold, or items purchased with said gold, and recover it to restore back to the compromised player. Then we would give a nice fat action to the sellers account, which would usually result in them getting the boot.
That's what I think people who buy WoW gold never understood. The gold didn't come from Chinese farmers just using bots all day to get gold. No, it came from Chinese hackers who hacked people's accounts, stripped their character clean, and then sold the gold to you online at a profit. Shitty.

So reports really helped, woa nice, I reported a few of them, I would wake up in the morning to farm something before the rest would start playing and watching those guys there all the time made me angry. I see how it works now, thank you for your response! Amazing AmA btw! I always liked to hear what Blizzard employes have to say.


Oh yeah reports helped a ton because we were never really in game the majority of the time, so there was no real way of knowing who was botting or being a dick unless someone reported it to us. Believe me, banning people like that was our favorite thing to do, so we loved getting those reports lol.


Tell us what you know about Titan. Come on.

Well it's been a while since I've heard anything, but I will say that if it goes how they were explaining it to us during our Show & Tells, then it's going to be pretty ****ing badass, and may even kill, or slightly hinder WoW. It's that sweet of an idea. Let's just hope they don't **** it up. >_>


How do you feel about Titan being "delayed" until 2016. Word on the street is that they've scrapped a lot of the concepts and moved devs onto other projects.


Well that blows if it's true. I liked the concept they were going with, but things change. Ghost.


Is it WoW in space?

lol no, although that would be funny. I will say that it's something you haven't seen from Blizzard before. A different direction in gaming style.


They've said that before, though. Give us some love here, son.

I caaaaan't. Blizzard likes to sue people.



What role do QA people play in decisions about the game, such as lore or boss mechanics? Do you have a big suggestion box or have a random great idea that you can share easily?


QA didn't really have any say in what went into the game, or what was really ****ing stupid and shouldn't be in there at all, but we did have a suggestion forum internally where we could post our ideas to the devs. The problem was that most of the devs were very full of themselves and believed that we didn't know any better, and we were just there to test the games, and apparently couldn't even do that right in their eyes, so most of our suggestions were laughed off.


How close do you honestly think WoW is to reaching the end of its popular lifespan and competitive reign as far as MMOs go? It has to happen eventually.. Five years? Ten years? Am I correct in assuming that the next major expansion will be the franchise's last?


I don't think WoW is going to stop anytime soon. They have a pretty strong thing going still, even with a loss of subscribers. I think it will pan out for at least another 5 years or so, but there's really no way to tell for sure. WoW is their moneymaker, so they'll milk it for as long as possible.


Will Starcraft Ghost ever happen, like even in a million years?

Nope.



Second question:
What did Blizzard think internally over the company's complete and utter failure to support and co-opt DOTA, which was originally a Warcraft III custom map? I know that Blizzard tried to sue Valve and others when Dota moved on from WC3.....
We WC3 players had been pleading with Blizzard for YEARS to provide official support for DOTA, to hire DOTA developers, and in general acknowledge the game's existence, yet none of that ever came about.....and now League of Legends is several times more popular than WoW has ever been. What do the people inside of Blizzard think about this monumentally epic ****up?


Same thing you're feeling. A lot of people rolled their eyes and laughed at what they were intending to do with DOTA. I know a lot of QA people thought it was a joke, but we didn't get paid to have an opinion. I'll just reiterate this: SC2 devs are mostly dicks.


Can you please elaborate? I genuinely don't get your first three sentences, there isn't enough content.

They thought DOTA was a joke.
This.



I know some GMs enjoyed adding a bit of personality to their interactions with players (For instance, I had a bit of a conversation with a GM about GnomeBall, a variant on football/soccer using Gnomes as the ball, with nets weaved with Dwarf beards). How much leeway did Blizzard give you on this? Any kind of story that sticks in your head?

Yeah, back in the day we were expected to be "professional" and not get too cutsie with our conversations. We had a department called QC (Quality Control) in which their job was to review our conversations and give us grades on them. I won't even do into how horrible and useless that department was, but thankfully they don't exist anymore.
Anyway, later on we were able to personalize our greetings and have more fun with players, so the more creative GMs would create personas that they would use with players. It made things way more fun and a better experience I think, but there were definitely some players who didn't appreciate it lol. I do remember this one GM had some macro where they were a Gnome or something who would emote throwing glitter in your face. That didn't go over very well when they got an irate player who was not in the mood to have glitter thrown in their virtual face lol.


I recall chatting with the "glitter throwing Gnome" GM! And IIRC, I think I gave them a perfect score everywhere on the little survey that they prompted us to fill in after each intervention.
Thanks for the answer, and thanks for doing this AMA!

No prob! Also, a thing to note about that scoring system...it's pretty ****ed up on the internal side. For example: Let's say you really liked your GM, but weren't TOTALLY satisfied enough to give the experience all 5's, so instead you give them all 4's, or maybe some 4's and 5's. Well GMs are graded on how many "perfect survey scores" they get, and are rated with a 1 or 0 point system. Basically if you get all 5's, you get 1 point, and anything else is a 0. Pretty ****ed up right? Well if you get too low of an average score per quarter, you have the potential to lose your job. Yeah...and they think this is an improved rating system.


I have been in IT for over 20 years and I have seen a lot of customer satisfaction survey systems and that is without a doubt the most ****ed up one I have ever heard of. A binary score?

Yeah I know right?


how easy was it to detected botting

It was pretty easy for the most part. 99% of it was visual. You could tell right away if it was a real player or a bot just by their pattern of movements.


Do you think the majority of Blizzard views Diablo 3 as a massive failure and that it didn't live up to the hype?

I think everyone was pretty satisfied with D3 because there were a shit ton of people who worked really hard on it, so bias comes into play with it. But all in all I feel like D3 was generally a success, although I know there were many people who felt otherwise.



I currently play on a private and likely illegal pre-BC world of warcraft server. High population, 100% Blizz-like (except for some minor bugginess with NPC pathing), raiding, battlegrounds and even decaying honor system. My question is, is Blizzard aware of such servers and assuming they are, what is their reaction to this?
As a side note to all the people who say it's just nostalgia...it's not. I've leveled, pvped and raided in all of the retail expansions, even Mists. Vanilla was better, and TBC as well (Karazhan for the win).


Yes we are aware of those servers.


and what is their reaction/thoughts about private servers?
What's your/Blizzard's stance on them, though?

We don't approve, but aren't going to really do anything about it.



Why's Ghostcrawler such an unrepentent shitheel?

hahahahaha, welcome to the majority of devs at Blizzard.

That doesn't really surprise me, but at least most of them are better about obfuscating it when they're dealing with their player base.
Was he as much of a self-absorbed ******* in-person as he is on the fourms/on twitter?

Oh yes he was. I can tell you a story of this time were our Customer Service department had a new policy where any new hires, no matter what department you were hired into, would have to sit with a Game Master for a few hours and see what it was like to be the face of Blizzard, and how hard our job was. Well they decided to include the executives on this one as well, and one day Ghostcrawler was scheduled to shadow a guy on my team. He basically spent the entire time on his phone texting, checking emails, or just leaving for long periods of time to make phone calls. He was so checked out from the experience that he left early because he was just too good to sit there with lowlife GMs. At least that's the impression we got.


Can you tell us anything about tseric and what happened with him?

Never knew the guy personally, but I knew/know some of the people who work the forums and it's definitely a tough job that you need tough skin for. But I can also say that about being a GM in general.


Is Blizzard planning on going the SOE route and make it so Titan and WoW are under the same subscription/license? I'd imagine they would, as WoW would most likely die, but you never know.

No clue what they plan on doing. That shit isn't going to be out for like 10 years, my guess is.


How are the devs set up? Are there a lot of dev teams, or a team per game? And what kind of organizational methodology is used (agile, waterfall etc.)

There's a team for each game, Team 1, 2, 3 etc. There's a Battle.net team, art department, cinematics, etc. I believe they utilize both Agile and Waterfall methods as Producers.


Was there any talk of D4? Or are they completely done with the series now?

I think they may be done.


Why is Metzen SO BAD at telling a good story nowadays? The storylines of Warcraft 3, in both Reign of Chaos and Frozen Thrones, were spectacular! In fact, the original World of Warcraft was pretty damn good too. But, what the hell has been going on lately? The Burning Crusade's plot was incoherent, and neither Illidan nor Kael'thas were at all in character from WC3. In Wrath, Arthas/Ner'zhul was such a letdown from what we'd expected, and the storyline in general of Wrath sucked. I haven't even paid attention to the plots of Cataclysm and the Panda expansion, it's looked that bad.
Who the hell is responsible for writing the overall WoW storyline? Whoever it is, they're very bad at it.

Why does it suck? Money. They have a lot of it and don't give a shit if the story sucks or not.


I just don't buy that. That's too easy an explanation, an answer I'd expect from any random no-credibility redditor. You're different.
Blizzard obviously polished and min-maxed the everloving shit out of SC2 and Diablo 3 before release. I didn't like the outcome (neither overly dumbed-down game could hold my interest for long..), but I have to admit that on a technical level both games felt very complete and tested upon release. But the storylines for both games, particularly in Heart of the Swarm, had all the technical depth of fanfiction written by a sixteen year old. I and countless other fans can write deeper plots on the back of a McDonald's napkin. I just don't get it. How were Metzen's shallow scripts given the go-ahead? Is this a George Lucas syndrome, i.e., Metzen became so internally powerful and bigheaded that the people with actual creative talent could no longer reign him in, or does he simply not give a shit anymore, or what?

Metzen became so internally powerful and bigheaded that the people with actual creative talent could no longer reign him in, or does he simply not give a shit anymore
This. I really can't say why the storyline for any of the games sucks the way it does because I'm not a writer or dev, so I couldn't even make that call. I don't know what goes on in the minds of those guys, or why they put out the content that they do. We all know it's bad and inconsistent, but that's the way they want it for whatever reason. I do think they place more emphasis on gameplay than storyline, which is why it's the way it is. But I also do believe Metzen has the monopoly on all creative direction when it comes to the story, so if it doesn't sound good, no one can really do anything about it.


Did the developers of WoW know that they were making the game too easy/for children after/during WoTLK? I feel like the game peaked in TBC, and I know I'm not alone with those sentiments. You talk a lot about the arrogance of the devs...

Yeah, I personally believe that they just wanted to accomplish 2 things:
1) To make it easy enough that anyone could buy it and play it, which in turn creates more money for them since they can appeal to more age groups.
and
2) They wanted to shut the people up that complained about all the issues in game, so they made it stupid proof for people so they wouldn't have anything to bitch about.
Believe me, the WoW team is waaaaay nicer than the SC2 team, and actually listen to other people's ideas about how to improve things. There are still a lot of devs stuck in their ways, since they've been there forever and feel they can do no wrong. Honestly, you really can't tell what the hell they're thinking sometimes.


Did you get to work with Chris Metzen? Is he as much of a douche and he comes off?


Never worked with him personally, but he can give off that vibe.


How well, or badly, do devs in big-name gaming companies really get paid. What about unpaid overtime and conditions/benefits in general. Based on all of this, would you recommend the gaming industry to devs currently in school/training?

If you can get in with a decent company, you should make decent money. Devs at Blizzard get paid a lot. The Cinematics team is on par salary wise with movie studios.


Can you expand on your duties as QA? Were you able to test raid content? If so, did(does) Blizzard hire ex-hardcore raiders to do this? I raided hardcore for about 3 years, top 5 in the world for a time, and have always been interested in a job at Blizzard.
Also, does their Austin location have everything the Irvine location has? In terms of jobs, that is.

We tested everything from D3, WoW, SC2, Battlenet. There were specific QA teams designated to each game, and within those teams were people testing different aspects of it. I know there was a team that did nothing but raids, but I heard it was pretty boring and deadend.
Austin is much bigger than Irvine, however it lacks the proximity to the main campus where most of the events take place.


Hey, thanks for doing this AMA, I've been waiting for one of these for a while. As a long time on and off WoW player, do you have any insight into Blizzard's decisions to open or not open any servers limited to certain expansions? It's something I've wanted for a long time especially for vanilla and TBC but the company doesn't seem interested.

That's interesting for sure, but I doubt Blizz will go that direction. If it becomes a big enough request from people, they might consider it, but I think it would just be unnecessary work for them to do when they feel they can concentrate their time on other projects.

[keysaler]

All the stuff he mentioned about botting and that the people who sell gold all get them from compromising accounts is something a blizzard employee would say and tbh I don't believe a word of it.

Everyone knows most gold comes from goldfarmers there are people falling for hacks and scams and giving in their passwords on fake sites but the ammount of gold being sold is far larger then the ammount that is being hacked.

Basically he is answering this questions as if he was still employed by blizzard so there's nothing new here to see.



If all the gold on rmah on diablo 3 came from hacked accounts then how good of a job is blizzard doing to combat them, goldselling is no different on diablo 3 then on wow.

There are sellers on the wow auction house that have 100's of millions from duping I seriously doubt they have not duped and simply hacked for 100million gold without being caught when a 8 year old can google their auction house profits....

It's kinda like how a ex cop would say he busted bad guys when in reality he would be writing out tickets.
Regarding anything different I thought that most of the things he wrote were pure blizzcrap and I don't want to read it.