In the original history, Rob. Pardo's first solo project after joining Blizzard was the development and production of StarCraft: Brood War, where he was the lead designer.

He joined Blizzard in '96 and has been working on the StarCraft design team ever since.

Because of his outstanding performance, he was righted to become the chief designer of "Brood War" when he designed the "StarCraft" expansion, and then designed it to make "StarCraft" really go to the altar, and laid the beginning of Blizzard's miracle of becoming a god by relying on the expansion, before "Brood War", the industry's view of the expansion was only a supplement to the original.

Before Brood Wars, no one had ever imagined that a single expansion would have such a huge impact on a game, which was inconceivable at the time.

Especially for the industry.

Later, Rob. Pardo has served as one of the three lead designers for World of Warcraft, Warcraft 3: Reign of Mayhem and Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne.

The one that Blizzard called the best.

In 2006, he was named one of Time magazine's Most Influential People of the Year for creating a world that could be lived by hundreds of people, World of Warcraft.

A character born to design RTS games, so, this time, after Blizzard handed over "StarCraft" to the other party, he immediately talked to the other party about adding hero units to "Warcraft 3", and because of the idea of RPG elements in RTS games, he didn't expect to get Pardo's full support immediately, and he felt that this kind of creative idea was promising.

Jester's idea was like opening a new door for Pardo.

Of course, the news that Pardo will become the chief designer of Warcraft 3 will not be announced for a while, but Jester's previous vague words on the forum have also been dug up with a lot of meanings, for example, Jester is alluding to the fact that the reason why many of the reasons why you think are not in line with Mars Entertainment is that the designers of these two games are originally the same person.

And. Or is it a completely different game in nature.

There may be a lot of players who like both games at the same time, but more of them still like only one of them, SC is certainly good enough, but this game is too difficult, and the characteristics of RTS games are here, if it is done too well. This will cause an inevitable problem, which is very unfriendly to the novice experience.

And this time, there are a lot of ideas about "Warcraft 3", whether it is Jester or Pardo himself.

In fact, Jester felt that the way that Blizzard used in the last expansion of "StarCraft 2" "Void Legacy" to constantly update the story campaign was very good, and I don't know why it was not used in "WAR3", probably because there was no such idea at the time.

The question about the plot addition of "Legacy of the Void" is on the carnival. Blizzard said that "Void Legacy" is the end of the story of StarCraft World, and some players questioned whether there would be no more plots - but Blizzard replied that there would be some peripheral plots, such as Nova, and we would continue to roll them out through story campaigns.

At that time, Jester saw the news and the first thing that came to mind was WAR3, and it would be nice if WAR3 had this.

Of course, at that time, because there was no Battle.net system yet. So it's not so easy and convenient.

In fact, Jester still has a lot of feelings about Blizzard. Although the company that was supposed to have a significant impact on video games in his timeline didn't exist in this world for his own reasons, Jester is still the perfect successor to the legacy of this great gaming company.

Whether it's their groundbreaking design for ARPGs or their monumental creations for RTS games.

Or in the future. He is bound to do the greatest game in the history of MMORPGs.

In fact, the entire Blizzard has grown from its creation to the development of the world, so that with WOW, it has merged with Activision to become the largest game company in the industry, and its ideas for designing games have changed again and again.

Blizzard started out as a studio of gamers who loved games and drew their nourishment from other games. Then add your own ideas and brains and make it your own game, so, in Blizzard's games, you will find a lot of tributes, but this is also Blizzard's tradition, learn from other people's successes, and then make yourself more successful.

It's a tradition that started in the early days of Warcraft.

Including "World of Warcraft" and even the later "Overwatch", all of them are such design ideas.

Of course, this line of thinking also has its own transformation process, for example, Blizzard's most successful game "World of Warcraft", this game was originally and even the first two expansions "Burning Crusade" and "Wrath of the Lich King" were very high-rated, but after the third expansion "Cataclysm" seems to have a sharp turn, there is certainly the most attractive plot characters and the finale of the "Warcraft" series in the eyes of players, but also has a complete change in development ideas.

If you have to summarize it one time, it is homogeneity, and if you want to say it in detail, it is a long story.

In fact, this transformation did not start with Cataclysm, but from the last two versions of Wrath of the Lich King.

In the development process of "World of Warcraft", perhaps the most important personnel adjustment for this milestone game is the upper ~ position of the crab in the late 3.13 period.

The crab finally replaced the earliest goblin Flor - that is, the task item of the sixty-level warrior epic sword Quelsala - the Flor of "Flor's Compendium of Dragon Slaying Techniques" became the chief designer of "World of Warcraft", and the first thing he did when he ascended ~ was to abolish the goblin suit naming method on 3.22, restore it to the t1-t6 naming mode, and split the progress.

At that time, the Silver and White Crusader Daily and Daily Championship Trials catered to the needs of casual players, and the regular 10-h10toc catered to the needs of the average player. 25toc-H25toc caters to the needs of high-end players who have been abused by ULD, and the madman achievement caters to the needs of top players, pleasing a large number of players at the time, and the brand (Triumph Emblem) at that time can be directly exchanged for the same version of the suit, from novices to high-level players know that if they are online for enough time and earn enough Triumph Empress, they can get a piece of equipment that matches the current version. So everyone has the motivation to go online.

It's a really nice design.

Especially after experiencing a large decline in the number of players in Ulduar - relying on the TOC like washing toilets, the number of players finally exploded again.

Moreover, the biggest reason why the crab can go to the ~ position is because of Flor's failure on Ulduar - this is not to say that this copy design failed, but that the players do not appreciate this feeling, Ulduar is undoubtedly the best design in the entire WOW history, the most brainstorming, the most perfect mode, and the most epic copy.

That's really a pinnacle of all MMORPG copy design. Not even NAXX has ever reached this height.

However, because of the difficulty, even if you don't play the difficulty mode, it is unwilling for ordinary players to accept, because it is really difficult.

Later, when analyzing this problem, Jester once complained about why Ulduar was such a good version, and why players were slipping. And this non-technical version of TOC will be liked by so many players.

That's what one of his friends replied to him.

"Do you say that the sales of the Musou series are high or the sales of Ninja Dragons are high."

For this kind of sales problem, Jester is naturally familiar with it. He immediately replied: "Of course it's because of the high sales of "Mushuang", but it doesn't need to be asked, "Ninja Dragon" is just a niche game......"

Before he could finish speaking, Jester's friend immediately asked: "Then do you say that the design of "Mushuang" is excellent or the design of "Ninja Dragon" is excellent?" ”

"Needless to say? "Wushuang" is a brainless game, mowing the grass casually, and the feeling of hand ~ is the same as a piece of paper. How can it be compared to the artwork of an ACT game like "Ninja Dragon", it's not a level, it's ......" When he said this, Jester suddenly couldn't go on, because he understood the reason why his friend asked him that. Because this question is similar to his complaint about why players don't like Odua.

That is, the vast majority of players, or rather a considerable number of players, lack the basic ability to judge the quality of a game, whether it is domestic or foreign.

Including later, Jester learned that since the crab was on the ~ position, a large number of Flor's designs had been discarded, and he was saddened by these designs.

First of all, let's talk about the copy of ICC, which has been called a classic by countless players.

This copy is probably the most successful copy of the Crab design, but if you know what Flor's original design looked like, you probably wouldn't think of it that way - in an interview with Flor, he mentioned what kind of copy the ICC was, or to put it another way - it would be a group of copies - like Blackstone Mountain in the Sixties, where there would be at least four team copies to make up the final ICC.

The final number of bosses will be fifty.

Of course, there won't be a normal or heroic NC difficulty setting.,There's only one difficulty.,But some bosses like Odua.,There's a hard mode.,Will drop better items.,What's better in this isn't just brainless violence.,It's really a completely different equipment.。

In Flor's vision, the entire ICC copy process would look like this.

First of all, the gate of the ICC has to be the Iron Wall Dam, enter from the Crystal Song Forest, pass through the corpse-strewn Iron Wall Canyon, pass through the fiercely bombarded Plains of War, pass through the cold and deep tomb of Sindagoza, pass through the secret of the Alebron, pass through the stinking slaughterhouse, pass through the dark and cold Spider Kingdom, pass through the ice crown full of sleepless, pass through the door of death, pass through the door of death, pass through the gate of desolation, pass through the door of fear, pass through Koresa, don't panic, this is the main gate......

See, the so-called crab ICC was just made by choosing the last part from Flor's epic vision.

If you knew that Flor's ICC was like this, would you still think Crab's ICC was epic?

To put it in contrast, Flor's ICC is a Homeric epic, while Crab's ICC is at best a Grimm fairy tale, and it is not a ~ human-oriented, children's version.

And the reason for such a change is because when Blizzard was faced with the high sales of "Mushuang" or "Ninja Dragon", they chose the higher-selling "Mushuang" from the perspective of a businessman, rather than "Ninja Dragon", which is called a masterpiece.

Maybe many people don't know that there will be a troll copy between Odua and ICC, but because the production of Odua is too time-consuming, and the players do not appreciate it, this idea was finally abandoned, and many people may have seen a very terrifying huge snake tail under the bridge when they played the five-person Benzu Dake, in fact, this is an easter egg left for this troll, which is the tail of a wind snake.

The reason why it is certain that there is a troll team Ben is not only because there is indeed a hole in the plot that has not been filled, but more importantly, the Chinese personnel of WOW have mentioned this matter, that is, it was originally intended to translate Zurdak into Zuldarak, but because I was told that if nothing else, there would be a troll book,So,The Sinicization team left the name Zuldarak to the troll team book that will come in the future.。

However, because of Aldua's relationship, almost all of Flor's design ideas were abandoned, including the troll Ben.

Of course, there is also a part of the lack of time to perfect the troll dungeon, and only the ability to launch a bento TOC as a transition, which cannot but be said to be a sadness, a sadness of the change in the thinking of game development.

Players will only continue if they can recognize great designsGreat designs, and if great designs are not recognized, then how can great designs continue?

The bento is not what the WOW development team wants, but what the players want.

When developers stop designing games for how to make games greater, then the decline of the game is inevitable, and many people say that WOW has gone downhill since CTM, but in fact, if you really know the whole story, this shift in design thinking has already bought the foreshadowing in the era of ICC with the most players - the reason for this foreshadowing is ultimately the reason.

Again, such a question.

Which one has the highest sales, "Mushuang" or "Ninja Dragon"?

Players keep saying that "Ninja Dragon" is good, "Ninja Dragon" is wonderful, and "Ninja Dragon" is croaking, but why is the sales of "Ninja Dragon" so small? (To be continued......)