Below are the second half of the interviews, which for me are brilliant and really were exciting to listen to as you gained a lot of inside information about the development that went into the games.
Interview with Dustin Browder
Dustin Browder is the developer on Heroes of the storm and he really wanted to talk about how the alpha was doing and where it would be going in the future. Not all of the heroes are going to make it from the alpha to the beta but they are trying to add in as many as they can before it's released so players have a wide choice to choose from. They don't have all the interface or features yet but they are trying to add them in quickly so that in the beta, players will be able to see what the final game might look like.
Each of the viking that where added in the recent update have different abilities which is nice to see and they have different speeds and actions that are unique to them. They already had a lot of summoners in the game so when adding the character who is a dark archer they were very happy with the result as she can take down so many enemies and stun them before they've reached her and can make enemies fear her and turn away and run.
They got a lot of requests to add in the vikings initially and they really do try and look at other requests and see if they are going to be right for the game. They take the time to sit down and figure out what abilities and traits that character will have and how it works in that particular world and also because Blizzard is a team as a whole, that's then split up into different teams to work on individual games, they are able to share the characters around a lot. Heroes of the Storm incorporates all of the different universes together and lets you play as all of your favourite character and lets you understand the lore behind the games even further.
He also does a lot of work on Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void and they are currently working really hard on getting the campaign mode up and running for the beta that will be coming out soon. This is the final installment in the trilogy of games and they have a lot of scarifies that are going to be made towards the end. This again is still in alpha so there is still the possibility that changes are going to be made and they predict that they will be.
Interview with James Waugh
James Waugh is the director of story development on Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void. He wanted this to be a war story above anything else and he wanted to show galactic devastation in the game. A lot of fans are upset that they are going to be concluding a lot of story lines in this game, although they have promised that there will be no compromising of the main character and there own stories. They really wanted to focus on the two races and the war and ensure that there is going to be a good ending in which the races will form new societies and wrap the game trilogy up neatly.
They are going for a lot of pre-rendered cut scenes that have already been mostly planned out, but believe that their technology is now up to scratch for it to not be too different from the rest of the game. They have about 90% of the story written so far and there are teams currently working on getting the cut scenes complete, ready to share in the alpha and beta.
Interview with Ben Brode
Ben Brode is the senior games designer on Heathstone and he begins by talking about how they really just aimed to create a game that was for everyone to have fun with an play with friends. The competitive e-sport nature of it isn't as much as it is for other Blizzard games and they wanted to make it as good as possible so that they can still get the same number of people playing it as their other games.
They are now introducing a spectator section where people can log in and watch your game or other friends, much like in the way twitch does, but this is all through the app itself. They are still experimenting with different things that they can add into the game and they are definitely producing content quicker than the other teams at Blizzard. As there are only a few cards right now, adding in 120 into the expansion is huge. The process for developing the new cards involves the team literally just sitting down and creating them from there. They have to have balancing developers for the existing cards and new ones so that there are not any that are going to be too over or under powered.
They wanted to have enough cards so that you got a really exciting card whenever you open a new pack and you don't just get all the great cards from one pack, making the others boring to open up to find you have all rubbish cards. There are many people that are playing this even when they haven't played other Blizzard titles either as it is so accessible for everyone that has a iPhone or iPad, as it is not yet out on Android, yet. This is like Blizzard's answer for gamers who do not have access to a computer, or at least a decent computer that can handle processing a game.
Interview with Josh Masquesra
Josh Masquesra is a game director on Diablo III and they have had some really good feedback for the new game so far, especially since it came out on console and they are really working hard on the patch that they have coming out soon and the release of the things associated with it as well. They are trying to work out when is the best time to release another season and the ones after that so that they can work out whats best for the fans in terms of updates. They are still enjoying the expansion of Reaper of Souls and are really focusing on making that foundation as strong as they can before they think about working on the next expansion for Diablo.
Interview with Tom Chilton
Tom Chilton is a game director on World of Warcraft and also the Vice President of Blizzard Entertainment. They are working on a lot of different PvP things at the moment and working on creating new mounts and pets and battle areas for the new expansion along with for the patches. Even though they have only just released the new expansion they are starting to think about the next one already. He has also been slightly involved with the filming in the sense that they know what story line they are going with. The filming has just finished and post production on it has begun, but Blizzard are pretty much leaving it up to Legendary to sort everything out and they are merely keeping up to date with it to ensure the two companies are gelling correctly.
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