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Tag: world of warcraft

The MMO Subscription Cull: 2018 Edition

Posted on January 19, 2018April 3, 2023 by Gazimoff

Over the last few years, I’ve developed a bit of a January ritual. I look at the games coming out and think about what I want to play, and there’s plenty to look forward to in 2018. But I only have so much time to play games, which means something else has to give.

Sometimes it means that a free-to-play game gets shelved for a while, but it also makes sense to cut back on subscriptions. After all, why spend £10 a month for a game that I don’t even have time to log into? That way I get both more time and more money.

So, without further ado, here’s what’s on the chopping block this year. And although some of the titles may be obvious, the reasons why might surprise you.

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Blizzard Engineering: The Nuggets from Blizzcon

Posted on November 12, 2017 by Gazimoff

It’s not often when you hear engineers talk about the games they’ve been working on. It’s like a peek inside the machine, or under the hood. So it’s no surprise that I was pretty geeked out when I heard that two CodeCraft panels would be running at this year’s Blizzcon. As it turns out, the sessions were a trove of information on how Blizzard develops and operates its games.

I was surprised by just how much Overwatch has led the way in new techniques for the studio, being a testing ground for everything from having no downtime on patch days, to using a hybrid cloud infrastructure. Then there’s World of Warcraft, and what it’s like to manage a 10+ year-old codebase on a living game. Under that, it was surprising to discover just how much falls into Battle.net, and that’s without considering the areas covered by Service Support or Web & Mobile teams.

If I was going to ask for more from the presentations, it’d mainly be about the architecture. As a former software engineer turned enterprise architect, I’d love to discover if they have an enterprise domain model in place, or if Blizzard uses a methodology like TOGAF. Putting my personal asks aside, here’s some of the juicy nuggets from the two Q&A sessions held at Blizzcon 2017.

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Warcraft: Legion – Endgame Perfected?

Posted on September 23, 2016 by Gazimoff

wowscrnshot_091816_141613With a few notable exceptions, levelling in MMOs is a temporary experience. We get a few weeks of meaty questing and cinematics, followed by months of waiting for content updates. It’s the Achilles Heel of the theme-park experience – rich and deep while it lasts, but bland and repetitive once the cap is reached.

I’ve made no secret about how much I was put off Mists of Pandaria, seeing a small forest of exclamation marks to mark the daily quest hub, as if to signify where I’d be spending the rest of the expansion. Warlords of Draenor tried to mix it up with the Garrison experiment, but it left me feeling less like a hero and more like a middle manager.

Which is why I’m surprised with how I feel about Legion. Sure, there’s an element of nostalgia here, as familiar NPCs play out a story that feels more like a main event than a timeline-based distraction. But it’s also been – and continues to be – hugely enjoyable to play, and that includes the time I’ve spent dancing around at cap.

How has Legion pulled off this magic trick? Looking deeper, I think there’s a clever blend of design choices at work, all acting together to make that endgame experience as frictionless and immersive as possible.

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