You know that part at the end of raid night when the final boss is dead and you』re done handing out loot and everyone kind of goes their separate ways? Yeah, this is one of those times.
We just came off of a great BlizzCon. We had so many different games to talk about, and we were thrilled at the reception of Warlords of Draenor. It was great to meet or reconnect with so many of you. I love BlizzCon dearly, which makes it so hard to tell you that this will be my last one, or at least my last one up on stage. An opportunity has come my way, and I have made the very tough decision to move on from Blizzard.
I wanted to thank all of you for being a part of this grand quest. I have said a hundred times that having passionate gamers, including the angry ones, is a far better place to be than having a community that doesn』t care. You all care. Like us, you want the game to be the best that it can be. So I ask you to keep on providing your feedback. I promise (and I rarely promise!) that the developers care very much about what you have to say.
I』ll be out there, and I can』t imagine it will be that hard to find me.
Hugs, Ghostcrawler
P.S. No, you can』t have a pony. Or a moose. Or a mantis shrimp. Or a tardigrade. Or a crab. Keep trying though.
鬼蟹加入WOW團隊正值WLK公布還未上線的階段,擺在他面前的是一款成功運營了3年多的世界上玩家最多最有影響的網路遊戲,他的任務是讓這款遊戲的壽命繼續延續下去乃至發揚光大。對於網路遊戲而言,完成版本上線並取得成功只是萬事的開始,運營階段才是最考驗團隊的。在WOW團隊之前成功的網路遊戲,UO、EQ、Asheron"s Call、Dark Age of Camelot,真正風光的歲月也只是三、四年時光,所以這項工作對於任何人來講都是一個巨大的挑戰,畢竟同環境下沒有人做過,誰也沒有經驗。
至少在11年之前,WOW這個項目開發涉及內部30多個部門,最上面的三巨頭裡根本輪不到他——副總裁France Pierce、產品總監J. Allen Brack、開發總監Tom Chilton。鬼蟹是J. Allen Brack下屬的設計組的頭目,這個團隊在09年GDC奧斯汀大會上披露的規模一共37人,負責職業、專業、道具、等級以及遊戲內重大事件等的設計工作。這個團隊顯然不是一言堂,比如你看WOW官網這篇「《熊貓人之謎》增益效果與減益效果設計 」的開發日誌(http://www.battlenet.com.cn/wow/zh/blog/5538439/):
2)Greg Street在自己Facebook主頁的說法是,A great opportunity for something new and exciting
3)按照Greg Street自己在World of Warcraft所扮演的職責描述:Handles everything from classes to mechanics to items to trade skills to achievements to UI design, and that includes the game balance,當然還有一項非常重要的工作:to foster communications between developers and players。對於Greg Street而言,不管玩家在遊戲中玩得爽不爽,愜意還是憤慨,他都是lightning rod
4)按照The Blizzcon 2013透露出來的信息,Greg Street的職責被描述為:oversees roughly half of the World of Warcraft designers, including the class, item, profession, PvP, and encounter teams. His teams also design the user interface for the game and handle all of the number-crunching and balance fine-tuning that powers the game』s combat and gameplay systems,這個描述和Greg Street對自己的界定差不多
5)WOW Insider對Greg Street有段評述:More than anything, to WoW fans, Greg was a bastion of community interaction, someone who worked tirelessly to improve the dialog between the developers and the community,最核心的部分就是界定了一個概念:bastion of community interaction。
Wow Pedia對此還有一段更直接的陳述:Since signing up with Twitter, Greg takes time every day to answer questions from other twitter users regarding WoW design
巴爾的摩太陽報(The Baltimore Sun)對Greg Street專訪,Greg Street對為什麼他這麼熱衷和用戶交流給出了一個很棒的回復:So often the players and the designers are separated by layers of PR people and community managers and everything gets diluted and filtered。Players want to give us feedback, and social media is a great way to have a conversation with normal people
但從此以後,這種現象將不復存在了,escapist magazine對Greg Street做了一個相對傷感的陳述:Love him or hate him, Ghostcrawler will no longer be Blizzard"s unofficial forum mouthpiece
6)按照Linkedin的資料,Greg Street的當前職位顯示Lead Game Designer at someplace cool,而在曾就職職位顯示Lead Systems Designer, World of Warcraft at Blizzard Entertainment和Lead Game Designer at Ensemble Studios。
關於此有兩則猜測,一則是來自Joystip,原句是I heard that Greg Street was going to Riot Games(League of Legends 開發者);另外一則來自2P,原句是A Former Blizzard Staff (Greg Street?) Comes to Kingsoft Game Studio As a Guest
Polygon對此有一段引述:An opportunity has come my way, and I have made the very tough decision to move on from Blizzard (當然論壇裡面還是有聲音認為Greg Street在WOW表現下滑的現在離職是種不負責任的行為,是想在自己聲譽正隆的時候把自己再賣個好價錢)
7)Gamefaqs在World of Warcraft一欄有個關於Greg Street離開後對WOW影響的投票,票源有限(200票左右),結果依次是:
A,Stay subscribed,67.94%
B,Stay un-subscribed,16.27%
C,Thinking about re-subbing,12.44%
D,Unsure about staying,3.35%
8)關於Greg Street的離職對未來WOW的設計是否有影響,來自Greg Street在Twitter的回答:I would not expect many changes to the game as a result of my departure. We always design from a place of consensus and collaboration