Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

The Twitter community had an impromptu AMA with Mark and he surprisingly answered their questions. Many of his answers answered many questions I had. The biggest being Blizzard runs itself and Mark is still friends with Michael Morhaime.

KC_Rhino: Any tasty ideas you can share with us that just never made it?
Mark Kern: I shared one earlier. When you died, we had wanted to create a whole zone for questing just for dead chars
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722594680504918016

PhoenixGamesT: Do you think the all the shit blizzard is doing is because of activision?
Mark Kern: Nope. Blizzard runs itself.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722558613206634496

TheWindMask: [Blizzard] stopped listening to what people actually want in the game and bend over backwards for the vocal minority for flying and such
Mark: I remember a lot of people asking for flying. It was a minority?
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722240750516211713

MornelitheVT: I personally never wanted flight, I thought making it from zone to zone on foot was part of the learning process.
Mark: Flying, and LFG and teleportation have really bad adverse effects on socialization and sense of world.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722242406649700353

Mark retweets the following lending credibility to the stats:
just_lightman: 200k is 16% of current active playerbase in last 30 days except China & Russia, according to http://warcraftrealms.com/censusplus.php Great work!
https://twitter.com/just_lightman/statu ... 7618199552

Stooooooooolen: Do you think [Blizzard] would change some specs ? For example Ret isn't possible to play on Vanilla :/
Mark: if they put their mind to it, they could do a polish pass.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722463307110555649

KeftenkDuras: Why didn't Blizzard make servers cross-region like Nostalrius? Language barriers? Other limitations? That's community to the MAX tbh
Mark: datacenter to datacenter iinks were quite slow back then. Syncing chars a nightmare.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722456468520198146

KeftenkDuras: It's kind of a Blizzard curse tbh. Look at D2 too. Never has been balanced even after the 'holy-grail' 1.10 patch.
Mark: You can really make a game feel sterile in the pursuit of perfect balance.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722458269030060032

KeftenkDuras: Do you think if legacy servers were made they would still be different from the original? i.e. economy exploitation, bugs, items etc
Mark: I think they'd have to take a hard look at it, but fewer changes the better. Slippery slope, etc.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722455269620330496

In reference to the ideas Mark gave during his PC Invasion interview
Katix88: neat idea but from a developer standpoint the sheer idea seems like hell to do. Do it the correct way that is
Mark: Yep, its work. I don't want to understate that.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722496333127360512

triggeringyou: I've had the theory that anyone that made any of the stuff that made Blizzard great is gone. Is this true?
Mark: A lot of senior people are gone. The original mgt largely gone.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722593036601929728
Mark: Ya, Metzen is still there. Samwise too.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722593376600653824

Mark: We used to treat the Blizzard brand like "Gucci" ...wasn't suppose to be super mass market. "Don't be too greedy" we used to say.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722593299555418113

gregor19009: I think you and other old devs mentioned that MC was put together in a short amount of time. Was that post art assests?...
Mark: Yep, we had build nearly all the dungeons before we had much gameplay figured out. So a lot of art assets lying around.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722593734748057600

gregor19009: or did you design the entire area during that crunch period?
mark: We had a lot of dungeons "in progress" but not ready to release for Raids. Continued to tune them and post them post launch.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722593998863347712

gregor19009: Trying to figure out what's casued the content bottle neck for new dungeons over the past two expansions
Mark: Ah, okay. Well, raids have to be play tested by the most senior designers. They can only work on one at a time (back then)
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722594540721311744

DonRadkos: Why was the Emerald Dream completely scrapped btw?
Mark: No idea. Any decision to do so was after my time.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722594773047975936

TheWindMask: I feel like if there were legacy wow servers people would feel more entitled to check out the new content patches, what about you?
Mark: Yes, I believe people would ping-pong between legacy and new servers.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722621543650492418

Rjarriaga1: If legacy servers were to happen. Would you go back to playing wow?
Mark: Yes, my wife and I would both play again.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722636479051075585

Bitehattori: What classes did you play back then?
Mark: Hunter, Warlock and Paladin.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722655470633295872

Mark: Whoa...can't believe Ghostcrawler said that.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722642464507568129

What GhostCrawl said on LOL boards... dayam...

Different approaches work for different products, and I don't want to second guess the WoW team. Let's just say that after working on Age of Empires and World of Warcraft for a total of 16 years, it's really refreshing to work on a game where I don't have to worry whether someone's grandmother can pick it up or not.

DaFuzZ7: Can you explain the mystery of the children of goldshire? Its always fascinated me!
Mark: The kids were named after the dungeon mesh designers.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722644460174225408

regarding Mark's current relationship with Michael Morhaime...
Rrhoads59: like you know him? You can say "hey what's up, here's this petition, retail sucks"?
Mark: Yes, we talk on occasion and he was my direct boss when I was at Blizzard.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722645612647342080

Regarding Mike agreeing to see Mark.
CyphraTv: Would you tell us if he declined?
Mark: Yes, I'll tell you what happens.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722647225734721536

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Volume 2
Volume 3

Regarding...

Rrhoads59: like you know him? You can say "hey what's up, here's this petition, retail sucks"?
Mark: Yes, we talk on occasion and he was my direct boss when I was at Blizzard.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/722645612647342080

If someone has a Twitter account could you ask Mark, "If Mike proposed hiring you for a legacy server team lead position, who you?"

Nice of you to sum it all up. Twitter can be a pain to follow up. I'll post that question its good.

Interesting -- thanks

Oh wow, this is really insightful.

Thank you for posting this. I would of never seen it otherwise.

Just a heads up, I've already asked Mark "If Mike proposed hiring you for a legacy server team lead position, would you accept ?" Dont spam him

vaylane wrote:Just a heads up, I've already asked Mark "If Mike proposed hiring you for a legacy server team lead position, would you accept ?" Dont spam him

Yeah I was gonna say I sent it also.

vaylane wrote:Just a heads up, I've already asked Mark "If Mike proposed hiring you for a legacy server team lead position, would you accept ?" Dont spam him

Thanks! And thanks all. That might be an interesting topic of conversation when Mark meets with Mike. Wouldn't that be amazing?

awsome post, please keep this one updated for a collection of it all

thx for posting