1977
I am a former Blizzard Entertainment employee who was laid off last year. AMA you want!
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Dr_Wreck74 karma
Why the heck did you go the interesting route of making Sarah Kerrigan human just to make her zerg again inside of 4 missions? Even my biggest blizzard fanboy friends were totally flabbergasted about that.
BlizzardThrowaway110 karma
Something I had absolutely no control over. That would be the devs. :/
BlizzardThrowaway12 karma
They do, however it was because of said internships that lead to the release of some project schedules. I don't think they do that anymore, or are at least very choosy.
nanneedaname8 karma
How are the devs set up? Are there a lot of dev teams, or a team per game? And what kind of organizational methodology is used (agile, waterfall etc.)
BlizzardThrowaway15 karma
There's a team for each game, Team 1, 2, 3 etc. There's a Battle.net team, art department, cinematics, etc. I believe they utilize both Agile and Waterfall methods as Producers.
BlizzardThrowaway28 karma
lol it's funny because I was actually on the Battle.net QA team, but was laid off before D3 was released, so I blame it on everyone else.
Ranger1075 karma
Thank you for doing this AMA! Huge StarCraft fan here!
Zerg, Protoss, or Zerg?
Why, why didn't you just let Sarah save Jim ?
soobin3 karma
How's new job hunting going? I dont know if there is a big market for game QA people. What is that, find bugs in games?
BlizzardThrowaway12 karma
Yeah, there actually is a decent market for QA people since you can test pretty much anything. The problem is that most gaming companies want you on contract until their game is released and the they dump you. That was the good thing about Blizz, they at least kept you on permanently. Unfortunately jobs in Cali suck balls and there's so much competition that it's hard to land a decent one. Still on the hunt, though!
savage1ma2 karma
Ever think of staying in the business and just swapping companies? Theres a few out there with decent MMO's that have quite good userbases. I can as a matter of fact say atleast 10 of the GMs/QAs and guys from the HR department at vivendi/blizzard i knew back in France now work for Wargaming.net and on other MMO's.
electronicat2 karma
did you know of anyone abusing their position as GM ? free stuff to guild, hints to friends ?
BlizzardThrowaway3 karma
Oh yeah, there were plenty of idiots there and they always got caught. We have a department called IA (Internal Affairs). There wasn't much you could get away with if you were trying.
mekimillion2 karma
As the market for MMOs changes (especially with the free to play releases of major games like Planetside 2) Do you think that Blizzard will be moving away from their pay to play WoW model or even into free to play territory as time goes on?
thinkingthought2 karma
If you followed WoW, any idea how much player dropped there's been in PVP?
Mostlyatnight_mostly8 karma
I think he means how much has the PvP population decreased in the last few years.
BlizzardThrowaway11 karma
Oh yeah, I'm not sure what's up with that. I'm a big PvPer myself and I have noticed that there just aren't a lot of people participating anymore. I think it's because they've made the game, shall I say, too easy for people. It's lost a bit of it's charm from back in the day when you had to put in some hard work to get your reward.
Wizzrd932 karma
Is it true Thrall is the next xpac boss? And Voljin will rule org? And the cap will be 100?
BubblerFett1 karma
how much did you get paid in qa? i am in software qa, and my bros friends and friends bros work at blizzard, and i always wondered if its worth working there. I am just too lazy to write an essay lol. I hear they pay like ~35k for developers there :/ but with good bonuses
BlizzardThrowaway2 karma
If you're hired into QA from outside the company, it's $12/hour. Hired from inside the company, it's $14/hour. I made more as a GM, but that was because of tenure.
dstenersen102 karma
How do you like your eggs in the morning?
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