Posts by GregBoffins

  • Blizzard cuts

    Quote from Zacker

    Along the lines of Izuno, I am fairly sure that this is like 90% related to WoW support personnel. Considering the significant reductions in userbase and the fact that WoW is now quite mature, it is not unexpected. They are still actively hiring people as much as always so I see no reason to take this as a general fear of Blizzard going down or anything like that.

    It does say in the article it IS 90% of support staff

  • Blizzard cuts

    Yeah I can see that as a fairly good reason.

    According to this article in 2008 (yeah it's a few years old but you'll get the idea) http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i ... tory=17062 in 2008 EU and NA subs combined totaled 4.5 million.

    EU sub income = 40,060,000 (20.03 USD at today's exchange based on a 15 EU month subscription)

    NA sub income = 37,375,000 (14.95 USD for today's monthly subscription)

    Cataclysm sales = 300,000,000 (based on 60USD a copy and 5 million sales) http://www.playerattack.com/news/2011/0 ... y-popular/

    tally = 377,435,000

    377 million might seem like a lot but when you factor in wages of employees on the wow team, costs of all the support staff around the world. Blizzard have offices every where to support different languages. Server costs and so on would definitely eat in to that easily.

  • Blizzard cuts

    I wouldn't be surprised if it were contracts too that didn't get renewed.

    Diablo 3 ramping down, I assume Mysts of Pandaria is ramping down too if a beta is here in a few months.

    So I guess it makes sense to let go 60 employees across a few projects.

    (I've been let go twice so I am more than sympathetic with the chaps now looking for work)

  • [HP] ~ 3D Sketchbook Thread

    Hey [HP] Great stuff

    I have a question though. Normally when I do a high poly I use floaters for most of my details (99% of it) but I noticed in your high poly you cut out the section where the small bolts/screws go in to the side of the mesh, how do you cut then out, and then how to handle the cleaning up process to keep it nice and tidy when you tesselate. Or do you use mudbox/zbrush to cut it out, which in that case it's quite tidy and clean. Never really thought to use those programs to hard surface modelling.

    If you're not sure what I mean when I get home from work I'll circle a little section and upload it

    Cheers

    Z

  • Is this Doom 4?

    Quote from KoKo5oVaR

    That was the reason I got in to the games industry, sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. What a huge pile of baloney that turned out to be

    Man the dream is not over, you can still try to be a drug dealer on the streets and get a nice squat

    I guess I should move to France then.

  • Diablo 3

    Oh i haven't played for 3 days. I didn't realize patch 13 was out.

    Now I've been talking out of my arse

    I'll have to update and try it out at some point and give some notes on it. That does look like a quickly slapped together UI for the skill system, I prefer the previous version.

  • Diablo 3

    Quote from Taylor

    I logged onto the beta again today and a lot has changed. As I’ve said in a few other responses I’m largely okay with removing attribute allocation and permanent skills. I see them as traps for newbies that promote cookie-cutter builds over experimentation. But man, this new new skill system is proper Fisher-Price.By default you can’t even pick what skills you want in each slot; the game has an ideal control layout and puts constraints on what abilities can go where. This massive clunky system only seems to exist to undermine character customisation in the name of “accessibility.” You can turn this off in options (“elective mode” – you will want to do this) but that won't stop its other characteristic of locking out abilities 15 seconds after they’re assigned (to stop hot-swapping). So, for example, if you want to swap two abilities around on your hot-bar it will take you 30 seconds, and then you’ll have to wait another 15 to use the last skill you assigned. This lock happens in town, too.

    They’ve also added in Runestones now but you can’t experiment with them in beta because they’re all no-brainer upgrades. The other big change this patch are new item affixes based around status effects, so the chance of getting a useable item has dropped again.

    I haven't experienced the clunky feeling of where you can't allocate skills? Maybe that's a setting I had turned off from the start.

    I quite like the simplified skill system. Being quiet a big wow player it's a nice change of pace of not having 20 abilities to use all the time.

    Cooky cutter, maybe for the beta, but I have tried quite a few different Barbarian builds including 2 handed, shield with 1h and the always fun dual wielding. With each build using different combinations of skills. (not forgetting gear I was playing around with strength and agility for different specs)I never had this freedom in Diablo 2 and the fact you can change your skills is pretty awesome. it's only because of the last patch in Diablo 2 that you can reset your skill tree, once.

    Having the 30 second cool down is fine for balancing. During the early phase of the beta you could swap your skills at as you pleased so you always ran around with the skill window opened, not really a good way to play the game to be honest. Then they introduced the skill reset shrine so you had to find one of them to change your skills, I think they've found a nice in between.

    Rune stones have been there for some time that'll really add to the customisation of characters.

  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

    Quote from Thrik

    I think the main problem with third-party packs is they do change the style to suit their own intentions, whereas obviously the official pack will completely match the original art direction. I don't like the idea of playing through the game and the pack creators not realising a certain texture they modified extensively looks stupid in certain places where it's used.