Category Archives: greg-street

Ghostcrawler on the philosophy behind the Mists of Pandaria talent trees

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Greg Street, aka Ghostcrawler (the lead systems designer), has posted some comments today dealing with the philosophy behind the talent system changes in Mists of Pandaria. He makes note that Blizzard's been getting a lot of feedback on these changes and that it wants more. (And he's serious, too -- the devs all do listen to what the community is saying.)

Some of the more interesting points include that the new system really is giving us fewer choices overall but making sure that the choices we have actually matter. This has been a fundamental shift that Blizzard has been moving toward for the past few years, away from the cookie-cutter builds and non-choice choices. Greg even goes as far to say, "Look, we tried the talent tree model for seven years. We think it's fundamentally flawed and unfixable."

That's a pretty huge thing for Blizzard to admit; kudos to Blizzard for realizing this and talking openly about it.

The full post after the break.

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Ghostcrawler on the philosophy behind the Mists of Pandaria talent trees originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mists of Pandaria live developer Q&A transcript

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Blizzard held a Mists of Pandaria live developer Q&A this evening. It was moderated by Community Manager Zarhym, with most of the questions being answered by Cory "Mumper" Stockton and Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street. The questions ran the gamut from serious to silly and offered a lot of great insight into the upcoming expansion and the inner workings of the development team. Highlights include, but are not limited to:
  • The new Pandaria faction hubs
  • New guild levels and perks
  • New talent system
  • Pet Battle system, including a possible spectator mode
  • The possible abolishing of prime glyphs
  • Ghostcrawler's feelings on #OccupyGregStreet
  • Matticus. Just ... Matticus.
The developers have already expressed interest in holding more of these chats, and I know I'm all in favor of it. For more information on the content of this evening's chat, check the official site, or stick with us after the break for a complete transcript.

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Mists of Pandaria live developer Q&A transcript originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Everything is Ghostcrawler’s fault with #OccupyGregStreet

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Greg Street, better known as Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer on World of Warcraft), is at the center of a vast game designer conspiracy ruining the in-game lives of millions of players. Or so goes the popular theory espoused by the exploding Twitter hashtag #OccupyGregStreet spoofing (what else?) the Occupy Wall Street movement.

As Mike Sacco explained in WoW Insider's back room chat, the joke originated from a conversation he'd had at BlizzCon with Narci (@druidis4fite) of Flavor Text, and as far as I can tell, the first tweets are from Narci and @malgrim on the con's second day. WoW Insider's first tweet with the hashtag went live around 1:00 this morning. Things snowballed from there and reached new levels of hilarity when the official World of Warcraft Twitter account (@warcraft) got in on the joke.

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Everything is Ghostcrawler's fault with #OccupyGregStreet originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Patch 4.3: Epic gems and more on the Deathwing encounter from Ghostcrawler

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Plaintively waiting for epic gems? They're on the way in patch 4.3 -- and the mechanic to obtain them is a little different this time around, according to Lead Systems Designer Greg Street, aka Ghostcrawler. In an interview with Tankspot, Ghostcrawler clarified how those epic gems are going to work.

"The way we're hoping to set it up, and we kind of have this working but things could change before we go live, is when you kill a boss on normal or heroic mode, each player gets a geode, and when they open the geode there's a chance they may find an epic gem inside. If not, it'll have blue gems or something like that," he said. Along with the scoop on epic gems, Ghostcrawler talked a bit about the upcoming legendary daggers and how they will work, as well as the Deathwing encounter.

For those wondering if the Deathwing encounter will be challenging, it certainly appears so -- and Deathwing himself will change from how we've seen him so far in game. Rather than the plate-wearing, mammoth-chinned beast we're accustomed to seeing, Deathwing will be hurt and resemble something Ghostcrawler calls "Cthulhu Deathwing." The entry for the Deathwing raid will be in the Caverns of Time, along with all other 4.3 instances.

For more on the Deathwing encounter, epic gems, tank threat and other 4.3 information, check out Tankspot's full interview.
Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Look at what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!

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Patch 4.3: Epic gems and more on the Deathwing encounter from Ghostcrawler originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 19 Sep 2011 03:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dev Watercooler: Rate of change

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Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street's newest Dev Watercooler just went live today, discussing all manner of timing and the design process behind updating the game. This Dev Watercooler is perhaps my favorite Ghostcrawler has ever written because it eschews the wrappings of a news post and instead focuses on the actual mechanics and thought processes behind the trials and tribulations of updating and changing such a massive game.

The post starts off with some general technical information about how WoW works based on its client-server relationships and why the game works the way it does. From there, Ghostcrawler begins to discuss different time frames that Blizzard looks to when deciding when and how to update the game. Time frames run the gamut from patches to exploits, which get little to no attention in terms of announcements, and class balance, which mixes parts of expansion announcements and brand new changes that fundamentally alter a class.

If you've ever had an inkling of interest in how game design works and the thought processes that go into keeping a game like WoW running as smoothly as it does, this is the post to read.

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Dev Watercooler: Rate of change originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Sep 2011 22:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ghostcrawler reveals upcoming class changes in Cataclysm

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Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has posted the blog post I think most of us have been waiting for ever since Cataclysm went live. It features a summary of where the dev team sees the PvE and PvP games at this point, including some analysis of various classes and specs, and some planned changes for those specs that are underperforming and overperforming.

In PvE, Ghostcrawler mentions that Blizzard is mostly happy with the tank classes and notes that while healers do have it a bit hard, this is intentional. Heroics are meant to be a challenge. As for DPS, he offered that some classes, such as arcane mages and marksman and beast mastery hunters, are too low in their damage, while others, such as shadow priests and fire and frost mages, are being watched closely before final judgment is made on their numbers.

In PvP, Ghostcrawler says Blizzard is satisfied with the decreased emphasis on healing prevention and burst damage. Crowd control and dispel mechanics, especially offensive dispels, may see some PvP nerfs, and priests will specifically be getting some PvP buffs.

Stats also got some mention. A lot of stats are being neglected by some classes, and the dev team wants to fix this. Mastery will be either buffed or completely revamped for many specs, such as unholy death knights and retribution paladins. Haste may be made to scale with more attacks, such as Lacerate, Slam, and Steady Shot, in order to make the stat more desirable to certain specs.

Check after the break for the complete text of Ghostcrawler's post, including a list of specifically planned (but not finalized) class changes for future patches.

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Ghostcrawler reveals upcoming class changes in Cataclysm originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 27 Dec 2010 21:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Light and How to Swing It: BlizzCon paladin info roundup

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Please send screenshots as well as any comments to my email at gregg@wow.com.

So this is pretty much going to be a collection of blurbs from the BlizzCon 2010 class Q&A panel. Some questions that were asked throughout the day were things that have come up in the past, but others had new information that hadn't even hit the beta servers yet. The panel members from left to right consisted of Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street (WoW lead systems designer), Kris Zierhut (WoW senior technical game designer), Owen Landgren (WoW game designer), Ion Hazzikostas (WoW game designer) and Chris Kaleiki (WoW associate game designer).

I went back and tried to do a much more thorough job at transcribing the information than we do in our live blogs (because none of us can type as fast as Ghostcrawler speaks). Also, I've added a "too long didn't read" (TLDR) version of each question at the beginning for those of you who don't read the whole post before commenting. For the rest of you, there is a full transcript as well as links I've found to videos of the panel on YouTube and linked directly to where the question is asked, if you want to actually see what was happening. This isn't official video, so it might get pulled for copyright issues, but until then, it's a great reference.

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The Light and How to Swing It: BlizzCon paladin info roundup originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BlizzCon 2010: Day 2 round-up

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Day 2 at BlizzCon 2010 saw the two most traditionally popular panels (the class Q&A and the general Q&A) go live, but there was plenty at the convention to keep you busy even if you were among the two or three people there not interested in developer panels.

Gallery: BlizzCon 2010: Booths and show floor


Gallery: BlizzCon 2010: Charity silent auction


Gallery: BlizzCon 2010: Art gallery


Gallery: BlizzCon 2010: Retro Arcade

BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!

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BlizzCon 2010: Day 2 round-up originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sun, 24 Oct 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BlizzCon 2010: Class Q&A panel liveblog

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The class Q&A panel will go live in roughly 20 minutes, so get ready. We'll be liveblogging every minute of it past the cut! I'm afraid you guys are stuck with me again, but the other writers have already warned me that liveblogging any Ghostcrawler panel usually results in fingers falling off by the end, so I've taken the precaution of arranging some Motrin and heat packs off to the side of the computer.

I type at 127 words per minute. Bring it, Dr. Street.

BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!

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BlizzCon 2010: Class Q&A panel liveblog originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 23 Oct 2010 14:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A City of Heroes-style mentoring system "in the long-term plan" for Cataclysm

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UPDATE: The Escapist has posted the full text of their interview with Ghostcrawler, so I've replaced the "abridged" version with the actual exchange instead.

Those of you who've played other MMOs (yes, they exist) might recall a feature from City of Heroes (yes, CoH did it before EQ2) that let you temporarily level down your character to a friend's level, allowing you to do any kind of level-relevant content together. Well, guess what? Blizzard is planning to let you do the same thing in a Cataclysm content patch, avoiding the type of situation you see above.

The Escapist recently interviewed Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street about Cataclysm, and this exchange took place:
Ghostcrawler:
A very simple thing we've done is just put on your character panel what phase you're in. So that you can look and be like "Oh, so the reason I can't see you is because we're in different phases." Long-term, we're trying to work on a system where you can actually go back and forward a little bit. You might be able to scale your character down levels in order to go play with a friend, and even redo quests that you've done before.

Part of the reason we're able to do that is because of the technology we originally developed for heirloom items, which are items that scale. And then for the Cataclysm expansion, we've changed spells, so they also scale with level. So instead of having ranks now, your fireball will just get more powerful as you gain levels. So since you can scale both class spells and items really easily, now we think we can actually let you lower your level down if you want to play with somebody else.

I kinda wanted to have that for Cataclysm launch, but it's a feature we're working on.

John Funk:
So do you think that's saying that, like cross-server dungeons, it might be patched in before the next expansion?

Ghostcrawler:
Yeah. I mean, we gotta get this one out the door first to know how much we need to do for the patches that come afterwards, but it's definitely in the long-term plan.
We hadn't heard anything about this feature before, but it sounds great -- this way, you can play with a lowbie friend without drastically reducing his experience gain, and you'll always have something to do together. Heck, it could even pave the way for making old raids relevant again. I'm excited to see how this plays out!
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.

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A City of Heroes-style mentoring system "in the long-term plan" for Cataclysm originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 20 Aug 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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