Longdale went to WoW.

https://massivelyop.com/2020/04/15/...cooped-up-by-blizzard-to-work-on-wow-classic/

They can have her.

 

Lols.

Not just WoW, but she's producing WoW Classic.

Wtf is she gonna do with that title?

I've suspected all along her "once in a life time opportunity" was either gtfo, or, play nice and we'll give you a 6 month severance to gtfo.

I still believe her big marketing push and all-in bet on bringing back former customers last year failed miserably, and she got the boot.

It's also likely she's so thoroughly trashed the eq2 brand no one will even consider buying the franchise.

Whatever.

WoW: "Sure, we'll hire you. You can produce our throw-back title, which requires that YOU CHANGE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT IT."

 

I imagine she will do some FV and TLE style servers. Both would be huge with the WoW classic fans.

 

You've been around for quite a while (because you won't effing go away). You've got name recognition (mostly people just don't like you enough to remember who you are). You have experience working on staple classics in the industry (titles long since past their prime with mostly bad reputations, but people recognize the names). Yeah, we might have a position for you (in a company that has no time for your b.s. and will likely burry you if you screw up). Welcome aboard (sinister cackle).

Is this failing upwards?

 

So...who wants to ask Kander and the others how it felt to not be good enough for even Blizzard?

 

It's actually a good fit for her. She's basically a cost manager for an immensely popular title that requires no creative direction. Her experience with tle/tlp concepts will be useful should Blizzard decide to roll some of those servers out.

Edit:
Upon reflection, Longdale bailing for this job is just as plausible as DBG canning her.

Either way, she's gone, so yay.

 

Oh man, my wife and I cracked up when we saw that. She's perfect for that spot and will fit right in with all of the shady, soulless suits already working there. I just hope they take Kander next.

 

I can imagine she might look into classic+ as has been talked about in the past. There are some areas and zones in classic wow that was never used and where they could put up a portal and add some new dungeons and raids.

Or shes gonna be supervise classic to tbc server transfer stuff.

 

Phew! Thank the gods she's gone to a title I will never play. Maybe she will shoulder-tap Kander once she gets her feet firmly under her desk. We can but hope!

 

Kander couldn't work in a place where releases are tested and polished.... "why do you test my code? REEEEEE"

 

Imo it's a good thing for both,

Blizzard get a producer with experience in succesful TLEs (EQ1, not EQ2). I'd expect they'll do a bunch of different flavours of classic WoW.
Holly gets a job where she might actually get to provide some input, as it's clear she isn't involved in EQ2.

The biggest loss imo is for EQ1 TLE world.

 

I believe the term is "percussive sublimation".

 

I don't think holly did a bad job.

EQ2 doesn't have the man power to possibly produce a good TLE. They try as hard as they can, it's not enough; but they're not ignorant to the issues.

I think that's the overall issue with EQ2, I don't think Kander is the greatest either or doing a good job persay. But, they at least work with what they've got in some senses.

Edit: I just wanna say Kander is not a bad developer when he's not at the helm, he used to do great things raiding wise back when he was just a lowly designer. On the same hand he also put 1k+ potency on items and allowed practiced procs to stack in ToV. He's not a leader.

I've been playing on the last couple of EQ2 TLE's, when Fyreflyte sends you a picture of over two thousand items being in one random folder with no indication of if it drops from raids, or heroics, or solo zones etc. You're then told you have like one day to make it all work, you just hit tag fabled apply x stats and hope it all works out because you don't have the time to do it.

I'm probably the worst offender at shitting on them on the live forums but, between Fyreflyte explaining a lot of it to me in detail and being told about some of the inner workings at DBG by a few past employee's i've been friends with. I don't honestly think Holly did bad things or had ill intent.

I think she will be great at Blizzard, they're not redesigning the wheel, they're trying to reproduce the wheel over and over again. She will be great at that, gimmick after gimmick. That's what EQ1 TLE's are built on now to get you to come back over and over again.

I think at this point they've designed themselves into a unfixable hole in EQ2 by "breaking the rules" (I believe Kander said?). Holly should've stopped that, but i'd imagine her understanding of inner game mechanics/spells in EQ2 was not present at all. How can she possibly know if you put 1k potency on items certain spells like fiery blast/VC would just stop working? Or does she trust her top designer who knows more about eq2 and it's systems than anyone on earth (Probably) knows somewhat what he's talking about.

 

From what I understand, Holly also worked with people from the Fires of Heaven forum (and probably some others) to try to design upcoming EQ1 TLE server concepts, which I thought was cool.

 

I agree with much you said here. I don't know Holly or any of the team personally, so I'm not influenced by that (the 'breaking the rules" business was actually a talking point from Longdale - for example, see the Fading interview).

I also have absolutely no clue about how the mechanics of the team operate internally, and I don't particularly care.

There is absolutely no way anyone is going to convince me that Longdale was sitting there completely oblivious to what Kander was doing to the game, both from design and business practices standpoints. And if I'm wrong about that and she indeed had no clue, that's a massive deficiency in itself.

The practical realities are fine as far as empathy goes. I don't think anybody knocks the team for being grossly under-resourced and most understand the implications of that.

I can also tolerate the dumb design decisions, but I'm not going to excuse away the dishonest business practices and gaslighting by either Longdale or Kander.

/shrug

 

I was thrilled when I learned Akil is the lead class and character combat designer at Intrepid. That is a massive undertaking (64 unique classes - primary class + secondary class). They put a great dev in to oversee that stuff.

 

With what I know about the conversations happening between darkpaw, and their overlords to produce more income from these games at any cost I really think you're missing important details. If you knew about some of the planned ways to up income, people would be in absolute arms. I don't think she is ignorant to the facts, I think she was told produce x money or lose your job, same with the remainder of them. As I said in another thread: you put 1k potency on items suddenly you delete auto attack and procs/poisons. Something that doesn't require real life P2W transactions.

I think at the end of the day a lot of these decisions of course come from the root of the issue which is just funneling as much money as possible from these games immediately without concerning themselves with the long term effects. Obviously not doing things like adding 1k potency to each item keeps the game profitable/alive longer. But what does it do for instant gratification blue suit who wants to look good for his boss? Does he want his numbers to be higher or lower than before the merger?

 

Yeah, she actively lurked that section. I'm over there as well, there is lots of good conversations about MMO's and also asking about wether Brad spend his money this week on cocaine or a hooker.

 

Every employee, after about 30 days post sell-out, knew what kind of company they were working for, since the customers could see it. If they've chosen to stay for love of the game or lack of other options, that's fine. They still know who they're working for and the tenuous position they're in.

I'm positive Holly was given a goal, not a detailed plan of how to achieve it. She chose to be deceptive. She chose to outright lie. She chose to not rein in destructive members of The Team. She chose to **** on paying customers with all of those decisions.

So she deserves every bit of criticism she's gotten or will get for how she's handled the franchise, especially EQ2.

Do I wish her ill? No, of course not. But I do hope another company doesn't make the mistake of giving her sole discretion over the creative process of anything.