Behind WarCraft III: An Interview with Campaign Designer David Fried

[Abelhawk]

Guys! My new Easter egg series has been a roaring success, and I'm so glad that everyone is enjoying learning about the hard-to-find secrets and behind-the-scenes stuff in WarCraft 3.

An actual developer and campaign/layout designer of WarCraft 3, David Fried, recently discovered my videos and began commenting on them, which was a huge honor. I emailed him, and he agreed to answer questions I had about the origins of the game as well as his experience working with Blizzard. I wrote up our correspondence into an interview form on my blog.

Check out the interview here! I hope you enjoy it!

 

[pyf]

Great interview imho. Congratulations.

I would suggest your post / interview be promoted to official News.
What do you think, guys ?


About Resurrection : it is most certainly Resurrection IV, for which no official PC version exist afaik. I know and played two fan-made variants of it for PC (one of them is *very* well-thought btw).


rotfl, Archimonde attacked by Nightelf tree s...tuff.

Risky jokes aside, it is the many great anecdotes evoked here, that make these interviews so enjoyable and worthwhile. They help us understand how things work at Blizzard.

Thanks again to the both of you, for making this super cool and very informative interview a reality.

 

[StoPCampinGn00b]

Could be news worthy. Had our Hive social media accounts feature it

 

[Silva]

dang, i really enjoyed the videos, keep'em coming.

 

[mrwhite-]

Amazing interview with interesting insight. Retweeted from my twitter and I think W3Arena.net did as well.

"My favorite race to play was the orcs, specifically for the Blademaster. He was such a broken champ and could singlehandedly dismantle a player's base with his invisibility and ridiculous crits" - Great that I am not the only one loving this. ^^

 

[Wareditor]

Really good interview!
Can't wait for your next video

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Quote from the article:

As to changing the campaign itself, I think there were a couple of levels that weren't as interesting as they could be, and for me, I felt the campaign was more about showing off a really crafted WarCraft 3 experience. So all of the levels where you just built a base and destroyed the enemy, I would have liked to have redone as something more interesting. In game development, there's always that feeling that "oh man, I could have done that so much better.

Oh HELL NO. That annoyed the fuck out of me in SC2. Every damn mission was on a time limit with goals other than conquering. It was so fucking annoying. I could never really get down and just enjoy playing the game at my pace, simply because the game kept nagging me about getting whatever was the McGuffin in that map.
I play strategy games to crush my opponents, not to do dumb fetch shores of modern MMOs all over again.

I hate it. Seriously, the mission design in the original Starcraft and WC3 were far superior to SC2 in terms of freedom and gameplay. These games had a much better balance between "normal" and "specific goal" missions. What is wrong with simple search & destroy missions? SC2's saving grace were the creative settings and the continuity between the missions, not the mission design itself.

 

[DracoL1ch]

Quote from the article:

Oh HELL NO. That annoyed the fuck out of me in SC2. Every damn mission was on a time limit with goals other than conquering. It was so fucking annoying. I could never really get down and just enjoy playing the game at my pace, simply because the game kept nagging me about getting whatever was the McGuffin in that map.
I play strategy games to crush my opponents, not to do dumb fetch shores of modern MMOs all over again.

I hate it. Seriously, the mission design in the original Starcraft and WC3 were far superior to SC2 in terms of freedom and gameplay. These games had a much better balance between "normal" and "specific goal" missions. What is wrong with simple search & destroy missions? SC2's saving grace were the creative settings and the continuity between the missions, not the mission design itself.

I believe it's matter of mind. When your players gonna waste thousands hours playing skirmishes with random people online, you barely want them to have all the same experience within campaign. It should be something more, something memorizing, something great and totally not routine.

 

[OutsiderXE]

I can understand Zwiebelchen. In my opinion each mission in itself was awesome, but to have so many time-limited missions wasn't a lot of fun. That's why I really enjoyed the Battlecruiser mission in space in WoL, even though it wasn't anything special.

 

[Tleno]

Well I really enjoyed these videos, I actually have an urge to replay the campaigns now! Say, you gonna post any updates on new vids in a single threads or what?

 

[pyf]

I hate it. Seriously, the mission design in the original Starcraft and WC3 were far superior to SC2 in terms of freedom and gameplay. These games had a much better balance between "normal" and "specific goal" missions. What is wrong with simple search & destroy missions? SC2's saving grace were the creative settings and the continuity between the missions, not the mission design itself.

SC has it all imho. Compelling story, dialogs of outstanding quality (ah, those briefings !), the sensation of freedom of play during missions, balance between classic vs infiltration missions... The campaigns are kind of a progressive tutorial (with limited tech tree etc...), but I never felt hampered when playing them.

WC3 is different imho. Dialogs are still good, but gesticulating 3D puppets during them are an issue imho. Story is still nice, but feels forced at times. I felt not dragged into the whole plot overall, despite great characterization (based on SC obviously). The "tutorial" stance is more perceptible. Missions are very nice too, but I missed the complete liberty I had felt in WCII ; it was not pure RTS here. Yet, I enjoyed WC3 as a whole.

I never played SC2 and do not wish to, based on gamer/player feedback.

Imho it shows 2000's video games are not 1990's ones.

what if yesterday's beloved classics had first been made in the 21st century

Now I am wondering what the 2020's will be made of, game wise.

 

[Tleno]

Quote from the article:

Oh HELL NO. That annoyed the fuck out of me in SC2. Every damn mission was on a time limit with goals other than conquering. It was so fucking annoying. I could never really get down and just enjoy playing the game at my pace, simply because the game kept nagging me about getting whatever was the McGuffin in that map.
I play strategy games to crush my opponents, not to do dumb fetch shores of modern MMOs all over again.

I hate it. Seriously, the mission design in the original Starcraft and WC3 were far superior to SC2 in terms of freedom and gameplay. These games had a much better balance between "normal" and "specific goal" missions. What is wrong with simple search & destroy missions? SC2's saving grace were the creative settings and the continuity between the missions, not the mission design itself.

I'd argue that this is the natural consequence of Blizzard RTS, Starcraft's in particular, design cues - while Warcraft 3 had items that could transition between levels but most weren't that irreplaceable, plus the fantasy setting is kinda ripe for adventure, meanwhile Starcraft 2 is mostly army-based so main aspects boil down to time management of economy, build orders and use of units of particular specialization in situations, say flanking badly defended from air locations with the use of banshees. While it gets pretty formulaic by LOTV, it still offers quite some replayability, and there are enough of slow-paced missions too.

Also, SC1 stands no chance to SC2 campaign gameplay-wise (though definitely beats it story-wise), it was a dull slog despite the story. WC3 RoC is alright, but FT is probably the best Blizz have ever pulled off.

SC has it all imho. Compelling story, dialogs of outstanding quality (ah, those briefings !), the sensation of freedom of play during missions, balance between classic vs infiltration missions... The campaigns are kind of a progressive tutorial (with limited tech tree etc...), but I never felt hampered when playing them.

WC3 is different imho. Dialogs are still good, but gesticulating 3D puppets during them are an issue imho. Story is still nice, but feels forced at times. I felt not dragged into the whole plot overall, despite great characterization (based on SC obviously). The "tutorial" stance is more perceptible. Missions are very nice too, but I missed the complete liberty I had felt in WCII ; it was not pure RTS here. Yet, I enjoyed WC3 as a whole.

I never played SC2 and do not wish to, based on gamer/player feedback.

Imho it shows 2000's video games are not 1990's ones.

what if yesterday's beloved classics had first been made in the 21st century

Now I am wondering what the 2020's will be made of, game wise.

That video looks pretty hilarious considering how great the Doom reboot turned out to be.

 

[pyf]

The video was done before Doom (4)'s release. Doom 3 had a slow pace, and a different feel. After long development hell and a major redesign, Doom (4) finally goes back to the fundamentals, with more added on top of them.

From Wikipedia :

" In April 2013, Kotaku published an exposé describing Doom 4 as trapped in "development hell". Citing connections to id, the article claims that Doom 4 has suffered under mismanagement, and that development was completely restarted in 2011. Inside sources described the pre-2011 version, which was to portray the uprising of hell on Earth, as heavily scripted and cinematic, comparing it to the Call of Duty franchise. The pre-2011 version was criticized as mediocre, but the sources also described the new version as "lame" and a "mess". Id's Tim Willits said during Quakecon 2013: "Every game has a soul. Every game has a spirit. When you played Rage, you got the spirit. And [Doom 4] did not have the spirit, it did not have the soul, it didn't have a personality.""

I highly suspect the developers took their cue from Brutal Doom. It seems gore sells (God of War III comes to mind here, also).



A few links of interest for video game designers :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_design
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_feel

David Fried already points it all out in his interview.

Game feel is of paramount importance. It is what makes the difference between a classic and its many clones, or a success and a failure.


1994 design tips by Tom Hall (of Apogee / 3D Realms fame)
- part one
- part two

 

[Abelhawk]

Say, you gonna post any updates on new vids in a single threads or what?

I post updates to my videos in this thread. This one was just for those who wanted to read the interview. Glad you like the videos!

 

[pyf]

Bad video game design made good : meet Default Dan

This indie game helps understand some unwritten rules, when designing 2D platformers.

the cake is a lie

Master Yoda says: " You must unlearn what you have learned. "

 

[Kyrbi0]

This was a really cool interview; I have had the great pleasure of having similar experiences, and it's always an honor/blast.

 

[robizeratul]

very interesting stuff, I just watched every of your videos!

 

[Emm-A-]

Unfortunately the site keeps on loading forever in my case... :/

 

[PurgeandFire]

Unfortunately the site keeps on loading forever in my case... :/

It was also posted here in our news (in case his blog isn't loading):
http://www.hiveworkshop.com/threads/developer-interview-campaign-designer-david-fried.279851/

 

[Emm-A-]

Thank you!