- Joined
- Nov 11, 2006
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- 7,518
One of our users, Abelhawk, recently created a youtube series to showcase the fascinating and hilarious easter eggs within Warcraft III's campaigns (check it out here!). David Fried, one of the campaign designers for Warcraft III, noticed those videos and contacted Abelhawk for a fun interview! Check it out below, or on Abelhawk's blog.
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I called 4-1-1 and asked for the number for Blizzard, and they gave it to me. I immediately called and asked if they were looking for anyone who had Macintosh experience (I was a big Mac person at the time). Lo and behold, they needed Mac QA testers for Diablo and Starcraft! I went in for an interview and immediately felt at home. Everyone was wearing T-shirts and jeans, and playing games. I knew I wanted to work there, and my background in computers and games made the interview a breeze. I got the job and started in QA, and while I was there for almost two years, I developed a knack for making neat test levels for Starcraft in StarEdit. I created a new co-op campaign map for Starcraft N64 called Resurrection, and it was very well received, so when Blizzard was looking for new level designers to take over the Starcraft Map of the Week program, I was picked right up. "Deception" was my favorite Map of the Month that I made. It has the most story elements, and a lot of them ended up sliding into Starcraft lore. That was back when Metzen wasn't paying too much attention to what I was doing. I also did "Trademasters," "Mercenaries II," and "Arena," which someone once told me inspired the Arena maps in WarCraft 3 that eventually became DOTA, but that's not a straight line nor verifiable. Soon WarCraft 3 began ramping up in development, and so I was moved to helping create the campaign maps. At Blizzard, everyone on the team gets a say in game design, systems, and story elements. So it's a very cooperative process. Primarily though, the level designers are the closest to the end product, and thus they end up working the hardest and longest of anyone on the team. Both because level designers are often waiting for tools and other elements of code and art, which we then have to implement long after everyone else is done, but also because we're the people who have to find the fun, and make sure that each map is an enjoyable experience. For WarCraft 3 RoC I created "The Culling" (my claim to fame really, if I have one), "Digging Up the Dead," "By Demons Be Driven," and "A Destiny of Flame and Sorrow." I was also the writer of the team, so all of the tooltips (we called them ubertips internally, don't know why), most of the items, and the color schemes for information on abilities and items were my idea. I also wrote a large portion of the flavor text in the game, and some bits of the extended manual. Though looking back, it's definitely not my best writing. |
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I played Dungeons & Dragons with Chris Metzen, Sam Didier, Jason Hutchins, and Derek Simmons for well over two years while I was there. Everyone was really cool to work with. Blizzard Entertainment was truly a company of like-minded nerds who just wanted to make cool stuff. Once I moved to level design, I interacted with Sammy and Chris all the time. I even had Mike Morhaime come and help with "The Culling," because the triggers got... a bit complicated and he came in to clean up. |
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So we had the intro and outro story first, then we would pick which ones we wanted to do (I called dibs on "The Culling" immediately). Then we would make a document or write up something about what we thought would make a cool level. Then we'd round-table discuss our levels with the other level designers. After that, we'd go start the layouts, and once we had the basics, we'd start putting in triggers to make things work. When we had a fully playable level, we'd get feedback from other level designers, and then if it was approved by the lead (Rob Pardo at the time), it would go out to all-company testing. Then you'd get a ton of feedback, and combined with bugs from QA, you'd spend the next couple weeks fixing things to make it shippable. Of course, you often had multiple maps in the works at a time, so you'd be starting the layout of a new one while tackling the worst bugs on the existing ones you had. It could get a bit hectic towards the end, which is why level designers are often the ones working right up until the moment you ship. Whereas code and art often gets locked down much earlier. |
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Jaina was supposed to die in a very early draft, but that idea was squashed pretty quickly. Arthas didn't need any more motivation to chase Mal'ganis than he already had, but that was planned to be a main story element. There was supposed to be a love story between Arthas and Jaina, but that didn't work out. It was a bit too Raynor and Kerrigan again, because Jaina was going to become a banshee or something... I don't remember very well, but that plot point obviously got moved to Sylvanas Windrunner. There were a lot of similarities between the Starcraft and WarCraft 3 plotlines, to the point where the first few drafts got sent back multiple times. I remember towards the end of development there was a huge backlash because of the ending cinematic where Archimonde is attacked by Nightelf tree sperm. There was all sorts of meetings and in-fighting about it. Pardo was rounding people up to basically attack the cinematics department for giving us something nigh-unusable. In the end we made it work, but the joke about the World Tree jizzing on Archimonde would come up at least once or twice a month until we shipped |
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There were also issues where triggers would get stuck somewhere and the level would just sort of peter out. So if I could go back I would probably study programming a little bit more so that I could have done a better job with my heavier trigger levels. I also would have looked at that cinematography book earlier so that I didn't make so many mistakes in the early cinematics. 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." |
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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. The moment he got ahead it was basically over. That and the grunts were so broken as far as unit health and damage. I wasn't known as a good player, though I was well remembered for my Protoss high templar control when we used to play Starcraft in QA. People feared the psionic storm. |
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There was only one design department for WarCraft 3, which included seven "level designers" and Rob Pardo as the lead game designer. Tom Cadwell (aka Zileas) joined after WC3 as an associate game designer and to help with unit balance. I remember when he put in the bat riders initially, he made them completely broken and then abused them in a game all of the game designers were playing. Of course, Tom Cadwell went on to be design director at Riot Games and made League of Legends, so he's doing just fine now. |
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David Fried has 17 years of game design experience, having worked on such games as WarCraft III, World of WarCraft, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, and many others. He recently became the lead designer at EdgeCase games. His YouTube channel about game design and analysis can be found here.
