Blizzard North Designers - Not Consulted

General Discussion
1

Found this over on reddit today. Looks like a snip from a live streaming session that includes a couple of Blizzard North folks. Including one that helped design the net code for online play.

Both of them essentially say - Blizzard did not consult any of them. So you can tell they are a bit amused with the situation with long queues and instability.

I can not post links, but I am sure you can figure this out.

WWW . reddit. COM /r/Diablo_2_Resurrected/comments/qev1fw/one_of_the_persons_who_made_the_servers_for_lod/

3 Likes
2

If I were them I would laugh…the servers were actually better.

in 2001.

3

You summed up what I wanted to say! Man, it’s amazing how today’s professionals are so bad compared to the old ones. This in all companies, worse if you compare Activision/Blizzard, shows exactly what I’m trying to say, from WoW to Warcraft 3, now through Diablo 2.

Very intersting content… :joy: :joy: :joy:

Well, at least I can’t say that I have a good laugh at it all, and if I were from the old Blizzard North I would be laughing even more.

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4

of course… this has nothing to do with bliz workers, they did a very good job… This is a ceo problem… withholding funds not to spend money on proper servers… Being a ceo is basicly being a thief… your job is about how to make more money for the pigs while giving aways less… a ceo job is to optain a ratio of 99,9% for them/ 00.1% goes to the public … then youre the best ceo

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Agree. Workers just do job they are paid for… But CEO is a professional too, so keep my phrase but with other context.

6

https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo_2_Resurrected/comments/qev1fw/one_of_the_persons_who_made_the_servers_for_lod/

link

7

If Blizzard had just used the old server set up none of this would be a problem. IMO they are trying to get a handle on just how they are going to run a global server set up for D4. I think if no other reason this global server set up was also just to try to make it easier for them to run warden just once and have all the data that needed to be checked under one roof so to speak.

Even if the original team had been consulted they could not have come up with a better solutuion TBH. If they had one they would have used it in the first place way back when . They coded for what they knew how and never ever tried to unify all of Bnet under one roof at any point and time hence the exclusive regional server content .

Hind sight is 20/20 as they say ,But you actually have to attempt and fail or succeed at something before you start throwing stones .

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“So Blizzard has done D2:R without talking with any oldschool Blizzard North people? That’s correct. They don’t talk any of us”

Rest in peace D2.

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They are laughing their (BEEP) off right now. When I played Vanilla/LOD back in the day, I never ran into a Que or had problems with game drops, etc. 20+ yrs later, and boom goes the dynomite…

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No need to consult the original staff if you have good software engineers - but well - here we go!

Seriously they should consult them about all the itsy bitsy stuff they worked out in the past.

11

thats a good channel to chill on sometimes.

david had a lot of good comments. i wish someone had a compilation

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It’s not about code devlopment, it’s about D2 essence, what made this game a success. Not anymore btw!

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I agree that lore and story could evolve with them on board, but sadly - they aren’t.
For the code base - they are not needed IF there would be some people that actually analysed and understand that code. But it looks like that didn’t happen ¯_(ツ)_/¯

14

lol, ofc they didn’t. Ego, dat ego. I’m sure much bad blood runs in a few directions, but truthfully, most of the company these days is just all different. I’d be amused too.

EDIT: Who am i kiddin’, i’m very amused with Blizzard.

15

D2 never experienced that huge amount of network problems because their online playerbase was really smaller and split across several regions.

Take WoW by example, had queue and most likey was coded or use his code.

Not being consulted or just not being part of the project, really doesn’t mean anything. Unless maybe provide some insights about mistakes from the past.

While they done a poor job on certain stuff, most of them is because they decided to use a limited arch from a older game instead of implement one from the ground. Part being lazy and the other part trying to preserve something which shouldn’t be preserved.

In that era their code by example wouldn’t be able to handle not even 100’s thousands in a single region. Most likely were limited by around 65k per region.

The game needs severe improvements, but they should have done that prior to launch, when the project was on the paper not after built on top of a really old arch with several scalability issues.

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16

I honestly don’t think it was necessary to consult them, the problem is more on the side of management and resource allocation, basically they are greedy so it’s going slowly.

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17

It’s just kind of respect in my opinion! Even when Activision bought Blizzard and become a holding.

Originally, Blizzard does not work in teams, with all of its games being projects solely at its headquarters, but the company felt it needed a change when developing the next StarCraft II. With that, it split into Team 1 and Team 2, where the former takes care of games of the RTS and MOBA genre. With that, Team 2 was responsible for the MMO genre.[4]

and

Blizzard-Team 1 (also called simply Team 1) was the main and oldest development subsidiary of Blizzard Entertainment, founded in 1994. They are responsible for creating StarCraft, StarCraft II, along with all its expansions. The studio’s most recent work has been Heroes of the Storm, StarCraft: Remastered, and Warcraft III: Reforged.[2][3]

I mean, the creators of Diablo are former members of Blizzard North, they know everything that was designed at the time, what was thought for the game, the changes, codes, the essence of the game and the focus they put on development. This means that, even knowing the codes, new people simply have new visions of how things should be and small, inconspicuous changes as well as big changes like disabling TCP/IP is a decision of the current team, maybe, just maybe, the The path that Activision/Blizzard is taking in game implementation and code decisions may not be focused on what Blizzard North thought for the game. Former Diablo 2 players have noticed different changes, some imperceptible but which totally changed the premise of the game. I don’t doubt that soon they will implement Diablo Token so you can buy with money and be able to buy cosmetics, boosts and other things that Activision/Blizzard usually implements in their games. But friends, again, this is Diablo 2 Remastered and not Remake. Therefore it should be completely faithful to D2:LoD in every way.

People used to separate the items by Normal, Nightmare or Hell and knowing which ones were according to the drops, as the names say, they should drop in these difficulties, but today that doesn’t happen, in Hell you drop mostly low level items like Normal. That’s noticeable, not that it’s a bad thing, but these are changes that were made and that maybe wasn’t in the game’s premise at the time. Also because at the time of 56k modems it was not interesting to generate excess traffic for farms or trade, so the drop table was more generous.