Monday Positivity

Hello, gamers!

I spent three days at IGROMIR mostly hanging around two booths — Gamer.ru and Blizzard Entertainment.

Much has already been written about Gamer.ru in the IGROMIR blog, you can read it there; it was very interesting and fun.

Here, I will talk about Blizzard and Cataclysm.

The booth is impressive. Just two games (WoW: Cataclysm and StarCraft II) took up the entire corner and attracted a lot of people. 20 gaming computers for each game, and you could get in by either waiting in line or correctly answering questions from a regular quiz, which in both cases was conducted by Kikhyavi. The questions were fairly simple, yet interesting. All gamers were given a Blizzard badge afterwards.

Cataclysm is a cake. The graphics were polished, the gameplay remains the same, and the worgen models = beauty. The starting locations for goblins and worgens are very different (naturally), and each one is enjoyable in its own way. Goblins start on a little raft after a shipwreck, while worgens start in wooden shackles :)

Goblins, IGROMIR

Worgens, Blizzcon

On the closed day (the 5th), there was a press conference from Blizzard, which was very thoroughly covered by kapxapot.

In principle, there was nothing new, as Blizzard had already talked about it; ranked battlegrounds will appear, a new BG Tol Barad, and a new guild system.

A little away from the gaming zones was a small booth for recruiters. You could fill out a form and get answers to your employment questions from the staff.

I managed to play both Cataclysm and StarCraft II. After that, I often wandered around their booth, watched trailers, listened to quizzes, and simply stood by the barriers. I also had a conversation with a very positive and pleasant troll-engineer:

— It was said that a demonstration raid by one of the Russian top guilds would be at IGROMIR; why didn’t that happen?

— Yes, we really wanted to see <Синтез> at the exhibition, but they didn’t respond to the invitation. At first, they agreed, but then just didn’t respond.

— What would have happened if they had agreed? A timed run, a competition?

— No, just a raid so that others could see how real professionals play. No time limits or competitions. It’s a pity they didn’t respond; by the time we realized they wouldn't come, it was too late to look for another guild. Overall, we often have problems with this. Sometimes our letters end up in the "spam" folder due to mail filters, and we often cannot reach the winners of our contests. They just don’t know they’ve won.

— A question that has concerned players for a long time: what else should Russian role-players do to make Blizzard understand that they need their own RP server? After all, there are many players in Russia who have been playing since the release of classic WoW, and they are forced to live on English-speaking realms.

— The whole problem is that these players are very few. Let's say, if all the role-players moved to a new realm, it would do quite well for a while. But players won’t be able to raise the economy to the necessary level; first, newcomers will leave, then most players, and only hardcore players will remain. Another "dead" server would result. Before opening a new realm, we have to think a lot and assess what the future of this server would be.

That’s how it is :(

— Almost since the release of WoW, many have prophesied its imminent demise; just let a new MMO appear. How long do you think WoW will still live?

— (smiling) I think WoW will live as long as people keep playing it. There have already been so many "killers" of Warcraft, and despite this, the population of the universe is growing, and the popularity of the game is not declining. That means people like it.

— Tell me how you got into Blizzard. Was it hard?

— Not for me :) I previously worked at a large Russian company, and I knew the language quite well. You could say I filled out a form — and they took me.

— What else does a Community Manager do besides posting on forums and conducting quizzes at conventions?

— My job is to maintain communication between the company and the players in both directions. Firstly, it involves publishing news from the developers, communicating with players, and answering questions. We try to track players' requests and wishes and pass them along to our team.

— So someone is actually reading them? :))

— Yes :) We also collaborate with creative players and groups. We keep in touch with fan sites, authors of fan fictions, comics, and artworks.

— Are there any pleasant and unpleasant moments in the job?

— I’m the kind of person who is always satisfied with everything. I really enjoy this job, and if something unpleasant happened, I don't remember it. (smiles again)

These are the kinds of people working in the Russian Blizzard team.