IGN: What do you do as the lead world designer, and what have you worked on in the past in that respect?

Leonard Boyarsky: As lead world designer I’m responsible for the lore of the game, the history, the story. I work with a quest designer named Michael Chu, who’s had a lot of experience in the RPG industry. We make sure that through the quests the story’s being conveyed to the player. We also work very closely with the art department to make sure - y’know, they’ll come to us and say to us ‘what’s going on with this civilisation or that civilisation, what’s the history?’ Because there’s a lot of ruins and building up on cities that have been around for a long time. So, building a world – the way we’re building this world – from the ground up and with a lot of history, really informs the art. And it’s a back and forth thing too, the artists will sometimes come up with really cool concepts and we’ll work that back into the lore. So that’s basically what we do there.

I started out as just an artist, and after that I was the art director on Fallout, where I was more the creative director, and really fleshed out that world in terms of the feeling of the world, the mood of the world, and then I progressed on that project to designer, and then, before leaving to start my own company, we designed Fallout 2. And then I started my own company with a couple of guys called Troika, and we made Arcanum and Vampire. I did way too many jobs on those games, from world design to animation, to texturing, to drawing, to concepting, to producing, but my love has always been the world creation part of it… and you’ve really got to choose. If you want to do it well you’ve got to pick your specialty, but it’s really great because I get to work with art directors like Brian [Morrisroe]… he’s really fantastic, and he wants to hear [what other people have to say]. Sometimes artists really just want to go in their own direction, but at Blizzard they’re really into the back and forth. Everybody has good ideas, so it’s been a really great experience.

read the full, 2-page interview here

New Diablo 3 Artwork and Leah Wallpaper <3

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Starcraft 2 Question and Answer Batch 42 as posted by Karune,

—StarCraft II Q&A Batch 42—


1. What was the main reasoning to shifting the Hydralisk backwards one technology level? How does this affect the Zerg early-game, especially since the Zerg will have absolutely no anti-air units before the Hydralisks? (gamereplays.org)

Actually, the Hydralisk has been brought back down to Tier 1.5, giving Zerg early anti-air capabilities without upgrading their Hatchery to a Lair. The test originally was to put Hydralisks at a later tech and have Corruptors be buildable earlier without a prerequisite building other than upgrading to the Lair. To make this happen, the Corruptors had to be nerfed appropriately to fit that tech, which made it very weak and much less fun. Additionally, without a prerequisite building, opposing players could not scout the Zerg player to see when they were going air, which did not fit the gameplay style we were shooting for.

2. What kinds of cheats will be included in Starcraft 2, and how will they be accessed/unlocked? (starcraft.org)

There will be cheats, but you wont know what they are from us sorry.

3. Concerning resources there is one big issue for mapmakers: There are only two of them. For many UMS-maps you need more different resource-types than gas and minerals, thus mapmakers were forced to use even civilians as a sort of resource. So will mapmakers be able to place their one, gather-able resources on the map such as lumber or gold? (starcraft2.4players.de)

Yes, we have recently added support for one additional custom resource type. Additional custom resources types may be implemented in the future, but there are no plans at the moment.

4. With the Battlecruiser’s new ability dealing splash damage to lightly armored air units, you could fear that the Thor has once more fallen into a role void. Is this the case or are the Battlecruiser ability and the Thor’s anti-air capabilities tactically different enough? (Gamereplays.org)

The overlap is really no more different than a Siege Tank and the Yamato Gun ability or the Reaver and the Psi Storm from Brood War. The new ability helps the Battlecruiser against a specific group of units, which are units the Battlecruiser is already good against, rather than making it effective against all units. The last thing we wanted is for the Battlecruiser to kill groups of units that are supposedly effective at countering it, such as the Warp Ray.

5. Does the Battlecruisers new AoE affect friendly units in the area? (thewarcenter.net)

No, the Missile Barrage does not affect friendly units.

6. Will it be possible to use the full 3D cinematics mechanic from the single player campaign in the map editor? (sc2pod.com)

Yes, we are looking forward to seeing some awesome custom cut scenes from the community.

7. Most users know that even invisible units can be seen by experienced players since they cause this nice little blur effect while in Warcraft 3 invisible units are indeed invisible aside from leaving footprints on the ground. So what about transferring the ‘real’ invisibility into the World of Starcraft by allowing mapmakers to choose from those two different invisible modes for each unit? (starcraft2.4players.de)

Map makers will be able to remove the blur effect that is currently on StarCraft IIs invisible units.

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