John Staats - The WoW Diary: A Journal of Computer Game Development

I am writing this inlate May 2016, days after Blizzards newest title, Overwatch, haslaunched. My former team leader and ex-roommate Shane Dabiri shared a Facebookpost celebrating Blizzards latest title, which prompted me to recall the timewhen Shane and I saw each other every day while we worked on World ofWarcraft. Although we drifted apart after WoW shipped in November 2004,whenever we saw each other he often asked, What ever happened to that Worldof Warcraft diary you were working on? Everyone wants to read it! Isometimes got this question when I reconnected with anyone from the old crew.Everyone on the team knew I was writing a developer diary, since Id spentfour years interviewing people about their jobs and keeping tabs on the gamesincremental progress. Seeing Shanes Facebook post about Overwatchinspired me to polish and publish this four-year time capsule about making thegame now referred to as Vanilla WoW.

I haveonly a diminished view of WoW these days. Is Vanilla the correct term? Or isit Classic? I have no idea. I neither make nor play computer games anymore. Ionly recently learned Blizzard was shipping an expansion called Legionduring a conversation with friends while playing a tabletop role-playing gamecalled Pathfinder. In terms of computer games, I am, as I once was, outof the loop.

Thereason I wrote this diary has its roots in my life before game development. Ididnt come from a place where computer games were made, nor did I know anyonein the software or entertainment industry. I was born and raised in Akron,Ohio, and spent ten years working in Manhattan ad agencies after graduatingcollege. Until I began editing games myself in the mid-1990s, Id never knownanyone in the electronic entertainment industry, and so the process ofdeveloping computer games remained an impenetrable mystery. After the Internetgave everyone access to everything, gaming fans began connecting withdevelopers. My introduction to this community was playing first-person shooter(FPS) online games, whose most popular titlesQuake and Unrealcateredto hobbyists who modified their games into new versions, called mods. When Ilearned there were mod tools that would allow me to build my own 3D levels, Ibought my first PC the very next day (I had played games on my roommatesmachines until that point) and built my own first-person shooter levels over thenext five years. I soon joined a group of fellow artists and programmers, a modteam, called Lokis Minions Capture the Flag, and began learning the basics. Iworked tirelessly at my new hobby, putting in over-one-hundred-hour weeks onmods when I was between advertising campaigns.

First-personshooters were in their heyday in the mid to late nineties for the simple reasonthat they supported the only worldwide 3D gaming community, and many FPS gamedevelopers (known as devs) worked in a spotlight. Devs published dailyupdates about their development progress, which gave fans like me the firstinkling into what kind of effort went into making games. Many pros becamesubculture celebrities, and magazines wrote stories about these Game Gods.Some became popular because they were the best in the business, while otherswere prolific writers or had outlandish personalities. I, too, found Game Godsentertaining and dreamed of becoming one in my own right someday. After fiveyears of modding, Id inadvertently developed a respectable portfolio oforiginal 3D levels, and when someone from my mod team told me Blizzard washiring level designers, I applied in the summer of 2000.