The Tale of Kern

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zdoofop

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Jul 26, 2016
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Noneofyourbeeswaxistan
#1
I've seen a few people ask about the Mark of Kern on Discord/Twitter, so I figured I'd be helpful and post the story here, in his own words:

Grummz: Okay, so, WoW was originally a team of like, 10 people. I was not on the team. I was overall mgr of product development for all titles.
Grummz: WoW was struggling internally. At our montly show and tells, the game lagged and nobodly liked the direction, art, etc. and lack of progress.
Grummz: Then, the leadprogrammer/teamlead left to found Arena.net with the lead from WarIII and our VPofTech
Grummz: So, shit hit the fan. WoW had to be chopped. No lead prog, no team lead, and everyone felt the team was Blizzard's "B" team
Grummz: I was at a very small meeting with WoW producer, CEO, top 5 people at Blizz.
Grummz: They said it's got to go, has no hope to survive.
Grummz: I said, we need this game, we can do this game.
Grummz: I offered to step down from my overall role and go onto the WoW team, and guaranteed I would find a AAA programmer to lead it ASAP.
Grummz: They said, if you can do it we'll buy you dinner.
Grummz:

Grummz: So, I stepped down, joined the WoW team (not as the lead initially), and started to work to turn the game around.
Grummz: I said "a) we're going to nail the Warcraft art style (it was not matching at all at the time), b) we're going to have REAL montly milestone progress, not faked demo stuff that wastes times and gets thrown out, and c) I'm going to find us a lead programmer in 60 days"

Grummz: So, I went after John Cash, lead on Quake 3 (or was it 2), and co-maker of the IPX network protocol at Novell.
Grummz: I took me a LONG time to recruit him, but I did it. Then I refocused the team's milestones, made multiplayer the number one priority
Grummz: I also worked to convince the artists to "dumb down" their style to match Warcraft (they felt Warcraft was too cartoony). I said we have to walk the walk and show em we can do what they want, and THEN we can show em how to do it better
Grummz: Anyhow, long story short, that's why there is a WoW today.
I just copied and psted this from Discord, i am not liable for any misunderstandings/embellishments.
 
Likes: Silv3r Shadow
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