From 2023, onwards, I have had the pleasure of working on the Combat Team of World of Warcraft.
My day to day responsibilities include:
Designing and iterating on content updates for the Mage and Hunter classes as well as the new Devourer Demon Hunter specialization. Mage and Hunter alone account for ~25% of World of Warcraft's population.
Paper prototyping, pitching, and implementing all designs, including kit-bashing and implementing bespoke visuals independently.
Fixed bugs and implemented designs in LUA scripting language alongside proprietary tools.
Working with UI, VFX, Encounters, and Rewards teams to collaborate on exciting features and iterations on existing features such as the player's UI, Cooldown Manager, assisted rotation, and more.
Designing and developing on World of Warcraft requires a deep familiarity and flexibility with internal tools, as well as a penchant for cross-team communication to ensure your designs and concepts are landing in every part of a game as big as World of Warcraft.
Some more unique facets of designing on World of Warcraft are:
Balancing the new and the old. World of Warcraft is a 20+ year old game, and we need to both respect the history of the classes we work on while forging new and exciting gameplay that keeps pace with AAA industry standards.
Flexibility and Scope. World of Warcraft is a big game with many features and lots of player appeal. Part of being a valuable contributor to the players as well as developers is to keep your corner tidy, collaborate and communicate often, and let the other disciplines share the limelight. It's not all about Combat!
Ownership and Independence. The Combat team largely creates their own workload. The amount of polish and the scale of your updates is purely driven by the Class owner. This unique workflow allowed me to take on huge amounts of work and deliver high quality content thanks to Blizzard's collaborative identity and amazing internal tools.
Midnight - Devourer Demon Hunter
I was the lead designer and feature owner of the Devourer Demon Hunter specialization in World of Warcraft: Midnight. This was one of the most exciting and enjoyable projects in my design career thus far, and required a significant amount of work, collaboration, and leadership.
Prototyped the new specialization across a series of different iterations.
40yd Caster, melee/ranged hybrid specialization, bow hybrid class, etc.
Aligned design and fantasy with narrative teams and Demon Hunter Class owners.
Worked with VFX, Character Art, and UI teams to ensure the specialization had a unique and stand-out kit that was hitting the combat notes we wanted.
Designed Devourer Demon Hunter with an approachability first mindset, ensuring the gameplay was deep and engaging with as little complexity as possible. The specialization features very few auras, a simple rotation, and an appealing fantasy while still having a significant amount of room for players to express skill and mastery as they familiarize themselves with the gameplay.
The War Within - Hunter and Mage
I was the lead designer and feature owner for the Hunter and Mage Classes in World of Warcraft: The War Within.
Designed, iterated, and tuned 6 different Hero Talent trees along with all 6 specialization trees for Hunter and Mage.
Kept each Class bug-free, tuned, and engaging across our expansion-wide class cycle.
Delivered specialization, hero talent, and cosmetic content updates to each specialization over the course of the expansion.
Collaborated with Encounters and Rewards on previews, hints, and secrets regarding Devourer Demon Hunter's upcoming release in Midnight.
Midnight Beta Patch Notes - Approachability
In World of Warcraft's Midnight Expansion, we heavily redesigned many Classes and Specializations with a focus on approachability and streamlining existing gameplay. This required a strong understanding of not only how the specializations and classes worked, but what players liked most about the specializations and how to focus that gameplay into a more digestible package.
https://www.bluetracker.gg/wow/topic/us-en/2174760-midnight-beta-test-development-notes/