Studio Head and Game Director of Fantastic Pixel Castle. We are making an MMO! Previously: Riot, Blizzard, Ensemble Studios, oceanography
Colorado County TX
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Our new studio, FPC, has released a gameplay video for our upcoming MMORPG. See what 1 year of dev with 25 people looks like!
piped.video/watch?v=v5ZAFtMo…
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I have news!
My recent job at Riot has been to help develop the League universe, which we’re going to need!
Because it is time. My new job is to kick off a big (some might say massive) game that many of you, and many Rioters, have been asking us to create.
PS We’re hiring
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Hey internet. Thanks for all the support over the past few months while I was afk
I am back now with some big news to share: I have decided to step down from my role at Riot Games
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My name is Greg. Until this year I worked at Riot Games and before that, Blizzard. But I have a new studio stacked with industry veterans, and we are about to announce, in an unconventional way, both it AND our new MMORPG. Because we want to be an unconventional studio.
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If you liked Arcane or the Ruined King game and are interested in more League, I recommend checking out Legends or Runeterra if you are interested in the lore, or Wild Rift if you want great multiplayer. Yes, we are building an MMO for you too.
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I tend to avoid personal news here; that’s not why most of you follow me. But I just lost my brother and my father does not have long to live so I will be AFK for some time.
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This is what it's like for designers to work with engineers (with credit to one of my coworkers):
Designer: Can we get this feature?
Engineer: Impossible.
Engineer. Wait a minute.
Engineer: [types like exactly 3 lines]
Engineer: It is done.
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Your company doesn’t love you.
If you work for me, my company doesn’t love you, even if I personally might care a lot.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket (even mine). Always keep a side eye out for opportunities. Always have a back up plan in mind. That’s not disloyalty.
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I wanted to share a bit of a eulogy for Riot Forge. When I was asked to take over what eventually became the entertainment branch of Riot, it was on three conditions: let me manage the budget, keep tv and film as part of the initiative, and let us start a small games arm.
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One thing I can say about "unannounced" MMORPG is that you won't all love every feature in it. We're going to make some choices that you may not agree with. Players want different things in their games. That's fine. Some of you (shudder) may not love the game at all. Also fine.
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So let’s be a little more negative for a moment. Without bashing other games, what features do you NOT want to see in this game we are making?
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A few weeks ago I made a tweet where I intended to emphasize what a commitment I had made to this MMO. Some players and media latched onto the “might never ship” part and extrapolated that the development was not going well. Spoiler: It is going great. This team is so stacked.
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There is no guarantee this game will ship. We are optimistic, but you just never know until it does. However assuming it does, this will be the fourth major franchise I have worked on (AoE, WoW, LoL), and likely the last. And I am very okay with that. It will be a good final act.
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There is SO much I want to tweet about MMO design, and have a conversation with y'all about what works and what doesn't, but I don't want that to feel like it's trying to be hype for the new game
trying to figure out how to navigate that
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One of the most common questions we get is why we announced the League MMO in such a weird way and when we will provide more real information. There was actually a strategy in place here!
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While we are honored by comparisons between Riot’s Project A and Overwatch, the two aren’t really in the same genre. Project A is a tactical shooter. Lethality is high and you don’t respawn. Map control and gunplay are key. The abilities are more about utility.
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Ahem...
Hello! 👋
We are Fantastic Pixel Castle, a new games studio making an epic AAA MMORPG codenamed Ghost.
To learn more about our studio and vision for Ghost, visit our website at fantasticpixelcastle.com.
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The MMO is in good hands and it’s the right time to hand over the reigns for the next phase
I plan to stay in game development and I have had a number of exciting opportunities presented to me already. And I will be with you all playing the Riot MMO when it comes out.
Hugs, GC
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We are building an MMO and we are hiring!
This is an unusual approach because we are going to need a lot of people, and we know there is a lot of interest, so you can use this link to express your interest even if we don't have an open role for you yet.
riotgames.com/en/mmo-recruit…
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News!
I am starting a new journey in more ways than one.
As I have shared with you all before, last year was a pretty brutal one for me personally. After 15 years in California, I am moving back to Texas to be closer to my surviving family. This may sound like I am retiring from the game industry, but far from it!
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As the head of this MMO team, I don't do a lot of actual "making things" type work. One exception is that I do brainstorm and problem solve for creatures, especially things to fight. It's something I've done a lot both for work and in D&D, and I love doing it.
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MMO development is like today we made 100 arbitrary decisions… but *one* of them will end up spawning 1000 conversations with players, cost us millions of dollars, and developers on the team 15 years from now will refer to it as the Day Everything Changed
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A follow up about hiring for the new project. Yes, we are serious about hiring. These kind of games take a lot of developers. Like any R&D project we will start small, but we will grow. The best way to apply is to visit the Riot Games website. (1/3)
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Here is another MMO topic. As before, the team has a vision. We aren't crowdsourcing. We just want feedback. We don't expect you all to agree. That's okay! It's a discussion.
What do you like about guilds, clans, companies? What rules do you like or not? What games do well here?
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I wish the Riot MMO well. They have a great world to explore and the team is truly top notch. I will definitely play the crap out of it.
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Players: I’m not having fun with this weapon durability thing
Game devs: You don’t understand. Having to get new weapons is key to the game working. It’s actually kind of brilliant
Players: But I’m not having fun
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I had confidence, but this still exceeded my expectations
Thank you, friends, for making #Arcane the #1 English language series this week on @Netflix, and keeping us top 10 in 87 countries. Our future is bright because of you.
top10.netflix.com/tv
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One of our engineers described running dungeons in MMOs and especially WoW as sitting in traffic - nobody wants to be there and they just want it to be over as quickly as possible. How did we get here? How do we break that mentality? I like dungeons. I want to be in them
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I’m running out of ways to express my shock and grief here. Riot and Blizzard back to back - places where I lived and worked for a combined 15 years. These are people I know well. I am so sorry. You are not alone in all of this
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We want to make an MMO that appeals to players who love MMOs, so don't worry about that.
What's interesting is how younger gamers who missed out on WoW / FF14 don't think they like MMOs even though they like a lot of things that MMOs try to do. We aren't trying to make an MMO for "young gamers" either, but they won't be young forever.
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When I left Blizzard, I intended to retire “Ghostcrawler.” @Celestalon suggested @OccupyGStreet for Twitter and I used that for 5 years. But everyone still called me Ghostcrawler, even me. So today, Blizzard graciously returned the @Ghostcrawler account to me!
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A combo of personal and professional considerations led me to down this path. We experienced some devastating personal losses last year and I want to be closer to my surviving family.
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I said from the beginning that building a League of Legends MMO worthy of you all was going to be a long journey. The most important job I could do as part of that was to build an amazing team, and while I try to stay humble overall, I will brag about this team all day!
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Related to my long thread on getting into the biz, we would like to hire some people with no prior experience to work on the MMO. It won’t be for awhile and there won’t be 500 of those jobs, but we think the perspective will help us, and we can give back to the community a bit.
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The team is talking about sharing some gameplay footage of our game soon. This is scary because games early in development often look like shit. But we still want to rip off the bandaid so that the community and the studio get used to the idea of Very Early work.
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Ant is a good friend of mine, plays in my D&D group, AND is working on the stories we'll tell in the MMO!
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As promised, we're going to share more about our game, code named Ghost, and I need y'all to not freak out about what a game in prototype looks like
We are trying to strike the right balance between saying we are early, without sending the message sry it's going to be 10 yrs
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I have a new team and we are making a new game in a new IP. While I am - by far - not the smartest designer in this business, I do think I am reasonably good at listening and talking to players. And that is the foundation upon which we all wish to build this new studio!
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I can confirm or deny nothing, but I can help Necrit's viewer count
piped.video/watch?v=9ypIpTu3…
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MMO Players: It’s important to me to see a lot of other players around that I am going to reject playing with
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I want to acknowledge that we are going to be announcing our studio and game during a period of a lot of rough news in the industry. Yes we are excited, but this is a tough business, and there is no guarantee we will succeed at it either. I feel for all of my friends and others affected by recent layoffs. :(
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But while I was on break I got to think a lot about my career. Grief has a way of really bringing into focus what matters the most to you (still don’t recommend it overall though). And after nine years at Riot it feels like it’s time for something new!
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A lot of the comments we received (thank you!) were about "artificially" increasing the time you have to play an MMO. A quick thread...
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There’s a 10 year old Blizzcon video going around of players doing a Q&A with a panel of devs of which I was a member. Look, it was a shitty answer at the time and it certainly hasn’t aged well. I wish I had said something better then.
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I avoided watching the Warcraft movie for nearly a decade because it was just too raw - all of that was happening while I was there. I finally had enough distance to watch it this past weekend. And I liked it. The orcs look great.
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For seven years I commuted to Santa Monica to work at Riot, 90 minutes+ each way. I endured it because the job and company were great. I will also never ever do it again. Today I can spend that three hours shitposting, petting my dog / chickens, working in the garden, or
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Soon (tm) we will announce our studio and game. If you all love it, well then we can be as surprised as anyone that we are actually good at this.
If you don’t like it, that is almost as big a win! Why?
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Took awhile but worth the wait. ARCANE! Out first show! So grateful to be a small part of this.
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I legit could move out of here. I wish the Nordic countries weren't so cold or that my Spanish or Italian were better. I know every country has its problems, but I just don't feel like I even belong in this country any longer. It is unrecognizable to me.
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I have been fortunate to be a part of some truly amazing game franchises, but I joined them all after they launched.
Riot Forge is something I am proud to have helped create. We are now an indie game publisher! The story-based games you want in the League universe are coming!
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MMO healing is a topic on which I have a lot of thoughts and at least some experience. It’s hard. If too much is on the healer, they get blamed and their life is stressful. If there isn’t enough, then the healer gets bored. And there is always the solo question.
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So I think in the last hour or so, I have somewhat committed to 1) Just calling our game "the unannounced Riot MMO", 2) Having crustaceans, 3) Only having cat people as a playable race.
Narrator: Only number 2 turned out to be true.
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"Wake me up on release day" is a totally fine response! We still want you as part of our community. But we also wanted to take a stab at this in "in plain sight" development for players who are interested in the Day Zero journey.
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Finally, please do be patient. We are thrilled with the excitement around this project, but every aspect of development, even hiring, is going to take time to do it right. We absolutely don't want to disappoint you. Our goal for many things at Riot is to exceed expectations (3/3)
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I suppose I have to add that we aren’t crowdsourcing the design of this game. I am just curious where our features might require a little more explanation or even selling. Feedback is always helpful.
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It’s so nice to be able to answer player questions and not have anyone in the company tell me I am giving too much away or being distracted from my real job. This is what I always wanted to do and the team is bought into that plan
And I bet at the end of the day it results in a better game
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Balancing game systems is brutally difficult. I find a lot of the gaming media's clickbait around Diablo 4 "Every build destroyed" "Players outraged" "Everything f'ing nerfed" to be a little hyperbolic. I know y'all need clicks but can't you try a bit of nuanced analysis?
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The reason companies announce layoffs publicly before telling individuals is to control the message. This is at least 50% PR, but they also don't want employees to panic as a rumor mill spins out of control on company comms platforms and the internet.
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Re: Ruination novel
1. You should read it!
2. Ant Reynolds is leading narrative for the MMO
3. One of the things great about this world is its breadth. So while there are grim and tragic stories (spoiler: this is one), other stories are heroic, happy, even silly
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I think RPGs are better when they are a little difficult, and I think that goes doubly true for MMOs. Having another player help you out, friend or stranger, is really at the core of the genre IMO.
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That they would have a chance to work with one of best IPs out there, and maybe learn something from Riot’s history of marketing, global experience, and player focus.
I’ll miss you, Riot Forge. Rioters current and recently let go, I care about you.
/thread
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This is the freedom I have been searching for my whole career. So far our announcement has gone off really well imo. At previous gigs it would not have surprised anyone to have an executive swoop in the day before our reveal and cancel the whole thing.
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We are flattered and happy with the kind words about our game so far, but also want to acknowledge it's easy to talk big about our aspirations, but the proof will be when you get to playtest. (Which won't be soon.)
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When I or someone on the team tweets about almost anything it can turn into a news article. We understand. Players are eager for info and the media wants to support that. And we are grateful! Just take it all with a large grain of salt.
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But there is no guarantee any game in this business will ship. Anyone who makes that promise is essentially saying they will ship even if the game is disappointing. We won’t ship a disappointing game. (We also won’t crunch just to make sure the game is as good as it can be.)
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I’ll share a Bobby Kotick story. I have a few. I cannot 100% verify this happened since it came to me from a dear friend, but I have no reason to doubt its veracity. It stars donuts.
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Since a lot of you have reached out, we are committed to hiring some folks with no industry experience to work on the MMO. I think fresh eyes will benefit us & it’s also a way to give back a little to the community. We aren’t ready for that yet - maybe next year if all goes well
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Do I think Riot will launch an MMO at some point? Absolutely. There are so many good reasons to do it. Maybe I am not the right leader, or this is not the right team, or our design isn’t the right one. But the company will keep at it until the game is worthy of your expectations.
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That is why I'm excited to announce that I am starting my own remote studio! Our goal is to move fast and go big. Fortunately, I have found a great strategic partner aligned with this vision, and we are moving forward!
And yes it will be an MMO or something very MMO-like!
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28 Sep is my birthday. And yes I am unabashedly leveraging your interest in tweets about my job, oceanography, history, and my dogs for gratification here. Is that so wrong?
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New roles for this project will likely appear in January and we will add more over time. If you are an industry veteran with MMO experience, it's less important to wait for the role to be posted. Those folks can DM or hit me up on Linked In. (2/3)
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I've been a pretty chill person most of my life, which has served me well in game dev when players can be... well.. really really mean. But I think it's about time to enter a brilliant yet troubled phase.
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That may sound insensitive (or it may sound like advice given too late) but your company is never going to care about you, your family, your pets, your debts as much as you do.
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Some of my favorite meetings are “Okay what do these people eat? What are their crops? What do they trade across borders? How fantastic vs grounded do we want to be here?”
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The announcement was the idea of our CEO. We thought it made sense to low key announce to help with recruiting (we need a lot of MMO vets), to excite players, and because we thought it would likely leak anyway.
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Grateful and overwhelmed from all of the positive vibes from our studio “announcement”
If you are one of the people who reached out with employment interest, thank you so much, and also since I am legit in the middle of moving, please give me a few days to respond
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Okay on a happier note, actual MMO discussion. This is not a reveal. Sorry. We won’t do that on twitter. But we have been talking about how much MMO skill should be adaptation to new conditions versus execution on a known situation.
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Sneak peak of our game next week!
We have promised to share every step of the way, so just be prepared that this is *really* early to show off a game
What does an MMORPG look like after just one year of development?
We're going to show you.
Our Prototype Gameplay Update goes live on Monday, December 9th, 11:00 AM Pacific Time.
Will we see you there?
piped.video/v5ZAFtMop6Y
ALT Concept art of Fantastic Pixel Castle's early development MMORPG, named Ghost. Three adventurers stand silhouetted, staring into a pink and gold cloudy sunset. In the distance, fractured shards of land float amongst the clouds, dotted with small cities, lakes, and mountains.
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Very sorry for my friends at Riot today. Please reach out (even the survivors) if I can help you process.
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I started to say things like magnum opus, but that sounds like it is my vision, and it very much comes from the team. I just steer the ship and watch for sea monsters.
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If you announce your game as "unannounced survival game" are you in some kind of Schrodinger's cat scenario?
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Innovation in MMOs, a thread/rant
To start with, we want to make a game that is loved by people who love MMOs. I understand the appeal of a studio making some crazy new genre that is maybe an MMO or maybe something new. I hope there are studios that take that shot. It won't be ours.
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I’ll be spicy some more. Someone asked me if it’s a mistake to streamline the leveling experience and let players get to the endgame asap because that’s what they love. My answer is yes
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I get a lot of requests for advice for breaking into the gaming industry so I try to address it once a year or so. No idea how long this thread will be.
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When we are ready to talk about the game (soon I hope), a big non-gameplay cinematic if off the table. A grand reveal of the whole game ready to ship is off the table. Other than that, what would you want to see?
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I've been making games for something like (jeez) 24 years. In that time I have never really dealt with imposter syndrome. But man on this team there are so many smart people. Always aspire to be the dumbest person in the room :)
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Sorry again for any pain I have caused, or anything I did not do to help make this industry a better place. I will try harder. I am going to go off twitter for a couple of weeks so other voices can be heard. I will be listening and I am easy to reach if the need arises.
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Man, I’ve missed raiding. The thrill of the countdown before the pull. The decision as a healer of who lives and dies. Analyzing strategy after a wipe. Blaming my low numbers on gear and certainly not skill.
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After our announce, the team is going to do some interviews and streams (and ideally keep doing them at a reasonable cadence). Think conversations with the community more than big gaming media. We have a few lined up already but will share a contact soon for interested folks.
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WoW: Hey tanks, pulling the entire instance does not make you look like an awesome tank, but it does make me look like an awesome healer
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Yes! This is the response we're looking for!
New MMO from former WoW lead gets the earliest first look I've ever seen, and it's the kind of ugly I want every game dev to feel comfortable sharing trib.al/qCXHz65
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