I know I say it a lot, but it really is an exciting time around the office as the last pieces of the Broodcall expansion are falling into place. Everyone is working a little harder in anticipation of our early launch tomorrow morning. What I’d like to do is share what a few people around the office are doing right now. As you can see my desk is over with the folks who do our programming and testing. All of these guys are making last minute polishes to features and assuring things go as smoothly as possible tomorrow.

Slugbait - This champion of code is going through line after line diligently trying to make any necessary adjustments. I wanted to talk with him more but the sound of a whip cracking in the background spurns me on.

qwerty and asdf - This dynamic duo is doing their best to break everything now so the players can’t do it later. asdf wants to take a break to do some dancing, but the Trading System can’t wait.

Elrac and Paragon - These two are discussing the new Drums of War system and making changes to the website. They are using a lot of technical terms that I’m sure I can’t share even if I did understand, so I just slide over to someone else.

MaxGoliath - His work was on a number of the new abilities in Broodcall. One in particular he helped create was Stormwrack which you’ll see tomorrow. He’s wearing headphones so he doesn’t have to listen to me crunch Cheetos.

After this I make my way over to the designers who think all this stuff up. Now as you can see Kaervas, CorpsE, and Sir Quimbel sit in tight quarters for maximum creativity. It’s also so CorpsE is always in range with a wooden sword he has at his desk. I can’t show you the dry erase board behind me, but it’s safe to say these guys are already sketching ideas for the next expansion. What do they do the day before an expansion?

Sir Quimbel - This is our writer and he’s actively creating a compelling story to go along with Broodcall. I expected more quill pens and such on his desk but apparently that’s “really old school.”

Kaervas - Kaervas takes a moment from whaling on the AI to tell me what he’s working on. Balance testing on the Drums of War is currently a priority and I can see he’s tinkering with all sorts of abilities.

CorpsE - As I approach his desk I get the obligatory glare and reminder that he IS buffing Gnark. CorpsE is working on a lot as the Senior Designer, checking the adjusted Ironfist Stronghold map and the new K’Thir Forest map going into Ranked Play. He’s also testing the Full Plate Armor, and renaming a rune that was apparently going to be Nosferatu.

KaizerSozay - My last stop is with the Producer himself. The guy in charge believe it or not is just as busy as everyone else coordinating pieces and making sure everything is on task. While I’m standing there he is looking at some Broodcall assets to use on the PoxNora website. I didn’t stay any longer than I had to for fear he would start asking me to collect data on what the Community thinks on Broodcall changes. I’ll have plenty of reports to do in the coming days.

I hope this gives you an idea of what is going on at SOE Tucson today and the type of work we put into an expansion. Admittedly this is all from a Community Managers perspective, but if nothing else you’ve now seen a few pictures of our new offices.

RadarX
Community Manager

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 12:59 pm and is filed under Community Harbringers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.