Blizzard Entertainment celebrates big the 5th Anniversary of World of Warcraft with a community-wide effort to create a massive Mossaic of photos. Simply download the Alliance or Horde insignia from the Mossaic page and upload your photo holding any of the insignias
In addition, a new in-house interview with many developers is available with subtitles and transcript. The following developers appear in this video: Jeff Kaplan, Sam Didier, Alex Afrasiabi, J. Allen Brack, Russel Brower, Chris Metzen, Rob Bridenbecker, Shane Dabiri, Frank Pearce, Mike Morhaime, Paul Sams, Rob Pardo, Tom Chilton, Joeyray Hall, Matt Samia, Micky Neilson, Nick Carpenter, Jeff Chamberlain, Justin Thavirat, Greg Street, Cory Stockton, and Glenn Stafford …. pants. Heck, that’s a lot of people.
You gotta watch this video and see how human and emotional these developers are. One I can mention is Rob Bridenbecker who tells how his brother was a Warcraft player and later got to play WoW and he was all geeked up. His brother had cancer and fought through it for about five years, and died a couple of years ago. Chris Metzen attended the funeral and decided to write a long epic-questline [A Hero Remains] in honor to Rob’s brother. I was amazed when I recognized the questline and to learn what it’s motive was. It was epic, but you wondered who exactly this NPC was. Now we know. Remember that paladin who refused to die in Icecrown by the Silent Vigil? The paladin that stayed behind because he got touched by the undead blight? A metaphor to cancer. And you go to Remulos, Tirion Fordring, Alexstrasza and even A’dal to find a cure? At the end A’dal and other Naaru take his spirit to the Light. Epic.
I posted a video capturing the entire questline during beta. It will help you understand how emotional and epic it felt to this developer.
There is so much more in this video to explore about the developers and how this fantasy world has marked their lives. You can watch it here.
More interviews and BlizzCast # 12 are to be posted soon at the official 5th Anniversary page.
