DiabloFans

DF: Do the ideas come to you suddenly and unexpectedly or are they thoughts you ‘chew on’ for some time before you get on with them?
I'd say half the ideas are one's that I've been holding onto for quite some time. For example, the idea regarding the loot journal in "Loot 2.0, discovering its true potential" was one that I've had since my early days of playing Diablo II. This addition along with the lore, small reward, and possibly an achievement I feel would go a long way to make the hunt for items better.

The random spawning dungeon idea was one that I actually came up with as a feature for WoW a long time ago. The initial idea was to get people out searching for random spawning instance portals that could potentially pop up anywhere in a zone similar to herbs and ore, but were only enter-able on a first come first serve basis. I really wanted to see players roaming in groups of 5 competing with each other, I think it would have revitalized world PvP and utilized the huge world that's now normally abandoned. I was excited when I first heard of the random dungeons in Diablo III but was then greatly disappointed to find they were really pointless and didn't have much depth to them at all. I'm sure we'll see these reworked in the future.

Some ideas though come as I'm writing about another feature. The Nephalem Valor stacking example comes to mind. If I could write that feature again I'd for sure change a couple things to make it friendlier to the players that want to jump into a game quickly and don't have an hour or more to play. There were so many great examples from the community as to why the idea was flawed, but that's exactly what I want from my posts. I really want the community to discuss the ideas together. There's a lot of people that get angry when they find or see a flaw in one of my suggestions, it makes me feel for the actual developers that have to put up with it on a daily basis. If you see something that you think is flawed, point it out, tell us why, and maybe propose a solution. No need to get up in arms about it. It would go such a long way in actually showing the developers some constructive criticism.

DF: How many ideas do you usually need in order to feel satisfied with a post?
Sigh... This is a problem for me, I'm never actually satisfied with the amount of ideas in my post. I could literally talk non-stop when it comes to game like Diablo. When I first decide to make a post I initially throw in as many ideas as I can. The hard part is later removing what topics or ideas I'm really not sure about or are maybe just a little excessive. I had to fight the urge in the legendary item portion of my last post to not list all of my concepts for new items. Even before the announcement of loot 2.0 I had already begun reworking most of legendary items in the game to provide fun and interesting unique properties and really wanted to share them all. I think Travis Day has the greatest job in the world right now, I'd give anything to be the person in charge of creating the items in a Diablo game.

DF: How long does it take to create, write down and format your ideas in the way we see them on the forum?
My posts so far have actually varied quite a bit as far as time goes. The "Patch 1.0.9, a dream..." post for example was put together over a couple nights, including the pictures. The ideas however were a collection old and new so I already had most of the ideas, the toughest part was deciding how I wanted to convey them. Believe it or not wording the post as a Blizzard representative was actually a lot easier to write since I could be a bit more vague and not present many numbers. Numbers are usually just for show anyways.

The first thing I've been doing is tossing in all of the titles and basic ideas for each section in point form. The next part is the most fun part for me, creating the pictures. I use Photoshop for pretty much all of my mockups, I'm pretty familiar with it since I'm using it on a daily basis at work. Even so, It's definitely one of the more time consuming parts of my posts, but I think it really pays off in the end when it comes to showcasing my ideas. I'd way rather show one of my ideas than type it up as huge wall of text that could have easily been avoided. The very last thing I do is actually go through the points and change them into sentences, usually describing hidden details I couldn't show in the pictures. Obviously some spelling errors are missed (thanks to the guy on Reddit for linking me the definition of "defiantly" and "definitely" haha).

Formatting the post and breaking up the large wall of text actually comes pretty naturally to me, I've been doing it as part of my job on a daily basis. If you aren't familiar with formatting on the web I urge everyone to check out the post here on diablofans http://www.diablofan...lofans-forums/. A cleanly formatted post goes such a long way.

DF: Do you have a full-time job? What is it (does it have to do with your creative skills)?
As hard as it is for my in-game friends to not think I'm just a fur trader or professional polar bear wrestler, I do have a full-time job. I work in a communications & marketing department, mostly doing online campaigns and such for a company. I do the web design, social media, and some other types of advertising. It's nothing too exciting but it does give me an outlet for lots of my creativity.

The reason why I'm probably in the career I am? Well I can honestly say it did have to do with the gaming industry, especially Blizzard. Growing up I had an absolute passion for games. and obviously still do. Not just a passion for playing them but actually getting down to the nitty gritty of what was making the games I enjoyed so much fun. I was literally staying up all hours of the night writing up ideas and concepts for games I wish existed. It wasn't until the first time I saw my friend playing Diablo that I knew it was the game I had been dreaming of playing all along. I didn't have a computer or internet access at the time (typical Canadian farm) but I was lucky enough to eventually get my hands on a copy of it for Playstation. I don't even want to go into details of how much time was spent playing that game, but it was more than I'd like to admit. When Diablo II was released I bought the game the day it came out, months before I even had a computer or internet access to play it haha.

Anyways…back to the reason. Well after finally getting to play Diablo II it became pretty obvious that I wanted to do something in a creative field, preferably gaming. I remember sending an email to Bill Roper, David Brevik, Erich Schaefer, and Max Schafer asking how to get into the gaming industry and what kind of education I'd need to start in their footsteps. Sadly I didn't get a personal email from any of them but instead one of those generic emails sent out to probably thousands of people with the same questions, nothing too exciting. However, in the email it did give me an idea of what I should be looking at as far as education. I took a program in college that involved a little bit of everything including web design, 3D animation, writing, graphic design, and so on. After college I ended up getting the job I described above and haven't really pursued anything further. Maybe it's time.


DF: What do you hope to achieve with the successful strike you’re hitting in the D3 community so far?
Besides a job working on Diablo at Blizzard? Haha. I can honestly say that the success of my posts will hopefully continue to get positive discussions going within the community. There are so many great ideas coming from the community that more than likely go unheard a lot of the time. I'm really excited that my posts have been providing an outlet for many players to discuss topics which are important to them. If my posts lead to something else that's great, but I'm really just hoping they'll give the developers something to look at from the fans point of view.

I also want to relay, when I create my posts I'm in no way trying to disrespect the developers of the game. That's the last thing I want to do or portray. You really get a sense Josh, Travis, Wyatt and the other developers know which direction the game needs to go and I'm pretty confident they'll succeed. I'm also really jealous of all you that get to go to this year's Blizzcon, I have a gut feeling it's going to be amazing.

DF: What are your expectations about a post’s success and are they usually exceeded?
They've definitely exceeded any expectations I've had, well I really didn't have any to begin with. I've been making these types of mockups and ideas for as long as I can remember and I'm just glad people are enjoying them as much as I enjoy making them.

I'd really like to thank Diablofans.com for having such an awesome community.


DF: Are you working on a next post already?
I've got a couple concepts in the works but nothing concrete. Things like the Paragon level (trait tree), new classes, and maybe even a proposed solution to PvP. Mostly things I'd like to see in the expansion. I try to stay away from the story as much as possible, but I have a sneaky suspicion we'll be visiting Westmarch and seeing our friend Darrick Lang and Kabraxis come Blizzcon.

DF: Is there something you'd like to add at the end?
I'd just like to say hi to my previous WoW guild of Spirestone, and friends Vaneke, Dom, Clothy, Ferador, Tranq, Chesty, House, Naenia, Haggai, Schmitty, and Malucial.