Sr Game Designer
@Warcraft
. Get geeked out over rpgs, WoW lore, slime cats, and cosplay. My views are my own and don't represent employer. Icon by Bex~
So... I'm Sarah, a Quest/Content Designer on WoW! I've done a little bit of everything from selfie quests in Tiragarde, outdoor content in 8.3, Heritage Armors, etc.
For TWW, you'll be playing my stuff during Hallowfall's section of the campaign. As well as some smaller things.
So... Hullo! I'm Sarah, a Quest Designer on WoW.
Some of the content I've worked on includes three of the Heritage Armor lines, quests for Kul Tiras, 8.3, and I took point on the level up story for Maldraxxus!
I'm also a (j)rpg nerd and a hobbyist tabletop dice maker.
If you see a named dog/cat in DF, there's a good chance that they're named after a rl pet.
And quite a few of them are memorials - so give them a pet if possible. ❤
When I set up hunter pets, one of the things I need to do is check their animations in relation to their scale.
I was on the fence on if i was going to make mudskippers tameable until I checked their anims and just spent the next 30 minutes laughing as they ran after my toon.
Hey hey, I'm Sarah, a senior quest designer on WoW.
I've worked on Heritage Armor acquisition in BfA, led the campaign quest efforts in Maldraxxus, reunited Draka and Thrall, and most recently - I am the main patch point on Embers of Neltharion.
I'm an rpg nerd who loves mmos.
Introduction time! I'm Sarah, and I'm a quest designer on WoW. I've been with the team for just over 3 years!
I've worked on various content, including Heritage Armor questlines for Blood Elf and Worgen, and now I'm part of team
#maldraxxus
#MeetTheDev
Russ stood up for me when I was an intern getting pushed around by a senior dev. He also listened to my terrible transmog ideas.
He was consistently one of the best people to get feedback from, both positive and negative.
Russ, I wish you luck on your next journey!
Today is my last day at Blizzard. I hope that I have given you something in World of Warcraft to enjoy. Thank you all for enabling the wildly improbable ride I have been blessed to be on.
Reminder that game trailers/announcements take a ton of time to actually create & schedule.
If you truly think there's a 'break glass in case of emergency' situation for *any* company then you're deluding yourself into being mad at the cost of people who put effort into it.
For my team, 9.1's entire development cycle was done WFH for the first time.
I've learned a lot about myself. I also dealt with the worst case of Imposter Syndrome I've had.
It was a trial, but I'm proud of what we made. I'm looking forward to seeing the reactions to my content
Most of the content I made in TWW isn't accessible for... a while but I am loving the hype I'm seeing around.
So have a meme I made in the final minutes of a work day months ago.
I still hate how I look but here we go~
I'm Sarah, I'm a Quest/Content designer on WoW. I make all manner of content but my specialities are giving slimes dumb names and making Deep Lore Cuts.
Also I have a doggo~
#WhatAGameDevLooksLike
FWIW - this was a typo/bug to begin with.
I wrote this line in a fugue state and by the time someone had pointed it out to me, it was something that had to go through localization again to be fixed, so it wasn't a simple 'just delete this'.
Fun fact - I created this great hornswog and then felt bad when I made him a killable creature.
So I gave him to a different design team and they rolled with it.
I'd like to point out the final bullet in the Modern column.
I know it's not a glamorous thing like the rest of these changes, but we're working on toxicity in game! This is the first step.
I'm still in limbo of employment and have no personal updates on that front.
But PLEASE help my Blizzard friends who are impacted and retweet their posts. Especially if they're on a work visa and need a job asap.
In game?
Had the Greymane family talk to each other for the first time on screen.
Heirmir. And generic female characters in Maldraxxus across the board (we almost didn't get any besides Draka).
Convinced leadership to get Lor'themar a new model.
Hi everyone, I wanted to share one more thing I had fun making for Dragonflight, the Fireplume Regalia. It was one of the trickier sets I have designed because I wanted it to have a lot of options for people to mix and match. Hope you guys like it! :D
I've been seeing a lot of "just go indie" posts.
I'd love to go Indie! I'd love to work on what my dream idea of a game is (I love WoW too though, nothing against WoW).
But it's also a job. Indie doesn't let me keep an apartment. It doesn't let me feed myself or my dog.
Can folks watching the industry get decimated please stop with the "silver lining" rhetoric. There's no silver lining. This isn't going to lead to a boom of indies. It won't lead to more focused games. It won't cause better run studios. It won't do anything good for games.
Actually, I have one thing to say:
For ladies who were looking at going into the industry who are second guessing it now - it *is* getting better. Even in the short time I've been in the industry.
(1/2)
A quick note for folks -
Some of my coworkers (like me) are okay with interacting w/ people about WoW. Some of them are not, please respect their wishes.
And you will never see us talk about things that aren't announced/out yet, nor will we answer questions about them
I made myself sad at work by reminding myself that I wrote a death line for the mechanical wolf in the Gnome Heritage Armor questline that was...
"WAS I A G-GOOD B-B-B-BOY..."
What AI is good at doing and should be used for: Assisting human work as a tool for more tedious and repetitive tasking.
What AI is bad at and should not be used for: Replacing the creative process completely and basing said work on stolen database values.
Harassment under the guise of 'activism' is still harassment.
Don't do it.
Trust me when I say the devs getting you customization are also some of the most critical of the company w/ recent events.
i like when random people on the internet try to call me out for retweeting one thing that is public
from pretending they know more than me & this is it, to calling it pandering, to telling me that because i’m excited about a thing i’m not still critical of my company overall?
Thank you all for your positive support! It may be a little later than expected, but me and my jelly cats will see you in Azeroth and beyond. For the Primus!
Hey you, in the fancy transmog.
We want to hear from you! Regardless of what subcommunity you're part of, how much of a following you have!
Come yell about player customization (like troll beards), balance changes, etc. We want to hear it! Just... in a constructed manner.
When we get new models in game - someone on Design sends out a team wide email explaining a bit about the lore/use of the model for visibility.
The first type of this email I got to write was the one for the Incubus. I enjoyed typing it up.
In case anyone is wondering - my first task as an intern was to place every single treasure location for repeatable treasures in patch 7.3.
(I did the same for all of Kul Tiras in BfA.)
Sometimes I get to make fun stories, sometimes treasures need to be spawned in.
Real talk: if your 'journalistic integrity' means putting good people at risk for the sake of a story, it's not integrity, it's personal clout chasing.
*Sees a random WoW player use the small 'memorial' to Sylvanas I set up in the Blood Elf Heritage questline for the background of a screenshot.*
Feels good.
FYI, we just clarified something in the patch notes related to this. (It's not skippable on alts because it's not required for anything, access wise, after your first character.)
I got to sign this card! I don't play too much XIV actively but I loved Shadowbringers and hop on occasionally to see what's new.
The industry is a tight knit place, we would rather celebrate each other's wins than be antagonistic.
While I appreciate all of the support in the form of follows, I would like to warn my new followers that my account is primarily me posting hand made trpg dice and retweeting silly pokemon stuff.
You have been warned.
A new standalone Tarecgosa's Visage mount is now available as a quest reward for Dragonwrath wielders at the end of today's Blue dragonflight questline from a quest called Rhapsody in Blue.
#Dragonflight
#Warcraft
I love when trolls leave comments about how I'm 'playing the competitor's game' like I'm just a robot who makes WoW and that's all I do with my life.
Anyways, me playing other mmos is a good thing. I happen to do it a lot. I also play a lot of WoW.
Just as a notice for newer folks who might not have interacted much with me before.
While part of my job is to hook up hunter pets (as in, make sure the right creatures are tameable) I am *not* a class designer and have very little to do with the actual system itself.
Too many people followed me today, so obligatory:
I don't talk about WoW a lot. I'm not an official spokesperson. You'll find that most of my twitter usage is spent retweeting Pokemon. And posting pictures of my dog. She's a gremlin and I love her.
Quick Note: My work on the Blue Dragonflight stuff was *only* the four Tarecgosa related quests that come at the end if you have the staff.
The bulk of the questline was the work of three other awesome QDs, and obviously narrative, sound, and our amazing QA team.
Unrelated to anything:
You can appreciate a character for being well written/interesting while acknowledging they've done terrible things. The latter does not invalidate the former.
That's... the point of fiction.
(This is not WoW related.)
Don't shy away. The best way to make a change is to become a large enough percentage that they *can't* ignore you.
Don't take harassment just because it's the norm though. There are places in the industry that will welcome you.
Anyone else have an item in a bag somewhere in an MMO that doesn't really do anything/doesn't have any actual value, but you got it from a random person you interacted with and it feels too wholesome to get rid of?
I'm a packrat. That's what the moral of this story is.
*Vibrates excitedly*
Reminder: Anything pulled in a datamine is usually pulled w/o context and should be treated as such.
That being said, I'm excited for you guys to see what we've been working on!
The age old question as a Game Designer: "Why did I read the comments?"
As a reminder to people who won't read this ever anyways - I don't talk about gameplay systems because... that's literally not my job.
I struggled a lot during 9.2 development on a personal level as WFH issues caught up with me.
But I am proud of the little dialogue I did write for some characters.
Turns out it's easy to channel existentialism in the current atmosphere.
@CallMeQuestifer
I feel like it's worth mentioning that
@itsmarksopp
was the one who assigned/submitted the bug.
And the screenshot names he include were:
"Am I a Man.jpg"
"Neigh, a horse.jpg"
Feels like it's time to do this again - Hi, yes, I do quest/content design on WoW.
For TWW I worked on Hallowfall (and a touch of Ringing Deeps). But beyond hype windows I usually *don't* post about WoW.
Instead your timeline will get spammed with Pokemon and doggo pics.
Because I get followers every time I make a WoW dev tweet, my old followers/mutuals know the drill -
Reminder that I cannot talk about anything that is not currently out about WoW.
And I talk a lot about things that aren't WoW, this is my personal twitter.
Miranda is an amazing storyteller and incredibly passionate about OW - I'm glad to see her in this video.
(For all of you Maldraxxus fans, she did some work on WoW prior. You can thank her for Marileth and a good chunk of Vashj related content in Shadowlands.)
Lead Hero Designer Geoff Goodman and Narrative Designer Miranda Moyer detail Sojourn, the newest hero coming
#Overwatch2
.
Learn more about Sojourn's weapon and ability kit, including her Railgun and Power Slide.
👀
My favorite quest text I wrote for 9.2 should now be live on PTR...
(It accidentally didn't get turned on with the Incubus option being added - Warlocks, this one's for you~)
One day Heartstone will have just a regular announcement day without anything getting in the way.
Hopefully.
Might want to burn some sage, just in case.
New Easter Egg found in 9.2.5!
At Windrunner Spire, on the 8.1 statue, you'll find 4 mementos to the Windrunner siblings!
Purple arrow for Sylvanas
Green arrow for Alleria
Blue/Silver book for Vereesa "Two Suns, Two Moons"
Harp for Lirath w/ a beautiful on-click musical event!
When I say 'people', I'm not talking about higher ups.
I'm talking about devs, publishing teams, support teams, social media partners, localization teams, etc. who all had a hand in the project. That's tens if not hundreds of people whose effort your discounting here.
I personally didn't do too much for 9.1.5.
However, what I did help with is probably the most eclectic group of things I've ever done for a patch. Can't wait to share it with the fans~
I've been quiet today about the subject at large because I'm running on fumes, emotionally.
Some personal life stuff happened yesterday on top of everything else, so I've just been limping along.
Thanks to folks who have supported the employees who are trying to make this better.
I don't have anything really to add, I'll let other people share their stories. I've had nothing but positive experiences with my team though.
I think I'm gonna take a break from Twitter for a bit, because this is exhausting.
For a timeline cleanse, here's my chonky cat.
#WhatAGameDevLooksLike
Hey Hey! I'm Sarah, a Senior Game Designer (Quest/Content)
@Warcraft
!
Game dev was pretty much my first full time job, before that I did some grade school education assistance.
I'm a nerd who collects to many plushies and everything Fire Emblem!
Sometimes my job has me make serious content about the tragedy of the Sin'dorei. Sometimes I hide 9 cats in a zone and make it an achievement to pet all of them. (No jelly cats are harmed in the completion of this achievement)
Someone recently asked me why I said "I was happy that people generally love or hate Maldraxxus." Specifically the hate.
You'll never make something everyone will love.
But strong emotions from people means they care. I'd rather have my content be polarizing than mediocre.
Only going to say one more thing - hi. I'm a woman. I'm not conventionally attractive according to beauty standards.
So why would every woman in a fantasy game be, especially ones who are going to war?
There's plenty of characters out there. They don't ask need to fit a mold.
Just in general: Be respectful.
I love the community I've had the chance to interact with here. The good definitely outweighs the bad.
But the bad still exists. Feedback is welcome, harassment is not, and sometimes there's a fine line between the two.
Seeing all of this fanart/prepatch hype reminds me of something. My personal greatest contribution to WoW: I am the reason Nathanos hates bird. That is all.