• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 02:25
CEST 08:25
KST 15:25
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
Tournament Spotlight: FEL Cracow 20254Power Rank - Esports World Cup 202576RSL Season 1 - Final Week9[ASL19] Finals Recap: Standing Tall15HomeStory Cup 27 - Info & Preview18
Community News
Google Play ASL (Season 20) Announced20BSL Team Wars - Bonyth, Dewalt, Hawk & Sziky teams10Weekly Cups (July 14-20): Final Check-up0Esports World Cup 2025 - Brackets Revealed19Weekly Cups (July 7-13): Classic continues to roll8
StarCraft 2
General
#1: Maru - Greatest Players of All Time I offer completely free coaching services Tournament Spotlight: FEL Cracow 2025 Power Rank - Esports World Cup 2025 What tournaments are world championships?
Tourneys
Esports World Cup 2025 $25,000 Streamerzone StarCraft Pro Series announced $5,000 WardiTV Summer Championship 2025 WardiTV Mondays FEL Cracov 2025 (July 27) - $10,000 live event
Strategy
How did i lose this ZvP, whats the proper response
Custom Maps
External Content
Mutation #239 Bad Weather Mutation # 483 Kill Bot Wars Mutation # 482 Wheel of Misfortune Mutation # 481 Fear and Lava
Brood War
General
BW General Discussion Google Play ASL (Season 20) Announced BGH Auto Balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/ Flash Announces (and Retracts) Hiatus From ASL Dewalt's Show Matches in China
Tourneys
[Megathread] Daily Proleagues [BSL20] Non-Korean Championship 4x BSL + 4x China CSL Xiamen International Invitational [CSLPRO] It's CSLAN Season! - Last Chance
Strategy
Simple Questions, Simple Answers [G] Mineral Boosting Does 1 second matter in StarCraft?
Other Games
General Games
Nintendo Switch Thread Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Total Annihilation Server - TAForever [MMORPG] Tree of Savior (Successor of Ragnarok) Path of Exile
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Community Thread Vanilla Mini Mafia
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread UK Politics Mega-thread Stop Killing Games - European Citizens Initiative Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine Russo-Ukrainian War Thread
Fan Clubs
INnoVation Fan Club SKT1 Classic Fan Club!
Media & Entertainment
[\m/] Heavy Metal Thread Anime Discussion Thread Movie Discussion! [Manga] One Piece Korean Music Discussion
Sports
2024 - 2025 Football Thread Formula 1 Discussion TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 NBA General Discussion
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Installation of Windows 10 suck at "just a moment" Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
TeamLiquid Team Shirt On Sale The Automated Ban List
Blogs
Ping To Win? Pings And Their…
TrAiDoS
momentary artworks from des…
tankgirl
from making sc maps to makin…
Husyelt
StarCraft improvement
iopq
Socialism Anyone?
GreenHorizons
Eight Anniversary as a TL…
Mizenhauer
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 613 users

Designer Notes Podcast - Interview with Rob Pardo

Forum Index > BW General
Post a Reply
Ideas
Profile Blog Joined April 2008
United States8097 Posts
January 13 2015 16:21 GMT
#1
Hey guys I came across this excellent extended interview with Rob Pardo (the de facto design lead at Blizzard for almost 2 decades) and I thought you guys would be the best people to share it with so I logged on for the first time in like a year to share it.

https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/rob-pardo-part-1

It covers the early days of Blizzard and the development of StarCraft 1 and Brood War pretty extensively and there's some really fascinating stuff in it.

Part 2 covers the development of War3, WoW, and SC2.
Free Palestine
Miwyfe
Profile Joined September 2010
England101 Posts
January 13 2015 16:41 GMT
#2
Was posted here:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/general/473471-4-hours-of-pardo-discussing-blizzard-game-design

I posted the following in the other thread:
This is far from comprehensive but will get you started. There are other topics discussed in between the bits Ive tagged etc.
Starcraft 1 relevant bits:

Part 1, Starcraft 1 sections:
00.38 (game balance)
00.46 (Zileas using reavers)
00.51 (fastest game speed)
00.55 (apm)
01.07 (Maps)
01.10 (Broodwar specifically as opposed to starcraft vanilla)
01.18 (Amount of hours he worked)
01.21 (Meaning of balance, Boxer using vultures)
01.22 (emergent gameplay, spellcasters, move and shoot units)

Part 2
01.26 on part 2 (unlimited unit selection for starcraft 2)
Kahanho0
Profile Joined January 2015
Belize1 Post
January 15 2015 10:52 GMT
#3
--- Nuked ---
Probemicro
Profile Joined February 2014
3708 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-01-15 11:05:27
January 15 2015 11:03 GMT
#4
On January 10 2015 19:05 Hesmyrr wrote:
Thanks for the notification! We're actually very excited about this event and already have bunch of threads dedicated to K[H]SL


lol hesmyrr confirmed for bot?
[[Starlight]]
Profile Joined December 2013
United States1578 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-01-15 12:01:13
January 15 2015 11:51 GMT
#5
This is freakin' awesome! Thank you!

// for the few ppl who might not remember, Pardo was the lead designer on BroodWar, along with Chris Metzen
User was warned for being hilarious
EndRoll
Profile Joined April 2006
Japan116 Posts
January 15 2015 13:51 GMT
#6
Thanks! Subscribed in iTunes will listen later
[[Starlight]]
Profile Joined December 2013
United States1578 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-01-15 16:27:37
January 15 2015 16:09 GMT
#7
Heard part 1, good stuff. Some thoughts

– It's too bad the interviewer didn't seem to know much about SC/BW. He kept relating everything back to games he himself helped design (Civ 3, 4). I get why he did that, but still, kinda annoying... the interview wasn't about Civ after all. Perhaps bone up on a bit on BW if you're going to interview its lead designer for several hours?

– Pardo had some interesting comments on game speed: "during development we played one notch above the middle speed [Fast]"... "we didn't think anyone would really play on Fastest"... "I myself don't really enjoy playing on Fastest." Kinda confirms a suspicion I've had for years that Fastest was a fluke speed.

– Some of Pardo's comments on balance are a bit odd, at least at first glance. He talks about how incredibly committed to balance he was during SC's development, but as we all know, SC vanilla got released in pretty horribly imbalanced shape... even several months after release, ladder stats were showing some maps with Zerg win rates over 80%, and that's over thousands of games, i.e a large enough statistical sample.

Maybe it would've been even worse without Rob's efforts (and to be fair, he wasn't lead designer on vanilla, just BW), but still, kinda points to the idea that maybe balance wasn't initially prioritized by Blizzard as a whole so much at first. Or if it was, they sure were bad at it .

He also doesn't mention the role the community played in helping force Blizzard's hand a bit... Bliz was flooded with balance complaints for months after vanilla's release (didn't really slow 'til 1.04 & BW came out), the Bliz forums were pretty much about imba wall-to-wall, threads with hundreds of posts on it were not uncommon. Have to wonder if that didn't strengthen Rob's hand some as 'Mr. Balance Guy' within Bliz, or even help make him a bit more the logical choice as LD for BW.

– I really like Pardo's design ethos, he wants to keep the cool and challenging stuff in, while still keeping things as fair and reasonable as is practical. He doesn't sound absolutist, but rather a guy who understands that design is about trade-offs and simultaneously juggling a dozen different things at once. I also like his thoughts on offense-oriented gameplay in RTS, namely, that's where it's at, not pointlessly drawing out games between two very mismatched players in terms of skill level.

Of course, Rob/Bliz may've gone too far with this early on... *cough* 4-5 pools under 150 mineral spawning pool *cough cough*.
User was warned for being hilarious
Chef
Profile Blog Joined August 2005
10810 Posts
January 15 2015 19:03 GMT
#8
Kinda disappointing; partly because of the questions, partly the interviewee himself.

You get the feeling either his opinions changed a lot over the years, or he had waaay more control over SC2 than he did SC1. Maybe his opinions just got more specific over the years, since SC2 seems to play exactly the way he thinks about it, but there are a lot more viable play styles in SC1 that don't fall under his ideas about what makes a fun game, at least on the community made maps. His ideas actually resonate pretty true in SC1 too for the default Blizzard maps.
LEGEND!! LEGEND!!
tehredbanditt
Profile Joined July 2010
103 Posts
January 16 2015 20:39 GMT
#9
I wish the interviewer would have asked some more specific questions about bw. Regardless of that, I was still happy to have heard the interview. What surprised me the most was the fact that rob seemed to portray the idea that he got changes to the game pushed through by being [one of the] best players during alpha and closed beta. An example if this being that he would always win with Zerg when they had fast ol"s on hatch tech.

I've always heard that the brood war units were already finalized when original Sc shipped , but Robs comments seemed to suggest otherwise. He also seemed to express desire to keep high skill ceilings in his games on many occasions, which makes me wonder why sc2 turned out the way it did ( he claimed that he advocated for the removal of limited unit selection in sc2). He did state the at the end of sc2 development he stopped working on the project, and during production he had many side jobs as well.

But yea. .. I wanted more questions like, " how did you come up with hit point values for units," or " what are three units / ideas that you liked but were unable to put into broodwar? And why were you unable to put them in?"

It's funny that the games he was a major part if creating are my all time favorite games ( bw, wc3 , vanilla / bc wow) yet up until a year ago I had no idea who he was
life of lively to live to life of full life thx to shield battery
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
Next event in 2h 36m
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
WinterStarcraft749
Nina 261
ProTech44
StarCraft: Brood War
Sea 2579
Larva 462
Backho 172
scan(afreeca) 87
zelot 76
sSak 58
IntoTheRainbow 9
League of Legends
JimRising 773
Counter-Strike
Stewie2K106
Heroes of the Storm
Khaldor164
Other Games
summit1g8427
RuFF_SC285
Organizations
Other Games
gamesdonequick1385
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 15 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• Berry_CruncH248
• practicex 46
• Light_VIP 22
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• Migwel
• sooper7s
StarCraft: Brood War
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
Dota 2
• lizZardDota280
League of Legends
• Lourlo1377
Upcoming Events
FEL
2h 36m
Krystianer vs sOs
SKillous vs ArT
MaNa vs Elazer
Spirit vs Gerald
Clem vs TBD
uThermal vs TBD
Reynor vs TBD
Lambo vs TBD
BSL20 Non-Korean Champi…
7h 36m
BSL20 Non-Korean Champi…
11h 36m
Bonyth vs Zhanhun
Dewalt vs Mihu
Hawk vs Sziky
Sziky vs QiaoGege
Mihu vs Hawk
Zhanhun vs Dewalt
Fengzi vs Bonyth
Sparkling Tuna Cup
2 days
Online Event
2 days
uThermal 2v2 Circuit
3 days
The PondCast
4 days
Replay Cast
4 days
Korean StarCraft League
5 days
CranKy Ducklings
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

CSLPRO Last Chance 2025
Esports World Cup 2025
Murky Cup #2

Ongoing

Copa Latinoamericana 4
Jiahua Invitational
BSL 20 Non-Korean Championship
BSL 20 Team Wars
FEL Cracov 2025
CC Div. A S7
Underdog Cup #2
IEM Cologne 2025
FISSURE Playground #1
BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025
ESL Impact League Season 7
IEM Dallas 2025
PGL Astana 2025
Asian Champions League '25

Upcoming

ASL Season 20: Qualifier #1
ASL Season 20: Qualifier #2
ASL Season 20
CSLPRO Chat StarLAN 3
BSL Season 21
RSL Revival: Season 2
Maestros of the Game
SEL Season 2 Championship
WardiTV Summer 2025
uThermal 2v2 Main Event
HCC Europe
ESL Pro League S22
StarSeries Fall 2025
FISSURE Playground #2
BLAST Open Fall 2025
BLAST Open Fall Qual
Esports World Cup 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall Qual
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2025 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.