20 years later, veteran WoW director says players outsmarted him completely in Ahn'Qiraj: 'All that work, and there was still an instant tell'

I don't envy the position of being a game developer—especially not an encounter designer in something as complicated as an MMO. You might have an idea of how a mechanic's gonna go, but there's just absolutely no way it survives contact with 40 motivated, mid-2000s era hardcore WoW players.

Former game director at Blizzard Wyatt Cheng, whose delightful TikTok channel has been giving free wisdom and anecdotes for some time now, says that exact agony happened to him around 20 years ago with the release of Ahn'Qiraj. Particularly with The Prophet Skeram boss, which splits into illusions at 75%, 50%, and 25% health.

"There's one part I never got right," says Cheng. "I really wanted the only way to tell the difference between the real Skeram and the copies to be that the copies have half the health. So under even DPS rates, the illusions would drop in health faster."