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Pat Ditterline, Lead Server Engineer

What is it you do on a daily basis? As Lead Server Engineer I spend most of my time looking at new designs and reviewing all the changes we're making to the game to make sure they fit within the existing server architecture. I’ve had the chance to work on a lot of the systems on the server over the past few years, from Abilities and Quests to RvR, where I implemented most of the Scenario systems. What is your background? College? Degree? Has it helped with the job? 1st job out of school? 1st game industry job? How long have you been with Mythic? Have you worked anywhere else? What other jobs have you held in the industry? I have a Bachelor's degree from Carnegie Mellon in Computer Engineering, focusing on Software Engineering. After school I worked at a web development company in New York City and then went to Waterloo, Canada to work for a tiny game development startup. From there, I came to Mythic and been here three years. I find school and work to be very different! However, there's no doubt that a good degree helps immensely when you're trying to plan a large system or think in abstract terms for a large project. What other titles have you worked on in the past? In what capacity? My first title at Mythic was the Catacombs expansion for Dark Age of Camelot, where I worked on class and ability code on the server. Then I worked briefly on Imperator as a server engineer. Finally, I joined the Warhammer team when development began, and I've been working on it since. What was your “welcome to the game industry” moment when it hit you that you were really making games for a living? I don't know if it was a specific moment, but seeing a game you worked on in a store or advertised on a major web site is definitely a big moment for a game developer. I think the coolest thing is talking to people outside of the industry and seeing how excited they are to meet you, and remembering when you used to feel that way before getting into the industry yourself. What are your hopes/goals for the game? My boring engineer-hope is that people are as happy as possible with the performance of the game. Really though, I just want people to have fun! You always want to make a game that you'd want to play yourself, and watching people enjoy what you've created is great. What are your key influences when making the game? Anything besides Warhammer? Obviously, other MMOs are an influence, since we're always looking at what the competition is doing and how we could do it better. I'm an MMO player myself so I have plenty of opinions on how they work (or don't...), and games like Everquest, City of Heroes, and World of Warcraft definitely influence my thinking. CRPGs in general are an influence as well. PvP games of any kind also help with your thinking on RvR, from first-person shooters to games like Battlefield 1942. What is the biggest problem with current MMO’s you hope to fix with WAR? Not enough variety in PvP. I'm really hoping Scenarios give people a wide choice of how and where to fight, while providing balanced, tactical and (most importantly!) fun PvP combat situations. On top of that, fighting over capital cities is an incredibly cool concept that will give people a large battle to enjoy. What are your favorite video/computer games of all time? What games are you playing right now? What game should the reader be playing if he’s not? MMO-wise, Everquest and World of Warcraft are the games I spent the most time playing. My all-time favorite games are usually fantasy games... I've played through the old SSI Dungeons and Dragons games a million times, and I could play Baldur's Gate 2 any time, even now. The original Bard's Tale and Might & Magic games were a big influence on me as well. I also enjoy good strategy and simulation games, and Master of Orion, Master of Magic, and classics like SimCity and Civilization definitely top my list. What music are you listening to right now? This instant? Whatever happens to be playing on XM radio (it's Pearl Jam, "Alive" right now). Current favorite bands for me are probably White Stripes, Muse, and The Strokes, but my all-time favorites are Bad Religion and Pearl Jam.

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