Blizzard Hits Austin GDC

Want to hear a real Origin veteran speak? Former Wing Commander developer and current WarCraft superhero J. Allen Brack will be headlining the Austin Game Developer's Conference's keynote speech this September. Mr. Brack worked on Wing Commander III, IV and Prophecy... but most will likely remember his namesake, the TCS Brack corvette, from the ICIS manual. From the Press Release:

The Game Developers Conference(R) Austin (GDC Austin) will host a keynote by Frank Pearce, executive vice president of product development and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment, and J. Allen Brack, the production director on Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft(R). In their joint keynote, entitled "The Universe of World of Warcraft," Pearce and Brack will talk about the ongoing challenges involved with operating one of the world's most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Presented by Think Services, GDC Austin returns with three days of main conference content focused on connected games; online games, virtual worlds, and social networking game play and four two-day summits including the Game Writers, Game Audio, iPhone Games and Independent Games Summits. The event takes place at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas September 15-18, 2009.

As the production director for World of Warcraft, J. Allen Brack is responsible for coordinating the efforts of the game's development team as it creates new content to keep the experience fresh and exciting for the global audience of World of Warcraft players. Brack has previously worked at Sony Online Entertainment LLC on Star Wars Galaxies(R) and at Origin Systems, Inc., on the Wing Commander(R) franchise. At Blizzard Entertainment, he helped in the creation of new zones, dungeons and quests for World of Warcraft's first expansion pack, The Burning Crusade(R), and currently manages the production of patches and expansions from their initial conception through their release.