Blizzard is good at two things. The first is marketing and the second is taking ideas and making derivative works from them to, as you say, make them accessible.
However, not hiring icefrog and then trying to sue over the dota name was just colossal mismanagement and a missed opportunity they had to have seen coming.
I wouldn't say DotA thrives on being hard. If that was the case the majority of wc3's userbase wouldn't have switched to it. I just think it came at a very important time in a metric shift of the playerbase and was an extremely powerful instigator during a void that formed when wc3 failed to reach expectations.
I think there are two extremely pivotal people in the custom content community. The first was Andy Bond, AKA King Arthur. He was a part of the group that made the first modding tools for Starcraft. He is now a lead programmer in Blizzard (in fact the wol beta AI refers him by name in notes). He was hired extremely quickly. I think some other names from that area at least had minor involvement. The second is Icefrog who made the single most successful piece of game-dependent custom content I can immediately think of (Counterstrike and co are independent mods). That it now lead to so many hundreds of copycats is ridiculous. Even if Blizzard never intended to use him as a designer, just his name is a significant brand name attraction, a critical part of their marketing philosophy.
Throughout time a few minor names were hired for Blizzard, but I'm not at liberty to disclose their information. One of them wasn't exactly a skilled modder or mapper. Certainly not at the level of Mister Schutter. However, many who were had tried time and time again around this area to become a part of the company, producing demonstrative works of respectable quality. This gentleman simply approached a recruiter in his college and joined that way. He started as QA and worked up from there. He also became an alcoholic. That's pretty common, I hear.
Of course, every case is unique and I do expect their recruitment staff to be looking for holes in their staff to plug, but if you want to become a part of the company it's always best to speak to them in person. Just generalizing, the traffic they get for applications must be insane. Renee has a good resume but I feel like her locality might be a barrier.
/edit
And as far as the OP is concerned you can expect wc4 has been in the design pipeline for years and their staff is already figured out for it.
He made custom content. He also talked directly to employees. The latter was more significant given everything would-be employees and then actual employees told me. If you can talk to a recruiter (they go to local campuses afaik, or perhaps he had other connections) your chances are far higher.
What is weird is they didn't hire Icefrog of all people when he applied.
It is likely his story is similar to someone else I know who also entered blizzard. As it turns out, talking to recruiters is a thousand times more effective than producing any nature of custom content.
However, veteran modders have all been universally turned down when attempting to apply.
Although why you would want to join blizzard at all baffles me.
Blizzard is good at two things. The first is marketing and the second is taking ideas and making derivative works from them to, as you say, make them accessible.
However, not hiring icefrog and then trying to sue over the dota name was just colossal mismanagement and a missed opportunity they had to have seen coming.
I wouldn't say DotA thrives on being hard. If that was the case the majority of wc3's userbase wouldn't have switched to it. I just think it came at a very important time in a metric shift of the playerbase and was an extremely powerful instigator during a void that formed when wc3 failed to reach expectations.
I think there are two extremely pivotal people in the custom content community. The first was Andy Bond, AKA King Arthur. He was a part of the group that made the first modding tools for Starcraft. He is now a lead programmer in Blizzard (in fact the wol beta AI refers him by name in notes). He was hired extremely quickly. I think some other names from that area at least had minor involvement. The second is Icefrog who made the single most successful piece of game-dependent custom content I can immediately think of (Counterstrike and co are independent mods). That it now lead to so many hundreds of copycats is ridiculous. Even if Blizzard never intended to use him as a designer, just his name is a significant brand name attraction, a critical part of their marketing philosophy.
Throughout time a few minor names were hired for Blizzard, but I'm not at liberty to disclose their information. One of them wasn't exactly a skilled modder or mapper. Certainly not at the level of Mister Schutter. However, many who were had tried time and time again around this area to become a part of the company, producing demonstrative works of respectable quality. This gentleman simply approached a recruiter in his college and joined that way. He started as QA and worked up from there. He also became an alcoholic. That's pretty common, I hear.
Of course, every case is unique and I do expect their recruitment staff to be looking for holes in their staff to plug, but if you want to become a part of the company it's always best to speak to them in person. Just generalizing, the traffic they get for applications must be insane. Renee has a good resume but I feel like her locality might be a barrier.
/edit
And as far as the OP is concerned you can expect wc4 has been in the design pipeline for years and their staff is already figured out for it.
He made custom content. He also talked directly to employees. The latter was more significant given everything would-be employees and then actual employees told me. If you can talk to a recruiter (they go to local campuses afaik, or perhaps he had other connections) your chances are far higher.
What is weird is they didn't hire Icefrog of all people when he applied.
Modding =! mapping.
It is likely his story is similar to someone else I know who also entered blizzard. As it turns out, talking to recruiters is a thousand times more effective than producing any nature of custom content.
However, veteran modders have all been universally turned down when attempting to apply.
Although why you would want to join blizzard at all baffles me.
The major RTS world stagnated shortly after Brood War's release.
Blizzard is just marketers. Anyone who had ideas has moved on to other companies a long time ago.
They won't hire anyone from the modding community.