Developer Interview with Jeffrey "Tigole" Kaplan

produced in cooperation with


watch the Video on www.aboutwow.de

Here are the Questions:
Q: Actually many players fear that the old areas of Azeroth will get "Ghostlands" so nobody is using them, because they aren´t necessary.
Q: So we talked about the old continent, are there any plans to add new Dungeons or something like that in? In particuar Caverns of Time?
Q: Will the new continent Northrend be bigger than Outland?
Q: Will it be really hard to get from level 70 to 80?
Q: How does Blizzard check the balancing of the new raid instances and how do they know which is the skill level for causal gamers and which for hardcore guilds?
Q: Do you have a whole QA team which tests the content?
Q: Are there in particular any numbers of how much 5-man Instances you will include with "The Wrath of the Lich King"?
Q: After you included the "fraps" function to Mac OS, when will the PC version for the "fraps" function get released?
Q: Whats the difference between Mac and PC?
Q: Are there any plans to upgrade the game engine to support new features like directx 10?
Q: Are players able to use the flying mount in northrend and how will you prevent that people cross whole zones without spending attention to them? Are you plannig to build invisible walls or anything like that?
Q: Do you have any ideas for causal gamers? Is there any plan to motivate them?
Q: So Warhammer Online is coming up and it´s very based on Pvp, are there any plans to enhance the Pvp?
Q: For example the workers in Darkmoon farel are working and working and working and never make progress, so are there any plans to include some dynamic KI to World of Warcraft to make the world more realistic?
Q: And housing? Are there plans to include houses for player?
Q: If you could include one thing into World of Warcraft, anything you want. What would it be?
Q: When you could turn back time and travel to the point where the development of World of Warcraft started, what would you do better?


summary on http://www.worldofraids.com
- Blizzard will focus on making leveling 1-60 easier to encourage rerolling and new players. They will do this by adding the new CoT: Stratholme, Naxxramas, revamping old zones, and adding/fixing low level quests. They will also add a new 10-man instance in the old world that has yet to be named.
- Northrend will be larger than Outland is. However, Dragonblight will be the only individual zone larger than all Outland zones in Wrath of the Lich King.
- Sunwell Plateau will be released before WotLK as a 25-man hardcore raid zone with 6 bosses, as well as a 5-man casual and heroic regular instance playable by anyone.
- There will be a "level-up" instance for each leveling area in WotLK, with heroic difficulties available for all of them for level 80 players. There will also be at least 2-3 new 10-man instances in the new areas.
- There are no plans to fully makeover the current graphics engine for the expansion, but rather fine tune certain aspects of it.
- Blizzard is preventing players from using flying mounts early on at level 70-77'ish in Northrend to allow Blizzard to guide players better and provide more immersion, but they will be able to fly again later on toward the end levels.
- More daily quests will be introduced with randomization involved so that they are not the same each time you do them anymore.
- City raiding is not planned, but the idea would like to be explored by Blizzard for future content. Housing is also not planned for developement yet, but would also like to be implemented in the future.


summary on MMO-champion.com
- CoT : Stratholme and Naxxramas will be here to bring people back to the old continent.
- Dustwallow Marsh will fill the lvl 35-45 gap in leveling.
- Elite quests will be turned into normal quests in Alterac Mountains and Arathi Highlands.
- Northrend will be larger than Outland. Zones will be smaller than the ones in Outland (except for Dragonblight)
- There will be a "level up" instance for every level range. (Pretty much like Burning Crusade)
- WotLK will have at least two 10 man instance, with possibly a third one in a patch.
- They don't plan to upgrade the engine to DirectX 10, they will just add a few improvements every now and then.
- Randomization will be added to daily quests to make people feel like they do different quests each day.
- Housing is still scheduled, but doesn't fit with the current development of WotLK. We'll have to wait quite some time before getting it.


Zusammenfassung auf wow.gamona.de
- Die Instanzen Stratholme in den Höhlen der Zeit und Naxxramas haben ihr Revival, um die Spieler auf den alten Kontinent zurückzubringen.
- Die Düstermarschen werden die derzeitige Leveling-Lücke zwischen Stufe 35 und 45 mit vielen neuen Quests ausfüllen.
- Im Alteracgebirge und im Arathi Hochland werden die derzeitigen Elite-(Gruppen-)Quests in normale Quests umgewandelt, um sie auch für Solospieler schaffbar zu machen.
- Nordend wird grösser als die Scherbenwelt, die einzelnen Zonen aber kleiner (mit Ausnahme von 'Dragonblight')
- In WotLK wird es wie in TBC eine "Levelup"-Instanz für jeden Levelbereich geben.
- WotLK wird mindestens zwei 10-Spieler-Instanzen beinhalten und wahrscheinlich später mit einem Patch noch eine weitere.
- Es wird kein Update der Grafik-Engine auf DirectX 10 geben, sondern lediglich hier und da ein paar (optionale) Verbesserungen (Anm.: Das dürfte insbesondere die Benutzer älterer PC's und Betriebssysteme freuen).
- Die täglichen Quests werden zufälliger gestaltet, um den Spielern das Gefühl zu geben, jeden Tag eine andere Aufgabe zu lösen.
- Das Fliegen mit eigenen Flugreittieren in Nordend wird von Stufe 70 bis etwa Stufe 77 oder 78 nicht möglich sein, damit Blizzard die Spieler besser durch den neuen Content führen und einbinden kann. Im Endspiel werden die Spieler aber auf jeden Fall wieder fliegen können.
- Die Häuser für Spieler (Player Housing) stehen immer noch auf dem Programm, passen aber nach Meinung der Designer nicht in den derzeitigen WotLK-Entwicklungsplan. Wir werden also noch ein Weilchen darauf warten müssen.
- Raids auf Städte (-> Belagerungsmaschinen in WotLK) hält man für eine sehr interessante Idee, die man mit Hinblick auf zukünftige Content-Updates weiter ausloten will.


Corgan