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Blizzard's J. Allen Brack talks to us about World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, the development process and more.
At BlizzCon this afternoon we had the opportunity to talk to Blizzard's J. Allen Brack, the Production Director on World of Warcraft. We put a range of questions to him, including many submitted by GP forum community members.
Some of the key things discussed in the interview are WoW/Battle.net integration (WoW players will require Battle.net accounts, eventually), the possibility of having real Australia/New Zealand servers in the future (maybe, but don't hold your breath), plans for WarCraft 4 (none yet, the WC team is working on StarCraft II and its expansions first) and more details about the new races and content coming up in Cataclysm.
GP: In terms of the amount of changes and new content you're introducing in Cataclysm, is it fair to say this is the biggest WoW update yet?
JAB: Absolutely, yes.
GP: With 'phasing' in Cataclysm, if one player gets ahead or behind other players, does that mean they're going to get segregated?
JAB: We have some plans to change the way phasing works, and allow players to actually play with their friends, because that's quite a dominant part of the game - that's one of the problems we had with how the phasing worked in Wrath of the Lich King. So yeah we do have plans to change that, and make it so potentially players can go from one phase to the phase their friends are in.
GP: So why is it that Goblins can't be Druids or Paladins, and Worgens can't be Shamans or Druids?
JAB: Well, there's story reasons for that, you know, we've got the idea of the Goblins as a whimsical... not a very devout race, I guess maybe the best way to say that. And you know, Paladins typically have a connection with the "light", connection with some divine spirit of Warcraft, so we didn't think that was really appropriate. Also we wanted there to be more variety in the various races, so every class can't be every race.
GP: We have a question here about World of Warcraft in relation to Battle.net 2, just wondering is the intent to basically scrap the conventional World of Warcraft login and push it all through Battle.net 2?
JAB: Yes, more or less. We launched Battle.net accounts at the beginning of the year, so now players have an optional conversion period, where they can use their existing account or use a Battle.net account. As time goes on there will be a point where we say, OK, everyone must convert to a Battle.net account. We haven't really decided when that is going to be and when the right timing for that is, but Battle.net is the future of how you'll login to World of Warcraft, absolutely.
JAB: We've talked a lot about it... there's been a lot of internal discussion about doing the motorcycle, which is something that we did in the last expansion. That was something that there was a lot of internal debate in the team, but we decided to do it, and it actually worked out really well. It sort of has set the tone for a lot of the objects and things that we'll be doing from an art perspective for the Goblins. We're really excited about that, we're going to take them much further than I think we probably thought we would have a year ago.
GP: What do you say to people that claim the changes that you're making in Cataclysm are just going to make the game easier across the board?
JAB: I don't really think it's about making it easier, it's about making it a more compelling experience. We learned a lot from our philosophies in terms of The Burning Crusade, and in terms of Wrath of the Lich King, in terms of how to do quest content, how to actually do compelling story bits, and the idea of taking that learning and putting it back into the old game is overall actually very compelling. We knew we wanted to do this, because we knew we wanted to do two new races, and the idea of subjecting players to that same level of experience they've had in the last five years was not very appealing, so that's really the motivation to do that, it's not about making it easier.
GP: A question on the guild updates, it was mentioned that you'd be able to get cheaper repairs, as one of the abilities for the guild. Does that affect everyone in the guild in the same way, so you get say a 10% cheaper repair rate across the board for everyone?
JAB: Right, yes it affects everybody, so any kind of guild benefits or guild talent payment you actually spend points into, that will affect everyone who's a member of that guild at the moment. If you're not in the guild, you won't get those benefits.
GP: Can you give us an idea of the costs to mass resurrect your clan after a wipe?
JAB: No, because we haven't actually decided that. We know we want to do that ability, and we have some ideas, but there's a lot of challenges to figure out what the balance for that is going to be, how often you're going to be able to do it, things like that. Right now it's just kind of an idea.
GP: Have you had anything to do with the World of Warcraft movie at all?
GP: Have you had anything to do with the World of Warcraft movie at all?
JAB: Not too much... I guess the big announcement that we did is that Sam Raimi is going to be the director. We're working on it, the next step is to put together a final script.
GP: About the Oceanic servers that you currently have for World of Warcraft, they're not actually based in Australia or New Zealand, they're based in the States.
JAB: Yes.
GP: Are you guys still actually talking about having an Australia or New Zealand based server?
JAB: We are talking about it, part of the issue is where we are going to be located and how we transfer data over, and then there's a infrastructure cost, build out, things like that. It's not just a question of putting one server, it's an entire suite of servers. But it is definitely something we're talking about, because I know that a lot of the Aussies and the New Zealand players like yourself get a bit of latency at times.
GP: Our forum members also wanted to know about WarCraft 4. Can you talk about that at all?
JAB: WarCraft 4 is not currently in development. The team that made WarCraft III is actually the team that made StarCraft II, so they're working on StarCraft over the next few years - we've announced that they're going to be doing two expansions to StarCraft.
GP: About Cataclysm, obviously you're not talking about release dates, but how far through the development cycle would you say you are?
JAB: That's kind of hard to say, because we don't really know everything that we're going to do when we start out, we kind of figure out what we're going to do as time goes on. We started working on the expansion I guess about two or three months before Wrath of the Lich King shipped, so we sort of had a little concept of what this expansion's about, what we thought the game needed, what the next thing would be. Pretty quickly we centred on doing two new races, and then there was a big debate about how we're going to handle the old world and what we're going to do about that, and how far are we going to go, how accessible are we going to make that. So I guess we've been working on it for getting close to a year now.
Source: http://www.gameplanet.co.nz/pc/game...Craft-4-ANZ-servers-still-being-talked-about/
Note there is more but it's mainly about WoW.
To summarize: If they are making Starcraft II which now looks awesome, you can only wonder what graphic will WarCraft IV have.
At BlizzCon this afternoon we had the opportunity to talk to Blizzard's J. Allen Brack, the Production Director on World of Warcraft. We put a range of questions to him, including many submitted by GP forum community members.
Some of the key things discussed in the interview are WoW/Battle.net integration (WoW players will require Battle.net accounts, eventually), the possibility of having real Australia/New Zealand servers in the future (maybe, but don't hold your breath), plans for WarCraft 4 (none yet, the WC team is working on StarCraft II and its expansions first) and more details about the new races and content coming up in Cataclysm.
GP: In terms of the amount of changes and new content you're introducing in Cataclysm, is it fair to say this is the biggest WoW update yet?
JAB: Absolutely, yes.
GP: With 'phasing' in Cataclysm, if one player gets ahead or behind other players, does that mean they're going to get segregated?
JAB: We have some plans to change the way phasing works, and allow players to actually play with their friends, because that's quite a dominant part of the game - that's one of the problems we had with how the phasing worked in Wrath of the Lich King. So yeah we do have plans to change that, and make it so potentially players can go from one phase to the phase their friends are in.
GP: So why is it that Goblins can't be Druids or Paladins, and Worgens can't be Shamans or Druids?
JAB: Well, there's story reasons for that, you know, we've got the idea of the Goblins as a whimsical... not a very devout race, I guess maybe the best way to say that. And you know, Paladins typically have a connection with the "light", connection with some divine spirit of Warcraft, so we didn't think that was really appropriate. Also we wanted there to be more variety in the various races, so every class can't be every race.
GP: We have a question here about World of Warcraft in relation to Battle.net 2, just wondering is the intent to basically scrap the conventional World of Warcraft login and push it all through Battle.net 2?
JAB: Yes, more or less. We launched Battle.net accounts at the beginning of the year, so now players have an optional conversion period, where they can use their existing account or use a Battle.net account. As time goes on there will be a point where we say, OK, everyone must convert to a Battle.net account. We haven't really decided when that is going to be and when the right timing for that is, but Battle.net is the future of how you'll login to World of Warcraft, absolutely.
JAB: We've talked a lot about it... there's been a lot of internal discussion about doing the motorcycle, which is something that we did in the last expansion. That was something that there was a lot of internal debate in the team, but we decided to do it, and it actually worked out really well. It sort of has set the tone for a lot of the objects and things that we'll be doing from an art perspective for the Goblins. We're really excited about that, we're going to take them much further than I think we probably thought we would have a year ago.
GP: What do you say to people that claim the changes that you're making in Cataclysm are just going to make the game easier across the board?
JAB: I don't really think it's about making it easier, it's about making it a more compelling experience. We learned a lot from our philosophies in terms of The Burning Crusade, and in terms of Wrath of the Lich King, in terms of how to do quest content, how to actually do compelling story bits, and the idea of taking that learning and putting it back into the old game is overall actually very compelling. We knew we wanted to do this, because we knew we wanted to do two new races, and the idea of subjecting players to that same level of experience they've had in the last five years was not very appealing, so that's really the motivation to do that, it's not about making it easier.
GP: A question on the guild updates, it was mentioned that you'd be able to get cheaper repairs, as one of the abilities for the guild. Does that affect everyone in the guild in the same way, so you get say a 10% cheaper repair rate across the board for everyone?
JAB: Right, yes it affects everybody, so any kind of guild benefits or guild talent payment you actually spend points into, that will affect everyone who's a member of that guild at the moment. If you're not in the guild, you won't get those benefits.
GP: Can you give us an idea of the costs to mass resurrect your clan after a wipe?
JAB: No, because we haven't actually decided that. We know we want to do that ability, and we have some ideas, but there's a lot of challenges to figure out what the balance for that is going to be, how often you're going to be able to do it, things like that. Right now it's just kind of an idea.
GP: Have you had anything to do with the World of Warcraft movie at all?
GP: Have you had anything to do with the World of Warcraft movie at all?
JAB: Not too much... I guess the big announcement that we did is that Sam Raimi is going to be the director. We're working on it, the next step is to put together a final script.
GP: About the Oceanic servers that you currently have for World of Warcraft, they're not actually based in Australia or New Zealand, they're based in the States.
JAB: Yes.
GP: Are you guys still actually talking about having an Australia or New Zealand based server?
JAB: We are talking about it, part of the issue is where we are going to be located and how we transfer data over, and then there's a infrastructure cost, build out, things like that. It's not just a question of putting one server, it's an entire suite of servers. But it is definitely something we're talking about, because I know that a lot of the Aussies and the New Zealand players like yourself get a bit of latency at times.
GP: Our forum members also wanted to know about WarCraft 4. Can you talk about that at all?
JAB: WarCraft 4 is not currently in development. The team that made WarCraft III is actually the team that made StarCraft II, so they're working on StarCraft over the next few years - we've announced that they're going to be doing two expansions to StarCraft.
GP: About Cataclysm, obviously you're not talking about release dates, but how far through the development cycle would you say you are?
JAB: That's kind of hard to say, because we don't really know everything that we're going to do when we start out, we kind of figure out what we're going to do as time goes on. We started working on the expansion I guess about two or three months before Wrath of the Lich King shipped, so we sort of had a little concept of what this expansion's about, what we thought the game needed, what the next thing would be. Pretty quickly we centred on doing two new races, and then there was a big debate about how we're going to handle the old world and what we're going to do about that, and how far are we going to go, how accessible are we going to make that. So I guess we've been working on it for getting close to a year now.
Source: http://www.gameplanet.co.nz/pc/game...Craft-4-ANZ-servers-still-being-talked-about/
Note there is more but it's mainly about WoW.
To summarize: If they are making Starcraft II which now looks awesome, you can only wonder what graphic will WarCraft IV have.
