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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsCurse's interview with Tigole and Kalgan
by Eliah Hecht 
May 9th 2008 at 1:00PM
Like many other sites, Curse.com got a chance to visit Blizzard and take home some information on everything Wrath. They have an interview with lead designers Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan and Tom "Kalgan" Chilton, and a general writeup. A lot of it has already been covered in our previous reports, but here's what looked new to me:- Karazhan showed Blizzard that 10-man raids could work, and were good for more casual players; on the other hand, more hardcore raiding guilds were upset about having to break into 10-man groups. Thus Wrath's split 10-man/25-man raid system.
- Naxx is going to have to be tuned way down, since it's now an entry-level raid instead of a top-level raid.
- Class balance as we know it is going to change drastically with the new talents for every class (at least in their current, secret, developmental state).
- WoW was always planned out with item inflation in mind, so don't worry about it too much.
- There will be a Northrend kick-off event.
- Kaplan would rather we did dailies for gold instead of farming primals, since it's less repetitive; on that note, he wants to make more of a varied experience, like the cooking daily or the daily dungeon with randomization built in.
- They're planning a new item type that will bind to your account, specifically for twinking. You might get it in a dungeon, and you can mail it to your alts, but you can't sell it on the AH or anything.
- There will be a new battleground, with siege weapons and destructible buildings.
- The Paladin is designed to be the best AoE tank, and the Warrior the best tank for sheer mitigation; the Death Knight is designed to be the anti-caster tank. These distinctions should be fairly irrelevant in 5-mans -- any tank class should be able to tank a regular or heroic dungeon -- but they will come into play in the more difficult raids.
- They're experimenting with daily quests being used during the leveling process.
- The Arena gear will come in two tiers, to mirror the quality of the 10-man and 25-man raids.
- 10-man and 25-man gear will be recolors of the same models, and you will be able to wear them together for set bonuses.
- Arthas will not be in the game from the beginning, but will be patched in.
Filed under: News items, Expansions, Interviews, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 4)
Badger May 9th 2008 2:12PM
Did anyone else catch this part of the Interview?
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"TTH: What tier level is the equipment going up to in the next expansion?"
"TC: Well, it'll start off at like tier 7 quality gear, or tier 8. It depends on whether or not you consider Sunwell to be sharing another tier of gear, and then Ulduar beyond that will be another tier of gear."
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What the hell is "Ulduar?" Maybe I just haven't been paying attention but personally I don't remember seeing this name before.
Badger May 9th 2008 2:19PM
Disregard - I just read that Ulduar is a part of Northrend. Sorry. It was mentioned in the same breath as the Sunwell, and I miscounted the number of Tier sets, so I thought that maybe a hint had been dropped that we were about to get one more instance.
Still ... Ulduar sounds a lot more important, from the way that Kalgan keeps referring to it, than some players may realize.
wyrd May 9th 2008 5:06PM
The reason Ulduar will probably be important is it will most likely continue the information and quests about titans, dwarfs, and earthen that people have been screaming for forever.
Rob May 9th 2008 2:13PM
My feral is only 65, yet i have zero trouble getting into instances. It helps that I could (in theory) respec and do some healing. Plus it really helps that early instances are very forgiving. For example we did UB with a balance druid as a healer. We had to stop and let him drink every other pull but it was doable. Only one wipe and a few deaths. I didn't even tank that one, we had a 63 warrior who did it.
Anyway my experience is that druids can make just fine tanks even in greens at that level. I dont know about heroics/kara. My sense is that ferals are just fine there too, and if you've got the right gear and skill you can tank almost anything, and people will be happy for you to do so.
JParris May 9th 2008 2:22PM
Indeed, druid are in very high demand if you gear properly. No tank can soak up damage like a druid. With simple gear switches you can tank nearly any boss in the game, and there are more than a couple that seem designed specifically around high-dodge high-dps tanks, which is a Druid's niche.
Rob May 9th 2008 2:33PM
WOW Inside SNUBBED by Blizzard?!
Curse got to go to BHQ, but WOW Insider had no Roast Beef?
guy May 9th 2008 3:51PM
HAHHAHA, I was thinking the same thing...
The WI invite was lost in the mail? Or does some one at Blizzard understand that all this site does is regurgitate old news?
Thorn May 9th 2008 5:52PM
@Rob:
I tend to think of this place as the Reader's Digest of WoW. It's definitely not "inside" the game, but it does serve a purpose.
Thorn May 9th 2008 5:53PM
Err... I meant that to be @guy. /fail
Nyght May 9th 2008 2:48PM
I have a tank druid and I never had any problems tanking any instance. Never once have I heard "Nah we want a warrior". I get begged to run one of our 4 or 5 kara badge runs each week. I tank in MH and BT and when 1 MT is needed I can switch to cat and out dps the warriors that arent MT. I think the issue is more of skill than class. Get max defense, max armor and as much HP, ATk PWR (threat) as you can and nobody will complain about you. Use www.emmerald.net as your resource for getting gear. It ranks gear for bears and cats. Hunters and Rogues have nothing but smiles when in my group due to Leader of the Pack (5% crit) and Improved LOTP (heals on crits) Warriors can't give them that ;)
Brimoonfang May 9th 2008 3:24PM
Thanks for all your comments.
After hearing from a guildie, it appears that the issue is not so much that they don't want me to tank, so much as it is
that the other tanks are locked into that role:
If I put on my DPS gear and go cat, I can be useful.
If I put on my tank gear and go bear, the prot spec warrior
or prot pally cannot put out the DPS I do as cat. So if I insist on tanking, I am gimping the whole raid.
4STR4STALeatherBelt May 9th 2008 3:29PM
"Arthas will not be in the game from the beginning, but will be patched in."
Excellent. So just like Illidan he can be marketed and yet not even be in the frigging game till 6+ months after the expansion is launched. Black Temple and Zul'Aman both took far too long to be added, especially since they were both hyped as LAUNCH content. Epic fail.
Zrob May 9th 2008 3:39PM
Was your guild ready to hit BT before it was patched in?
If so, how long did you have to wait?
Mr. Applebutter May 9th 2008 4:24PM
Black Temple patch was may 2007, BC was released in January right? Where's the six months?
Ryan May 9th 2008 4:28PM
Considering only one or two guilds had downed Vashj and nobody had downed Kael prior to the 2.1 release, I think the BT release was very timely.
4STR4STALeatherBelt May 10th 2008 5:33AM
Sorry, maybe I just have high standards but I don't see expansions the same way you clearly do. If they're gonna market this as the "Lich King gets smashed" expansion then should he not be in the expansion from launch? Isn't that what we're paying for? Too much to expect for them to add ADDITIONAL content after the expansion launches?
You clearly didn't raid in TBC if you think it was anything less than a joke. Gruul was insane, the fight now is almost nothing like the original version. Vashj was bugged so badly that the guilds who DID kill her first still wiped and had to get the loot through a GM. Blizzard made no effort to even properly design the raid content for TBC, they just threw a mish-mash together and hoped we wouldn't notice. Well guess what? We did. This time around they might consider actually having the raid content better tuned+coded for launch, and not just 1 or 2 instances but everything they MARKET for the expansion.
Again, clearly my standards are just too high. God forbid I expect to get what we're paying for when we pay for it. *Rolleyes*
Diabla May 9th 2008 4:30PM
"...Kaplan would rather we did dailies for gold instead of farming primals, since it's less repetitive....."
So does staement mean that future items from WotLK won't be using as many farmable mats like primals overall or say fewer of certain types? or.. (lol) items that require things like nethers and vortexes as the main compontent with trade specific items to fill in the other mats spots? I guess I'm confused.
Let's take primals for example.. Farming them is "repetetive" so Blizz makes dailies for us to earn gold instead. Since people farm them to make money and don't/won't need to do that anymore then the market is going to become comprised of buyers and little to no suppliers. which means that the few suppliers left will charge exorbitant prices for items like these they're already doing now since the release of 2.4.
And I going the wrong direction with this? I failed economics .. It was a freakin' epic fail.
Attorama May 9th 2008 4:39PM
"They're planning a new item type that will bind to your account, specifically for twinking. You might get it in a dungeon, and you can mail it to your alts, but you can't sell it on the AH or anything."
Great, so now everybody is going to roll on items and claim that it's for an alt.
kr3wman May 9th 2008 5:18PM
I don't think anyone would roll on something that is worse than what they already have.
Verit May 9th 2008 6:49PM
Unlock 10 man bosses only if a 25 man team does the content first?
On one hand the elite guilds will feel they have purpose again, on the other it sucks if all you can do is 10 mans.