WoW Insider interviews Tom Chilton, part 2
by Alex Ziebart 
Nov 14th 2008 at 4:00PM
WoW Insider: Are you guys ever considering merging attack power and spell power together, since you've been homogenizing stats and gear?
Chilton: We actually considered that for Lich King, however... essentially the math behind it was... it got to the point where it wasn't feasible to be able to do it with the Lich King launch. The retroactive changes would've applied to everyone's itemization, and characters, talents, all that kind of thing. It ended up being too much of a hurdle for us to do with Lich King. It's still something we've considered, and I'm sure we'll consider it again later down the line. If the timing becomes right and the need is still there for it, then we'll consider doing it.
There's also a certain amount of fun to putting together multiple sets. Like its fun to put together a PvE set and your PvP set, and that's kind of cool. We don't want to take that away entirely. So if you're a Hybrid class like a Shaman, you're putting together your Enhancement set and an Elemental set and that's pretty cool, but it can go too far.
With The Burning Crusade the itemization became so different that when an item would drop, it's not any good except for one guy of one spec. So what we tried to do was to get that to a point where that feels reasonable, and if there's more need for stat homogenization later, then we'll do it.
WoW Insider: Yeah, leather spellcasting gear...
Chilton: Yeah, that's not something you see a lot of specs using, is it?
WoW Insider: At one point you guys mentioned integrating a kind of in-game addon like Outfitter. Can we still expect to see that?
Chilton: Well, I can't say specifically when you'll see it but it is still something we're thinking of doing. Swapping items quickly is one thing we want the base UI to do more cleanly or smoothly than it can right now, swapping sets and that sort of thing. It's something we're interested in and something we've done a little work on internally, but I can't give an eventual patch date on it. I don't really associate it with patch 3.1 or 3.2 or 3.3, we really don't know.
WoW Insider: Are you still positioning for growth in America or are you looking more toward expansion in, for example, foreign markets?
"We are still growing in North America, we have been for some time." |
WoW Insider: You talked previously about the Death Knight class as a hero class being an experiment. What criteria would decide if it was a success or not?
Chilton: Well, whether people really like it. (Laughs)
WoW Insider: Well, how do you gauge that? There's always so much complaining on the forums... I mean is it the number of people playing the class and how they're playing it? In the first month? Beyond that?
Chilton: Right, well, we'll look at whether or not the class itself fits into the game, and stands up on its own and is successful as a DPS class, a tanking class, if it's successful in PvE and PvP. The whole approach of starting at level 55 and the kind of epic questline you go through to introduce you to the class, that seems to be going very well. It seems to be one of the more popular features of the expansion. So far it seems adding the Death Knight and having it as a hero class has been a succesful concept. I can imagine us continuing to do it in the future. I do believe there are a limited number of classes we can have in the game before everything starts becoming the same, so we do have to pace ourselves and be careful about what we pick, and how we actually do it. We will be very careful about adding new classes without question, but I think it's something we can do in the future.
WoW Insider: Thanks for taking the time to speak with us tonight. I hope you get some sleep.
Chilton: Oh, no, I'm going to go home and play!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Horris Nov 14th 2008 4:18PM
Great interview... and a perfect answer to that last question.
Rob Wynne Nov 14th 2008 4:37PM
What I'd like to have is the ability to start other character classes at a higher level similar to death knights. I've already *done* every zone in Azeroth multiple times. Do I *have* to trudge through them again? Gimme a jumpstart after I've hit the cap once or twice.
Caustik Nov 14th 2008 5:04PM
There is no need for starting a "regular" class at 55, the 2.3 and 3.0.2 changes made the leveling 1-70 a walk in the park - it's almost too easy now (ie remember the pain the the ZF hammer before?).
I miss the fact you had to group and learn to play in group to do some old quests, the majority is now soloable.
It's a good thing since some regions are deserted, but a bad thing since imo it leads to people not able to play in group in a rightly manner.
Naix Nov 14th 2008 4:37PM
Being excited to go home and play a game you worked on for the last 400+ days for 60+ hours a week says something.
RogueJedi86 Nov 14th 2008 5:12PM
Well he didn't have to tell the truth. Anything to appease the fanbase. Just doesn't seem like Blizzard would be as obsessed as us after so many years. Even the most hardcore player gets burned out sometimes. Just imagine that, but on a bigger scale, where you know the coding of the game.
Cyrus Nov 14th 2008 10:13PM
I haven't played much pencil & paper RPGs so maybe I'm missing something, but based on previous Blizzard computer games I have a hard time imagining any new classes like the Death Knight. I mean, of all Blizzard's hero classes, the death knight was pretty much the only one that could possibly become a playable character in WoW. (There are some others, like the dark ranger in the Warcraft III expansion or the necromancer in Diablo II, but they and everything I can think of that isn't already in WoW are dark, minion-using dps classes. They're similar enough to each other that any one of would crowd out the rest, I think.) All the rest are already in the game, albeit maybe under a different name, or their abilities are in the game spread out among other classes.
I'm not saying there's no more room for new classes. (We don't have a cloth-wearing melee dps like a monk or ninja yet, or a physical dps that can also heal, or a bard, or...) But I assume a hero class should be something with a certain history and legacy in the World of Warcraft lore and stuff, right? So what else is there, besides death knights?
Tanglebones Nov 14th 2008 11:03PM
Imho, Shaman plays very close to the bard from DnD. I mean, i like it for the same reason that i liked the bard class... Its got similar versatilty, the buffs that the totems bring are kinda like the bard's song, and there's the same potential to do some combination of melee and casting... but even i'd have to say in the end, shamans have one up on bards: they don't have to prance about in tights singing...
RogueJedi86 Nov 15th 2008 12:17AM
Pre-WotLK, people would've argued that there was no need for Death Knights, that they were just Warlocks in Plate, or "Evil Paladins". Just because you can't see a way for future hero classes to work, doesn't mean there isn't away.
GamerJunkie Nov 14th 2008 5:34PM
Right, because of the new ezmode leveling, you see most new WOW gamers are a bunch of lazy idiots. They think it cost too much and waste too much time to raid for gear when they rather solo stuff for gear like BG and Arena. Tho Arena isn't really solo but you could form a team with just a friend.
RogueJedi86 Nov 14th 2008 6:12PM
It's only "ezmode leveling" because you played when it was harder to level. For a new player, there's no harder mode to compare to. It's just slow for them same as it was for us the first time through. And may I note it's only so much easier now because you know exactly where to go, having leveled several characters. I doubt you're calling it "ezmode leveling" with your highest toon being only level 35.
Jack Spicer Nov 14th 2008 6:40PM
Yeah, my first toon was a disc/holy priest, and I did most of my DPS through melee cause I thought I needed to save my mana. Talk about making the game feel like drudgery.
manimal2878 Nov 14th 2008 8:33PM
Not having 20 other people to play with has nothing to do with being lazy arsehole!
empwolf Nov 14th 2008 6:01PM
I know one day I would like to see scalable instances. Perhaps a lame option to consider for many. Ffor those of us who spend a lot of time working, however and are in small guilds I would like to see some of the "bigger" instances without having to rely on a PUG that may not have the tolerance to let you learn to play it.
RogueJedi86 Nov 14th 2008 6:13PM
Scaling instances like the new scalable Bind-to-Account items? It'd be nice.
Knowing Blizzard's raid-focus though, they'll say "we already added scalable instances, you can raid with 10 people, or 25 people!" and pretend there's no one who doesn't raid.
empwolf Nov 14th 2008 7:35PM
Sadly your probably right. It's nice to know however that someone outside of my guild agrees, however. Maybe we aren't a bunch of crazies :-)
Turtlehead Nov 15th 2008 12:10AM
"I know one day I would like to see scalable instances. Perhaps a lame option to consider for many. Ffor those of us who spend a lot of time working, however and are in small guilds I would like to see some of the "bigger" instances without having to rely on a PUG that may not have the tolerance to let you learn to play it."
Going to come off negative so skip to the end :)
If you mean five mans that scale down I'd ask scale down to what? The holy trinity is already three, tank-DPS-healer, and they've already upped tank DPS. Further, BC instances were getting soloed by some classes not to long after it launched and getting borderline exploited by stealth classes even sooner. There's a limit to how scalable things can be without them being abused by those more skilled.
If you mean raids, that's the whole point of ten mans and lower difficulty on all the raids.
The easier leveling and soloing works directly against learning to play competently--it's silly-easy to level for many (all?) classes and end up having no idea what you're doing. Recently done it with my bank alt huntard. Couldn't chain trap to save my or others lives despite being darn good on my main. [The hunter changes SCREAM "hey, let's breed a whole new generation of terrible hunters! Here, go volley with your pocket prot pally!"] Too easy too level and goof off.
Finding a good guild that's the answer. Not easy. Finding a good guild is like finding a good therapist. Or husband. May take a few tries
Once you find the right match you'll have the support for the time available to play and advice on how to do better.
RogueJedi86 Nov 15th 2008 12:14AM
Turtlehead, I think Empwolf might've been referring to instances that scale down to 1 for lore purposes. The people who questing and lore aren't usually the kinds of people who can spend an entire evening clearing raids. Even then, you're too busy watching health bars(both allied and enemy) and threat meters and pulls to appreciate the lore of where you are. Scaling them down to single-person lore experiences would be more enjoyable overall. Give either crappy loot or no loot, just scale it down and let casuals enjoy lore.
If Empwolf didn't mean that in his original post, then I mean it now. :)
empwolf Nov 15th 2008 3:35PM
Turtle I appreciate your comment and agree with you on much of it. RogueJedi is on the money with the intent of my post, and how I would like the concept applied. If you told me tomorrow I could do a scaled down 25 man instance with just 5 people, but with no good loot or any of the epics that people are going for, then I would be happy. It would be a good time with friends enjoying a new area, and portion of the storyline.
Cetha Nov 14th 2008 6:30PM
"There's also a certain amount of fun to putting together multiple sets"
what?? I apparently missed the fun train on that one. My least favorite part of my druid, shammy, and my pally is the amount of gear I have to keep track of..it's gotten a little better with wrath, but really only a little, it's still a ton of stuff taking up space
RogueJedi86 Nov 14th 2008 6:37PM
Imagine if they do merge Attack and Spell Power in the next expansion. Spell Power is already Spell Damage and Healing combined. If they merge all 3(now 2) stats, Druids may just end up wearing the same set across all 3 talent trees.