Posts with tag Mumper

If you guys have noticed, we like to feature the various throwback thursdays that developers have posted to twitter. Today we have another doozy from Cory Stockton. Previously he's shared really awesome looks back at places like Dalaran, today he gives us this look at Shadowmoon Valley in its conceptual stage. Looking it over you can see that things are still in the 'generic name' version, for instance 'Dwarf' and 'Broken Draenei Village' instead of names yet, but most of what we recognize as the Shadowmoon Valley of The Burning Crusade is on there. Considering we're going to be getting a look at an entirely new SMV as an Alliance starting zone, I find this look back very interesting.

We've seen quite a few of these behind the scenes peeks at Blizzard's design process, from Alex Afrasiabi's pictures of his Benediction design and the Rhok'delar pages, to these pages from Cory Stockton and Jonathan LeCraft including Death Knight and class designs.

Now Cory Stockton's back with this, an early look at how Dalaran's layout was designed.

My 1st pass layout of Dalaran for WotLK. Made a few changes along the way, but it came out pretty damn close. #TBT pic.twitter.com/EFwX0hJk5a- Mumper (@mumper) February 28, 2014

It's striking in how familiar it is, and yet places like the Dragon Embassy (later relocated to Wyrmrest Temple), the lack of clearly demarcated Horde and Alliance sections, and the presence of the Violet Citadel as a separate instance definitely set it apart from the Dalaran we ended up with. As always, interesting to see the game that might have been.

Following Alex Afrasiabi's example, both Cory Stockton and Jonathan LeCraft have posted some of their earliest design brainstorming notes to Twitter. Stockton's notes focus on the death knight class and what you're looking at was originally penned back in 2006, before Burning Crusade was even launched. Now that's planning ahead! It's interesting to see what aspects of the class survived those initial thoughts scribbled down on paper, such as no shield for tanking and runes as a resource.

LeCraft's notes (image after the break) date back even further to show the earliest workings of class abilities like Ice Lance, Snake Trap, and Spellsteal. Rogues and warlocks, you were once considered for that latter spell but it appears the mages won that round. The "jumpy heal" didn't end up in the druid's spellbook and instead went to priests as Prayer of Mending. It's a fascinating look into WoW's development process and makes one wonder what notes are being scribbled today for expansions we don't even know about.

Amongst all the excitement about pandaren and monks, it's easy to forget about the arrival of Pet Battles with Mists of Pandaria in a few hours. Blizzard CM Kaivax is definitely not a forgetful soul, and has posted an in-depth interview with Lead Content Designer Cory "Mumper" Stockton.

It's a great interview, in which Cory clarifies some design philosophy behind the Pet Battle system. The 100 gold cost, which makes pet battles pretty out of reach for new players, is intentional, and part of the design of the feature. As Cory says, everyon playing pet battles should be playing World of Warcraft first, and pet battles as an aside. It's an addon, an additional feature to make use of in your spare time, so Blizzard don't support players who only want to do pet battles. Once a new character reaches level five, though, as long as they have a generous benefactor they can get going and battle some pets right away.

This also means, of course, that players on trial accounts will find it pretty impossible to play pet battles, as they can't trade, can't auction, and, even if you're thinking "I could vendor enough stuff to get to 100g", they have a cap of 10g. And trainers don't seem to accept instalments.

Cory also clarifies some important points with regard to PvP realms, including what happens to your pets if you get killed, and what happens if you die while trying to capture a pet. And, he talks at some length about recent changes in the pet battle philosophy, and more to come in future! Hit the jump for the full post.