Posts with tag pc-gamer

PC Gamer has an interview up with Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas, and it didn't hold back - and neither did he, really. Asked if he thought World of Warcraft could last another ten years, Ion's yes was unequivocal.

I can't tell you exactly what our 20th anniversary celebration event is going to be–maybe new content which hasn't been created–but I can tell you there's going to be one.

So now that I'm sitting here desperately curious about what that 20th anniversary celebration is going to be, let's look over some other interesting points from the interview.

• Baking all previous expansion into the Battle Chest is all about removing obstacles to play - they like the depth of having ten years worth of content, but not the feeling that in order to check out the newest content you have to run all the old stuff first.
• Visual updates being discussed include various forms like moonkin and cosmetic additions to armor, things like quivers for hunters and updated geometry on the armor itself.
• It's unlikely we'll get another Cataclysm style visual update anytime soon - resources are more likely to be allocated to new content.

So head on over to PC Gamer and read Ion's interview.

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Blizzard Producer J. Allan Brack also talked in the latest issue of PC Gamer about Wrath of the Lich King, and while he doesn't drop any major bombs, he does speak pretty candidly about what Blizzard is doing right and wrong with content, and what they hope to achieve from World PvP in the future.

Perhaps most surprisingly, he gives away just how closely Blizzard is watching their competitors in the MMO world to see what's worked and what hasn't -- on the issue of updating the graphical engine and just general influences, Brack has no compunctions about citing EverQuest as a huge influence on World of Warcraft, even going so far as to call it "the big foundation" of the game Blizzard made. He also notes that Blizzard pays a lot of attention to their own game as well -- they track how fast players are going through content, and how players do it. He specifically says that Lake Wintergrasp PvP will work like the Spirit Towers in Auchindouin, in that the battle will go down at a certain time, so everyone knows when to get to work and fight there. Battlegrounds and arenas aren't being neglected, either -- there'll likely be "at least" one of each added to the game with the expansion.

Finally, he also agrees that "level separation" (the difference between the characters you've got and your friends who just joined up at level 1) is a problem that Blizzard is keeping an eye on, and while he doesn't mention any solutions yet, he says they'll change it if they feel they have to. Sounds like Brack and his team are well on their way to hammering out the expansion.