Beckett Exclusive with the Blizzard Development Team: Cataclysm and the 5 and 15 Anniversary.
I had the privilege of speaking with two members of the Blizzard Development team, Greg Street and Cory Stockton. I was able to get about 20 minutes to ask them questions about the upcoming WoW Anniversary and the new Cataclysm Expansion. They let me pick their brain in regards to these milestones in the game. I got some great insight and information from them. So without further adieu:
What was the inspiration when you created the anniversary companion pet?
Essentially the Onyxia whelp was developed to be a drop for Onyxia's lair when they asked for an asset to be created; when the model came back they decided to use it as the anniversary pet because it was so cool looking.
Are you adding an in game event with this Anniversary?
No, the events are geared to follow real world holidays. New ones were added this year like the Day of the Dead (el Dia de los Muertos) and the Harvest Festival which is the Thanksgiving event.
What is the most challenging part of the Anniversary?
This year, because five years is a milestone we wanted to create something nostalgic and give back to the player community. This is why Onyxia was brought back and updated. It allowed players who did not get the opportunity in the past to enjoy something that was part of the old world and lesson the strain on the development team. Either way it is still fun for old and new players.
With the addition of two new races and the new class combinations will there be more character slots added to accommodate that for players?
This is a possibility and is being looked into. The team is taking a look at how many players are maxed out with all their character slots being used.
The armor in Wrath of the Lich King was a bit on the bland side with all the muted and darker colors, will that change with Cataclysm?
Yes, there will be new sets of gear for PvP, Tier items and dungeon sets. These sets are designed to work better together and be more aesthetic. So if you are using tier robes and instance gloves they should go better together and not look as mismatched. The colors used for Lich king were chosen because of the cold and dark aspect of Northrend and the Scourge influence.
Have you started working on next year's Anniversary?
No, right now the focus is on Cataclysm and the upcoming patch.
With the new instance and raid system and the upcoming patch will the new instances be saved overall or by wing?
The new Icecrown instance will be large and be three separate instances essentially. There are three wings. The goal was to make an epic and larger dungeon for players. When you run it once initially you can run each wing in no particular order and be saved only to the wing you run.
The pet store is also a recent addition; in the future will mounts also be made available in this manner?
Not yet, this is still in the development stage. More pets will be coming, but we need to see how things progress before adding other things like mounts.
Will other charities get a benefit from new pet sales in the future?
Again because this is still very new it will need to be looked into as it progresses.
World of Warcraft has now been around for five years is there a reason why tailors still do not have a crafting bag and will that change with an upcoming patch or with the expansion?
There is more than likely a good reason why there isn't one but we can look into that. Though it is a bit strange that all the other professions have one and tailors do not.
Will there be a pre-launch event for Cataclysm like there was for Wrath of the Lich King?
Definitely and this one is planned to be bigger and better than the pre-launch event for Wrath of the Lich king, information will be more forthcoming as it gets closer.
There has been concern that lore is being changed or bent and is getting lost with the Cataclysm expansion, will there be things to explain this?
Lore is a very important part of World of Warcraft, so with the expansion there will be quest lines added to explain the new changes and some others will be taken away. There will also be new events as well like the highborn night elves coming back to the Temple of the Moon in Darnassus. Night elves were picked to become mages because of their history in lore and that we felt it would be a controversial idea.
I do need to thank both Greg and Cory for taking time out of their busy schedules and let me bend their ears for a while to get these questions answered. There are some wonderful things to come with the new expansion. Again I have yet to be disappointed by the Blizzard Development team, and I know there will be more amazing additions and surprises in store for us in the future.
To discuss this game go to our World of Warcraft Forums at: http://www.massiveonlinegamer.com/community/forums
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