Blizzard Worldwide Invitational ‘08: World of Warcraft Q&A Panel

Today at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Paris, Blizzard developers opened the floor to any and all questions relating to World of Warcraft and I was there to jot down the questions and answers. So without further ado, here’s what we learned today.

- There will be no new content patches until WotLK comes out and Blizzard is still keeping quiet on a release date for the new expansion.

- Will the range bug for Druids be fixed? They’re working on it

- What does Blizzard plan to do about the fact that their talent trees are geared toward either PvP or PvE and will that continue into the expansion? Looks like the gearing of trees toward one aspect of the game or the other is not intended and Blizzard wants to work toward all trees being viable for any aspect of the game.

- Will Inscriptions be geared more toward casters or melee and what gathering profession is going to accompany it? The new profession will be intended for all classes and will use herbalism.

- Will Linux support be available in the future for WoW and what are the obstacles keeping it from happening now? Apparently, the only obstacle is that Blizzard doesn’t feel like making the game for Linux. They stated they could do it easily and skirted around saying “just don’t feel like it” straight out but that was the jist of it.

- Are there plans to make the Warrior trees less tank vs. dps since the Druid (and soon the Death Knight) are able to tank and dps through a single tree? Yes. Improvement to warriors are incoming. They’re working on increasing prot warrior dps. They also plan to make shield slam available to all warriors.

- What are Blizzard’s plans to make pure dps classes more viable since there is an influx of hybrid classes that can perform all duties just as well? Blizzard said that they are focusing on class distinction and their goal is simply to keep classes as different as possible.

- Will voice chat be modified to fit the voice of the character? Blizzard has discussed the possibility and called it an “interesting challenge” but it doesn’t look like they’ve reached any sort of conclusion. However, they did mention that Death Knight voices would be different depending on the race playing it (i.e. Gnome Death Knights will sound like a cross between a Gnome and Darth Vader)

- Will the addition of new classes disturb the balance of 25-man raids? Inevitably, yes. But the important thing - for Blizzard - is that there are still 25 players playing different classes.

- Will the Death Knight be a viable main tank in 25-man raids? At the 25-player level, Blizzard wants to specialize tanks so that they each excel at different encounters - thus making each one important. In 5-mans they want all tanks to be interchangeable. No mention on how this affects the 10-man raids.

- Will there be flying mounts in WotLK? Absolutely yes, but the how of getting the mount is still being discussed. Flying - in Northrend - will be available from level 77, and new skills - such as the ability to carry passengers - will be unlocked at Level 80. Looks like they’re still tweaking the details of how flying mounts will work in the expansion.

- Changes to Retribution Paladins? Blizzard is working toward making items that will be shared by warriors, paladins and death knights. They also plan to increase dps.

- Will one be able to modify the look of weapons and armor the same way as hairstyles? The short answer is no. Blizzard want weapons and armor to reflect a player’s acheivement in the game. They do have plans to make armor for PvE and PvP distinctive from each other.

- Will there be different skins for Druids? Blizzard has considered this - quite seriously it seems - but they are shying away due to an uncertainty that this is something that won’t cause an outcry of unhappy players. It’s hard to gauge whether the answer to this was a strick “no” as it seemed to weigh in more toward the “maybe some day but it’s not a priority” side of things.

- Will there be different models available for female and male druids? The answer to this was no. But they are working toward making a different model for the Dire Bear and introducing a Dire Cat model.

- What will be the changes made to Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms with WotLK? Blizzard stated that they are big fans of the old world and hope to bring as much of it as possible into the future of WoW. They have plans to build a harbor in Stormwind (you can see the beginnings of this already on the PTR for patch 2.4.3). They are also introducing a new area - Northern Plaguelands - which will serve as the starting zone for the Death Knight class.

- Any plans for arenas? They plan a new arena in the back of Orgrimmar.

- Will there be Gnome Paladins? No.

- Will Blizzard do something about class imbalance in arenas? Patch 2.4.3 - which will be coming out “soon” - will include changes that will “favor casters.” Regarding the expansion, ten new levels and the introduction of new spells and abilities will affect class balance.

- Line of sight in arenas? Blizzard will introduce the concept of dynamic line of sight in arenas which will feature moveable obstacles such as pillars that go up and down.

- Sunwell Plateau is too hard, will it be nerfed? Blizzard is content to keep the Sunwell Plateau as difficult as it currently is, as it serves as the end raid for The Burning Crusade expansion.

- The game is too easy, and there’s lots of noobs. I’m not sure what the question was exactly, but Blizzard replied that their goal with WoW has always been to put out a game that’s “easy to play and hard to master” and that they work toward including content that’s accessible and enjoyable to players of all walks of life. Blizzard also pointed out that WoW’s low system requirement would always attract a large number of casual gamers.

- What will be the new buffs introduced in WotLK? Blizzard stated that Shaman totems would be improved to affect raid members. Buffs such as Battleshout and Unleashed Rage would also be expanded to the raid.

- Will there be improvements made to the character selection screen, such as letting you see time played on a character? Blizzard thought this was a good idea, and certainly something they would consider doing, it would just have to fall at the bottom of their very long to-do list.

- Will Rogues get a choice between specs if they hope to raid, as swords is currently the only viable raiding spec. Blizzard has plans to improve daggers in the expansion and these will come back strong.

- Will there be an epic ground form for druids? No.

- Will European to US server transfers be available? This is something Blizzard would like to offer but they have no timeline available at the moment.

- Will Uldum be a playable dungeon in WotLK? There’s no clear answer yet, but Uldum is at the top of their list of dungeons that they hope to introduce either in WotLK or in a future expansion.

- Since the Warlock Demon form will increase armor, will the Warlock be able to tank? Demon form is not intended to fill a tanking form.

- Will new armor in WotLK be as mismatched as it was in TBC? Blizzard admits that there was “some clown action, okay, a lot of clown action” and they hope to improve on this somewhat, but there are no promises that people will be 100% happy. Which I took to mean most of us will go from looking like a million bucks to looking like paupers.

- Will there be a system in place to match people better in arenas? There is already a system in place that attempts to match players based on a score, but they also have to take account the queue times if they make the system too aggressive.

- Soul shards are annoying to farm, will there be a better method for obtaining them in the expansion? Blizzard has no plans to change the soul shard system, however they do plan to introduce a method by which the warlock can obtain emergency shards.

- Why does the animal boss in Kara drop such crappy loot? The animal boss in Kara was always intended to be a time filler for raids that were short a few members and wanted to something to do while waiting on the rest of their team.

- Does Blizzard plan to do anything for their RP base? Blizzard has a dedicated team whose focus it is to plan fun events in WoW. At the moment, they’re working on introducing Weddings and things like that, but since the team is small, not a lot of changes have been implemented.