World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Q&AFollow

You've read the E3 preview and you've watched the video interview. Now check out our behind-the-scenes interview with World of Warcraft lead designer Jeff Kaplan.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/worldofwarcraftexp1/preview_6151428.html?part=rss&tag=gs_&subj=6151428&page=1&q=&q

This a quick 2 page Q&A for the Burning Crusade. I thought it was worth the read.

With the quote Dodo pulled up, I think I hear angels singing. THAT is what I saw WoW missing, and I am ecstatic at the thought of that addition.

Edit: This part also made me smile greatly. Socketed items were fun in D2, and I'm glad to see them in WoW.

GS: Will there be a combination bonus that will encourage players to use different gem types?

JK: We don't want players focused like, "All I want are intellect gems; that's all I care about," so we have a system, we don't really have a name for it yet, but it's almost like gem sets or metagems. For example, I can socket in this gem that does +12 strength if four blue gems are equipped. There are these gems that will make me shake up my normal socket system, like one that does +4 agility per different-colored gem, so if I keep mixing up gems, I get more agility.

Edited, Wed May 17 21:34:43 2006 by CrimsonNeko

Outdoor=not in an instance. And this will be where you don't have to queue up or anything, it's always on.

Anyone wonder what will happen to the current BG system because of this? I like world pvp, but I don't want to see AV die or anything like that.

Good thing I've been stocking up on metals and gems for a few months now. This just reinforces that mining is going to be quite the lucrative business post-expansion.

I'm all for story and quests and lore, but I'll be a monkey's uncle if I'm not a 400/400 jewelcrafter by day after the expansion comes out. =)

Edit:

It's not just the honor in the Outlands, it's the bonus for holding the objective as well. I imagine that I'll ***** around in the Outlands while queued for BGs.

Edited, Thu May 18 13:38:59 2006 by Riggy

It does come down to the Honor Riggy.

I don't think Blizzard has the 'balls' to make world pvp that truly matters. Now don't get me wrong, they'll probably be some kind of 'advantage' to holding the pvp objectives, but I doubt it will be all that impressive personally.

Remember, from the get go Blizzard has made sure that losing pvp was no big deal. And from there they added more and more measures to make world pvp have less and less of an impact (BGs and DHK).

The last thing Blizzard wants is to have people complaining to them because the Horde always hold the Burning Peninsula or whatnot.

As much as this is a copy/paste of a Warhammer Online concept, they won't go 'all the way' with it. Unless there's a lot of honor to be had, I don't know if it will be able to rip the BG grinder away from it.



Edited, Thu May 18 14:02:32 2006 by Tyrandor

It all depends on what the "objective" is and what the "reward for holding that objective" will be.

If it's just an extra graveyard (as Kaplan used as an example in the NY Times interview) then I can't imagine people doing it too often.

But if it's something really cool (like a vendor you can only access when controlling that objective) then it'll generate more interest and BGs will lose popularity.

I won't disagree with any of your points. However, despite what people complain about, Blizzard does a good job of incorporating player concerns into their vision for the game. And to be contrary, I think that Blizzard's view of world pvp should work regardless of server type and the DHK was a (admittedly heavy-handed) response to try and keep world pvp in check and from unbalancing the pve servers in particular.

So yeah, losing will still have little effect. I am guessing that holding the pvp objectives will act as an incentive, not be the end reward. And I'm guessing (hoping) that they've learned and won't have civilians hanging out near the pvp objectives. I can picture quests like "get 50 HKs while defending the objective". You get honor and an immediate reward.

The nightmare situation will be that there will be civilians strewn through out the zone and after a few DHK's people give up.

That would be a cruel joke wouldn't it.

Give them credit for trying to balance pvp with the rest of the game. I applaud Blizzard for not implementing a server-type dependent solution. I view this as their attempt to incenticize controlled pvp. I'm envisioning an AV-style of play in a section of Outlands labelled Contested.

The problem is that then they do differentiate things. Now whenever they conceptualize an idea, there will be an extra step in the development process. "How will this change we're considering affect the pve servers? How will it affect the pvp servers?"

Next logical step: "Well, it affects pve like this, which is fine, but pvp will be hurt. We'll adjust it like so to make it work."

Continuing, 6 months and 6 content patches later, the setups have diverged so completely that some things can no longer be reconciled between the two servers. And then one of two things happens:

1) Server type A gets something not in Server type B.
2) They overlook something in the two different setups and completely break the gameplay open for a server type.

DHKs may have been minor in the short run, but it sets the precedence for differing solutions for different server types, which in my humble opinion is a bad precedent to set. Every racial, religious and sexual orientation problem has started in a similar fashion (as an extreme example).