Streams can be found @ http://eu.blizzard.com/wwi08/streams.xml, instructions to watch are on that page.
XFire is also hosting streams, nothing much known about those yet. http://www.xfire.com/cms/xf_wwi08/
After the large Dev Q&A Panel, Cory Stockton (Lead Level Sesigner) and Samwise Didier (Blizzard Art Director) held a smaller Q&A with 15-20 people. Here is a three-part video covering parts of that conference.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 (From World of Raids)
From WoWInsider's coverage.
One thing they're talking about is that they don't want to leave the Death Knight in the specific role according to their class -- they don't want to pigeon hole Death Knights by the spec they choose. The speaker plainly said that it's problematic for designers that tanks are forced to either be tank spec or DPS spec -- they want to avoid this restricting dynamic for Death Knights.
He also spoke about class-defining abilities. Runes, right now, have a 10 second cool down. The Armies of Undead are meant to call masses of undead -- invoke the feeling of how Arthas is the Lich King, and able to pull large groups of undead to attack enemies.
The speaker definitely seemed concerned about the tank shortage. They want to avoid pegging a death knight spec as only one spec at a time, so that each character has as many options in play as possible.
Which races can be Death Knights? Confirmed all of them. The Lich King doesn't discriminate, he likes them all. You can be a Gnome Death Knight if you want.
Steady Shot will no longer clip autoshot -- the speaker acknowledged that Hunters hurt their own DPS by using their abilities
Pets will get "talent trees" - one utility tree, one TANKING tree, one DPS tree
A specific ability revealed was "cornered" - your pet does an additional 20% damage when they're at 20% health
Plan for New Pets? And new pet slots? There will definitely be new pets. (No news about new pet slots.)
Will pet skill points disappear with pet talent trees? It's a total rewrite of the Hunter pet system. No more skill points, only pet talents now.
Will get a Frostfire bolt to make Elementalists more viable.
Now that every other class has CC, what are you going to do so that Mages are more viable? Make sure their damage is competitive. They are "sidelined" by Warlocks now. Intended for Mages to be kings of AoE but Seed of Corruption was too effective. Scale up Mage damage, make sure they can overtake AoE.
Divine Hymn - Allows priest to cast a hymn (holy tree) that heals party members. If an opponent strikes a party member, they go into a trance. It gives a deep holy priest not only a healing mechanic, but a pretty interestnig emergency ability to use for control
Dispersion - Reduce damage 90% regen 6% health/mana per second. 51 point shadow, a way to turtle against incoming attacks and regen. Can move but not cast spells
Guardian Spirit - Talent that prevents party member death. Castable cheat death pet. Follows a party member, if party member takes a killing blow, the spirit dies instead. All three are specifically designed to address core priest issues, or solidify their overall role.
Will there be some changes made to priests in terms of damage and healing ot balance them against other classes? Do you mean balance them up or down? Shadow Priests are huge in raids, but they're a big weakness in high-end Arena PvP, we never see them there. Dispersion is the big ability designed to help this, to help them escape from melee. Hopefully that'll do the trick.
Entangling Roots indoors: A lot of druids left out of heroics due to a lack of CC indoors. Diminishing returns off of Cyclone a "curse to the class" because Cyclone has such a short duration. No DR means you'd end up spamming Cyclone every 6 seconds the entire dungeon.
Didn't change Cyclone because "it takes too long to cast, didn't want to take Druids out of the action to recast Cyclone over and over, and chain-Cyclone in PvE"
Flourish (or nourish?) for druid -- short time cast healing spell, 1.5 sec cast, effectiveness depending on what HoTs are up
Will Druids be able to use Windfury and Mongoose in forms? Yes, that's one of the changes. The windfury is no longer going to be WEAPON and going to be BUFF for your PC. Windfury is a buff, not a weapon enchant. It works with forms and poisons and weapon buffs etc.
Will cyclone be changed or improved for Balance? No.
Suffering from "totem spam" -- too many totems
Strength of Earth and Grace of Air will be combined
Totems will affect the entire raid, not just the party. Woot!
Rockbiter is out. Earthliving is the new weapon enchant, will give +healing
Flametongue is giving spell damage. Frost more reliably snares
Shaman will get Hex, a limited, emergency CC, 8-10 sec duration, .5 sec cast time -- Hexed players will have movement control, but no casting ability
Fan of Knives, from Warcraft III was a core ability of the Warden, but they thought it fit Rogues more
It's a short AoE damage burst when needed (1 minute cooldown was mentioned)
Sap bigger spread now. Humanoids, beasts, dragonkin, demons. Another CC help for heroics. "Pretty much anything with a skull and brain inside of it."
Ret has poor itemization -- trying to move it over to Warrior/DK itemization
Hand of Purity is a new "reactive healing spell" -- PoM style preemptive "healbomb"
More non-exclusive blessings -- Freedom and Protection. They won't necessarily be called blessings, but they'll be outside of that category.
Does the Ret focus for Paladins mean you plan to move away from Protection and Holy? 'I definitely want to express we don't ever plan to move away from core things like Holy/Protection." We have to work on the specs that haven't worked well enough. Hand of Purity is one example of trying to enhance Holy.
Wanted to make the class feel more like Warcraft III -- put the Bladestorm Shockwave in, and tweaked Arms and Protection.
Shockwave will help with Prot damage problem
Titan's Grip is confirmed -- dual wielding 2h weapons. Rossi will love that.
Any plans to make it so warriors don't need to waste 5 talent points to get Flurry for raids? "We'll see." He acknowledges that the talents pigeonhole warriors, and that they want to be careful not reinforce that. Try to make it so that Death Wish Flurry doesn't turn into dominant raid DPS build. Bladestorm needs to be very attractive for DPS. Titan's grip route is the fury route for DPS, so BS if you're Arms, Titan's Grip if you're Fury. With both viable, the five talent points might not be necessary. They're fine with the flurry points, specifically, though and feels worth it to them. (Crowd is extremely unhappy with that one)
Demonic Circle -- scribe a circle on the ground, and then teleport back there when you need to
51 point Demonology is a demon form. "Illidan form" is what Blizz is calling it around the office. In demonform you can spam some AoE Shadowbolts.
From WoWInsider's coverage.
Cory Stockton, lead level designer; J. Allen Brack, lead producer and Tom Chilton, lead game designer are on the podium. They'll be talking about WotLK plans and theory, with a sneak preview towards the end of the panel.
10 and 25 player experience for every raid dungeon. Probably the biggest change they've made - allows them to have a lot of new content, compared to earlier separate development on 10/25 man content. Now they can double the amount of content.
Heroics will return: really happy with the way heroics played out in TBC, want to bring it back. Lots of plans for heroics, more tuning, changing things up from standard 5-mans. Thinks players will like the direction.
More nonlinear content. More choices for players, don't always have one path to take in dungeons. Give players a bit more of a choice so dungeon is a different experience if you do it more than once. The Occulus is a good example.
New gameplay scenarios. Been trying to do this since shipping WoW. Gauntlets, timed events, nonlinear play. Being able to do things in a different way, so not every dungeon is the same thing that just looks different. Different experience too.
Spirit shard reward system for all raids/dungeons based on Wintergrasp PvP. Whoever controls Wintergrasp can get spirit shards from all bosses in all dungeons/raids in the game. Use them to buy unique items, enchants, etc. Still working on reward system but connects pvp with pve. Help the two merge together over time, somewhat separated, same goal for player: advancement.
Dungeon Line-up:
Why 10/25 man raids? Opens up raid content to a larger audience. Takes more organisation and planning but doesn't mean that content shouldn't be available. Sometimes the hardest part of a 25 man raid is getting 25 people. So why not give that experience to people in smaller guilds?
Loot separation. Separating loot by a full tier worth of stat points, ultimate endgame content is 25-man so ultimate rewards. Still get great rewards in 10-mans. More loot per boss kill in 25 player raids (because there's more players). Been talking about giving more loot in 25mans for a while, will see that change in Wrath.
A big project, heroics were an interesting tuning problem, hard enough to be a challenge but easy enough that people just starting out could do them. Were a great success. But too hard, want to make them more accessible. Don't want e.g. lacking a prot spec tank, holy priest, etc to bar people from doing heroics. Should be available to more players, open up to different classes and groups.
Some dungeons were too long. Took longer than they planned. Like to keep dungeons to ~1 hour long. Not their intention to have players stuck in dungeon in 3 hours. Going to really check length before releasing new dungeons.
Quests did not feel as connected as they should (kill end boss/kill 10 creatures). Really trying to allow dungeon quests to have interesting goals. Gundrak is cumulation of a long questline encompassing the whole zone. You know why you're killing the endboss, and what the outcome will be, connects players to dungeons beyond killing bosses for loot. More of an impact on the world.
Summoning changes worked out great. Stones/warlocks summoning into instance (audience applauds). Main reason was to remove barrier to entry to dungeons that were annoying to get to. Wanted to make it convenient.
Patch order. Has an impact on what players have available to do, have to make sure things feel right when releasing patch. They wanted to get Black Temple out asap so Zul'Aman ended up being released later, probably would have been better to deliver ZA first since most players weren't ready for BT but keen for 10-man content. Learned that lesson with WotLK. Arthas is final endgame boss so delivering content in the order they thinks works best for the players, whether that's a new 5-man, raid etc.
Again? Audience cheers; 'that's about the same way we feel about Naxxramas'. Huge labour of love. Always felt it was a dungeon that WoW needed. Most players never got to experience it because of the release timing. Loot was still really great but TBC superceded it. Made sense to come back to it and give everyone a chance to experience it. 10-man accessible. Extremely proud, want everyone to play it.
Lore-wise Naxx fits in perfectly, with Arthas/Northrend, history behind Naxx lends itself well to being a part of WotLK and something players can get into really early. Chance to retune it and make it even better. Huge dungeon with a ton of bosses, over 15 bosses in one raid dungeon, non-linear (wings) giving players a lot of choice.
PvP gear will be available through PvE as well as PvP. Spirit shard system. Players that want to get started in arenas who love dungeons can get started through PvE. Won't be the best gear, but will give you a chance. More items per boss kill in 25 player raids. More items desired by more classes, big project. Trying to remove unnecessary stats because there are too many different types of loot, what if a ret paladin item drops and you don't have one? Merge some of the stats so that items will work across a group of ~3 different classes. Players can get loot that's more useful and accessible, killing a boss feels better.
Recipe drops, pretty rare right now. Specific plans only drop off one boss at really low drop rate. Doesn't mean they won't put unique plans on hard to reach bosses but want most plans to be accessible, earlier bosses, easier dungeons. Might not feel like such a grind to get that one rare pattern.
Want to make it not feel like a grind. Championing -- Earn faction outside of your current dungeon. Choose a specific faction to earn rep with, system will use tabards, put tabard on in any heroic and every kill will give rep towards the faction whose tabard you're wearing as well as dungeon faction. Small bonus if you wear the tabard of the dungeon faction too. Details not final but this is the direction. Don't want you to feel you have to grind certain dungeons mindlessly.
Remove faction requirements for heroics. Don't want people to feel like there are so many barriers.
PvP rewards will show up in faction too. Similar to current lowlevel pvp faction sets. Will continue this trend. Greater variety of faction rewards full stop. Only a certain amount of items they can make in the time they have. Items that fit different specs and classes. More recipe plans, something done in TBC but not all trade skills were represented in factions. More rewards in general from faction.
Will be able to tank both raids and dungeons. Not intended to be 'the new tank' but is a unique tank and want to make sure they can tank raids and 5-mans, heroics, as well as DPS. Just going to do it in a different way, keeping classes unique. Looked at what players need -- people always need a tank. More tanks = more dungeon runs.
Level 80 dungeon located in Borean Tundra (Coldarra). Unique; first dungeon players can fly in. Get a drake partway through the dungeon and do mounted combat as if it were a vehicle, individual spells on different drakes. Tank drakes, heal drakes etc. Nonlinear; started as a high fantasy pitch and has become a high concept design.
Occulus is a series of rings floating in the sky, can pick and choose bosses. Concept art shows circular and frozen themes. Dungeon design shown, they design on paper and try to feel how big the space is, is it big enough to fight the boss, the trash. Layouts turn into concept art and 'blockout' phase, turning 2D image into 3D so they can run around it in 3D. Dungeon is complete, internal playtesting at the moment.
Part of Ulduar, located in Storm Peaks. Tied to Titan lore. Level 77-79. Will need a flying mount to access. Nonlinear. Want to make you feel like you're infiltrating Titan area, feel like it's something new even though scope is very different. Epic scale. Level 80 dungeon in Ulduar (Halls of Lightning) and raid dungeon too, but Halls of Stone is first dungeon players will experience
Wanted the scale to be big but not annoying (to the level of wanting a mount to travel through it). Showed blockout, walked 5 players through game to see if there's basic things like enough room to pull mobs, enough room for cameras etc. Platinum Discs quests from Uldaman -- this is the next evolution, continuing the story. Location where we can read the discs and maybe find out information about how Azeroth was created, deliver lore to players.
Player response to CoT was overwhelming, allowing players to play through story rather than just read it. CoT: Stratholme located in CoT, Tanaris. Removing faction requirement on CoT teleport. Level 80 instance. Scripted experience, similar to Old Hillsbrad. Experience "The Culling" mission from Warcraft 3 in the WoW universe.
Fight alongside Arthas (before he falls to the Lich King) to see how Stratholme fell, what exactly went on with Arthas to get him where he is today. Really want players to get to see more of Arthas. Timed encounters, some completely new things. Non-linear. You're actually in Stratholme, used a good portion of the original Strat dungeon, looks and feels as you would expect and tried to stick as close to lore as humanly possible. Using original voiceover acting from Warcraft 3.
Infinite Dragonflight storyline from TBC will be continued in Stratholme, popular storyline, this was the perfect place to do it.
Entrance in CoT similar to other dungeons, entrance reflects Lordaeron art and Strat style buildings. Plaguewood transformed. Really wanted city to feel alive, on the brink of something bad but feeling that the city was fully functioning, player arrives at a crucial moment.
Q: Will there be a change in legendary drops? Atiesh-style or random drops? A: For the most part they like the Atiesh style. Sometimes they have to deliver content and don't have time to implement quests like that hence simplified drop system. Case-by-case basis.
Q: Attunements lifted in TBC. Any in WotLK, or just gear checks? A: Plan to reduce any complexity on attunements, don't plan to add new attunements to dungeons/heroics and entry level Naxxramas, will still have an attunement path once you get into raiding that takes you to the end but goal to make sure it's simple to understand and not as complicated as the attunements TBC shipped with.
Q: Wipe management - will there be closer graveyards, shorter run times through dungeons? A: Yes, definitely something we constantly think about. We play all the dungeons too. If we feel like something's too far we'd move it. In most cases the distance of graveyard is based on difficulty, want to make sure there's some price for death, but not too annoying.
Q: Being a hardcore raider, you could see content that not a lot of people can see. With 10-man dungeons being the same as 25, will you reward hardcore raiders beyond just loot? A: Want to make sure 25-mans feel like the pinnacle of raiding, hence the one tier loot separation, so you know for sure someone's done that raid, they'll wear different gear. Titles is something we're looking into working more with, titles from kills, title just from being able to get into one specific area. Definitely aren't trying to merge the two, like the first kills, videos etc. Want to keep that feeling, if you get that first kill it feels great for you.
Q: Will there be an expansion of the token system or will loot be randomly determined? A: Don't plan to move away from token system but some of the randomness can be alleviated by simply dropping more loot.
Q: With all this talk of heroics, there are some people who can't even manage normal dungeons, is there any idea of bringing in new dungeons for them? A: I don't think you're alone. There are a lot of players who find that first 5-man a barrier to entry, it's something we've been talking about a lot. We're not going to make everything easier but we do want to make things more accessible. It might not mean a creature is easier to kill but easier to understand, easier for new players to learn advanced techniques.
From WoWInsider's coverage.
Images: Overview, Map Development 1, Map Development 2, Keep
Stockton talks about the iterative map design process -- from a very simple hand-drawn map, to a carefully drawn out map, to detailed in-game maps, to the same with notes on where they'll add items, destructable buildings, etc. The placement of water in the zone is important because siege vehicles can't move through water, so these will be potential chokepoints.
Graveyards will be like graveyards in other battlegrounds with a basic 30 second respawn. You'll also be able to capture graveyards so your team isn't always respawning across the map.
Stockton shows off a keep. All parts of the keep are destructible. The scale is described as "epic" -- it's large enough for siege weapons to fit inside. Had to make them big enough for gameplay because, since it's non-instanced, there could be 50 people in the zone or 200 people in the zone.
Images: All Siege Vehicles, The Demolisher, Forsaken Catapult, Siege Engine, Goblin Shredder
Chilton covers five different types, all usable for both factions:
They're still considering how to obtain the vehicles, but they want the process to be fast-paced and fun.
Design ideals for these are:
Stockton takes center stage again to talk about the two new arenas in Wrath: Dalaran and Orgrimmar.
Dalaran Sewers:
Images: Layout, Development Screenshot
There's a pipe in the center of the arena that water will occasionally pour out of. While the water is falling, it will block line of sight. It's a simple layout, but a few dynamic elements that will mix it up. There's a pipe on either side of the arena where each team will start, and a blast of water will push people out of the pipe early on.
It's currently in playtesting.
Orgrimmar Arena:
Images: Layout
These dynamic elements will make each arena feel different.
Not testing yet.
Northrend Battleground:
Images: Layout, Size Comparison
Chilton comes up to talk about Northrend's new battleground
Stockton explains the layout. Attackers will come in on boats and assault the city. Siege vehicles will need to be used to break through the city's walls and break in. The further you get, you'll capture points allowing access to more siege weapons.
They're currently planning it to be 10v10 or 15v15. They BG is currently being play-tested.
Q&A:
Q: Now we have one source of honor, Alterac Valley, and everything else is a source of marks. Some people lose on purpose to get marks quicker. Is there anything being done to solve this problem? Chilton: It's a very very difficult problem to solve. We find that if we give no rewards for losing a battleground, it's very punishing. That's why we have systems to report players for not participating and we've lowered the number of players who need to report someone. (There is a certain point where the system can't determine how hard you're trying.
Q: Do you have plans to implement a spectator mode? Chilton: Definitely on our list of things we want to do. To add to that, we also have the idea of using that spectator mode to extend to other things, in raids for example
Q: Unique (racial) combat moves? Chilton: We don't plan to add any more racials.
Q: My girlfriend and I love PvP, but since the Burning Crusade, we feel like we're forced into arenas Chilton: We do plan to keep a pretty similar sort of reward items.
Q: For the frost mage, some crowd control talents seem to be PvP-oriented, don't you think this could cause unbalance? Chilton: It's always going to feel that way because bosses tend to be immune to crowd control, but we're trying to open it up.
Q: What do you plan to fix Warlock pet scaling? A: Right now we're pretty happy with pet scaling. It should be a viable tactic to spend some time attacking the pets. A player has to make a choice. We feel like if that scales very well, it's going to be a viable tactic to just focus on one.
From WoWInsider's coverage.
Q: Why has there never been a agnome ina Warcraft cinematics? A: There are many, they are just too short to be seen.
Q: Will there be a major content patch before Wrath release? A: That sounds suspicioulsy like you are asking for a release date for Wrath. The answer is: tomorrow. No, but Sunwell is the last content patch before the expansion release.
Q: What about the range bug for the Feral Druid? A: We are re-evaluating how we calculate range distance. May be fixed by Wrath.
Q: One talent tree for each class is geared toward PvP and one for Raiding. Any comment on that? A: Its not intended for any given tree to be a PvP tree. As players min/max their chars, one tree becomes most liked for a particular playstyle. We try to make all the trees as viable as we can for all the different parts of the game as much as we can.
Q: Will the Inscription profession be for melee and for casters and what is the gathering mechanic? A: Its intended for melee or casters and there will be major and minor inscriptions. Herbalism will be the primary gathering skill.
Q: Wil there be Linux support? What are the barriers? A: We have no immediate plans for support of Linux client. We had a Linux version early on for compatiability purposes, but have no plans to make the final game for Linux.
Q: What is going to be done to facilitate DPS warrior to tank better to be in line with Druid and Death Knight abilities to do just that? A: We do have plans to improve the Warrior. We plan to help the Prot Warrior do more dps, through Heroic Strike and Revenge improvements and maybe give Shield Slam to all Warriors.
Q: At the beginning of the game, the class roles were rigid, but as the game went on, classes became more like hybrids. But some are still single role. How are you planning to address Hunter, Mage, etc gameplay to make them more like hybrids? A: Most classes had hybrid abilities at the beginning. They will remain distinct but with cross-over roles. We do plan to keep them as distinct as possible. Even though there will be a new tank class, all tank classes tank differently.
Q: Is voice chat planned to modify voices to match the voices of the character. A: (In very Diablo like voice) No. (Real answer): We have been thinking about it, but it has a lot of problems having to work with the different voices of players. If one player has a lower voice, it will come out better than a player with a high voice. We are going to modulate the tones of the DK voice emotes so if you are playing a Gnome DK you will still sound like a Gnome.
Q: What is the story with the orc and the fruit cart in Shattrath. Will it ever be moved? A: If Metzen were here, he'd be angry.
Q: Do you think adding new classes will disturb the line up for 25 man raids. A: Yes, I think it is inevitable. The question is whether we are happy or not with the end result. What really matters is that it is 25 people showing up and hopefully everyone feels like their class has success in a raid.
Q: How viable do you plan on making DK's in the 25man raid. A: We want the tanks to feel interchangable at the 5man level, but at the 25 man level we want the tanks to have a specialty, DKs should be the best against casters. Shouldn't be far behind on other encounters.
Q: Will we be able to use flying mounts in Northrend? A: Yes, we are allowing players to use flying mounts in Wrath. Their wings might have to be defrosted a little bit. There will be some kind of attunement. New flying mounts will be introduced, possibly able to carry passengers at level 80.
Q: Itemization for Ret Paladins. A: There are several things coming down the pike. They will share itemization with Warriors and DKs. And we plan to enhance their group utility to melee dps and how much dps they are able to put out themselves.
Q: What do you have planned for armor customization in Wrath. A: We do plan to make raiding armor sets in Raiding look distinctive from PvP sets.
Q: Will feral druids get new skins in Wrath? A: That is something we have talked about. We have to be careful about this because while some players would like that, others would not. This is based on past exprience when we accidentally changed some Rogue stealth animation. The outcry from the community was amazing. We have to balance the desire for new things with the needs of the community.
Q: Will druids get male or female optional forms to choose from? A; We're thinking about swapping out flight form for male and female forms for feral. No? We do plan to have a new model for dire bear form and we plan to introduce the dire cat.
Q: What changes will you make in the old world, specifically filling in areas that are blank. A: We're huge fans of the old world. A few new things: we're adding a harbor to Stormwind, its transport to Northwind. We will also be extending an area in Northern Plaguelands for the Death Knights to have a starting area. We are planning on putting one of our new arenas in Ogrimmar in place of the empty Arena there now. We want people to continue to play in the old world.
Q: We have Gnome DKs, what about Gnome Paladins? (booing from audience). A: i was going to say yes, but by popular vote I'm going to have to say no. (audience cheering.)
Q: In season 4 how do you plan on improving class balance. A: Minor adjustments in Patch 2.4.3 tuning to favor casters a little bit. In addition, its hard to say about Wrath. Every time we add another 10 levels and spells and talents and a new class everything will change in terms of balance, but by the time we ship the game we will have balanced things to an acceptable level.
Q: What did you learn about Arenas so far? A: Line of sight, how much that affects players. We are going to introduce dynamic LOS in Wrath, for example a pillar may move up and down every 20secs or movable items. Randomness into the Arena vs player skill is the balance. We will have more info about the Arena in tomorrow's panel.
The first place we tested the Arena it was with no LOS obstacles and it wasn't as interesting.
Q: Even Nihilum could kill Kil'jaeden. Will you nerf Sunwell Plateau before Wrath launches? A: Naxxramas will be retuned for 10 and 25 man and will be first tier raid. That is a good example of content people couldn't experience before. As far as the difficulty of Kil'jaeden, he is designed to be the final raid boss of the expansion. He is the unobtainable goal and we have no plans to nerf it. We monitor player progression and if we need to nerf it, we will, but have no plans now.
Q: PvP players have to do more PvP to be better for PvE. Is there plans to better separate the two? A: Its a fine line to walk. We don't want one to feel like they have to do the other, but we want players to feel like if they participate in the other gameplay, there is something there for them and that the two playstyles aren't exlusive to each other. We plan itemization changes planned for Wrath to smooth things out between the two.
Q: Can Warriors look forward to Retaliation become less useless in Wrath. A: We will have swarms of mobs that will attack you.
Q: Don't you think with all the patches, the game is getting easier and easier, and it's increasing the number of newbs? A: We're just trying to get it to where Frank can get through the game. One of the things we value very much at Blizzard is the ability for the game to be easy to learn and hard to master. You will see more newbs play over time because we keep system requirements low. You will see a more and more casual audience play as time goes by.
Q: Which party buffs will become raid buffs in Wrath? A: Most of the Shaman totems, Unleashed Rage and Battle Shout as a couple of examples.
Q: Will there be management tools at the character screen to reorder how characters are displayed, time played etc. A: Good idea, but we would have to prioritize it and get it in.
Q: Any plans to increase viability of Swords specs for raiding Rogues? A: We do intend to make improvements, daggers fell behind, we do intend for daggers to be very strong in Lich King for Rogues.
Q: Will druids have an epic ground form? A: No plans. Just epic arena wins with their current ground form.
Q: Will players every be able to transfer characters from US servers to European servers or vice versa? A: We've talked about it. There are unique technical challenges. Its nothing we have a timeline or plans for.
Q: Crowd Control and PvP: Matches are no game because player is always crowd control and Magister's Terrace... and I lost the feed. A: It's one of the things we're looking at. CC is required to make the match interesting, otherwise it's just a damage race. In WotLK it'll change, but they can't say there will be less than there is now.
Q: Uldum in Tanaris, is that going to be later content or a release in Wrath? A: Uldum is a dungeon that a lot of players want to see, and it was on our list for Northrend. I can't say whether we'll see it or not but it's something we want to get to players. There's still a lot in the old world that we plan on hooking into, but we don't want to launch it all in one expansion. Others like Grim Batol, just not all in one expansion.
Q: Do you plan on having Warlocks as viable tanks? A: They've already had opportunities to be viable tanks, but it's not a role they will fill consistently. It's an AE damage or direct damage form
Q: Will ugly mismatched armor be a problem in Wrath the way it was in TBC? (cheering) A: We ended up having a little clown action, ok, a lot of clown action in TBC. We aren't going to eliminate it, but we are going to improve it. You won't be happy 100%, but we could just solve it by making everything gray.
Q: In the Battleground or in PvP, if you're a higher level than your opponent, you will have success. Is there any plan at the high level to separate players according to gear. A: Chilton: The current BG gear already does that. But to add additional parameters makes it even longer to find matching teams and thats what we have to balance against.
Q: Will Soul Shard farming being addressed? All other classes can buy their reagents at vendors. And what's up with the Missing Diplomat? A: Diplomat - no answer off-hand, would have to talk to Quest guys. Soul Shards - we do have plans, emergency soul shard ability, but no plans to change it significantly. Its class defining.
Q: Any plans to be able to switch between Talent specs easier? A: We are working on a plan to give players access to two Talent specs. More details in the future.
Q: Why does the animal boss (spider boss) in lower Karazhan drop such crappy loot? A: That was a specific idea we had were there was a boss that dropped loot that didn't require 10 people. You have 8 people logged on you could get some faction and some loot.
Q: Any plans to create cities or other environments specifically for roleplayers? A: It seems you can roleplay all over the world. Some players might want a theater, other palyers might want something different. We give the entire world a lot of lore and character. We detail our cities and outdoor worlds so people who want to roleplay have the props to assist that.
The world event team's goal is to add fun things to the world that aren't meant for getting the best purple loot or be best at PvP. We've discussed things like adding marriages to the game to let people have fun with the world. You see stuff like that in the Darkmoon Faire. The team is really small right now, so we dont get to do as much as we'd like to.
