“It’s time to set ourselves up for the next 20-plus years.”
This time though, things seem slightly different.
There’s an air of change around Blizzard, at least as far as World of Warcraft operations go.
It sounds like a great idea.
Things have needed to change.
More importantly, Blizzard has had to weather some ferocious storms.
Partially, some of the answer seems to be to go big.
There’s also a sense that the game is heading into a new era.
Nonetheless, there’s also a lot about the War Within that’s very familiar.
The notable new mechanics are Hero Talents, Warbands and Delves.
I tried one of these Delves, incidentally, during the alpha preview event, and I liked it.
It felt novel to be able to take on a dungeon alone.
Finally, Warbands remind me distinctly of Diablo, which of course Blizzard also makes.
Warbands go deeper than that, though.
One other minor but, I feel, significant point.
The iconic exclamation and question marks you see above NPC heads: they’re getting a refurb.
The War Within will be released sometime in the late summer, early autumn.
My full interview with Holly Longdale follows.
Eurogamer: I’d love to hear a bit about the idea for a trilogy of expansions.
Is this an idea Blizzard has been sitting on for a while - where did it come from?
Let’s take a step back.
Where are we going?
What is World of Warcraft?
What are we doing with this crazy behemoth, glorious thing that was created?'
And so from that we thought it’s time to make a bold statement.
And presumably they’ll be linked together between expansion by a string of content patches?
How to phrase this without giving it all away?
God, it’s so hard to say this without revealing things!
It’s not resolved in one.
There’s a very real cadence for how this will play out that can’t be rushed.
If we tried to do everything we planned to tell in one expansion, it wouldn’t be good.
There’s-
There’s 39.
Broader than the 39?
As to our content cadence: we’re still getting our legs under us with the eight-week patch cadence.
And eight weeks is sort of a guide; some may be faster.
What events should be happening in the world?
And to continue experimenting.
It seemed to be really popular - how did it do?
And it outperformed everything.
Even with the people that were… PvP is a polarising game jot down or genre.
It’s not designed for that, currently.
What we don’t want to do is put something out there that wasn’t intended to last.
So we’re going to see.
So we thought, ‘Okay, well, they’re underserved - what can we do for them?’
So the expansion tracks are the high-level storylines for the game, and also the feature sets.
I see - so you have your development team and your live team?
How is it doing and where does the bulk of the WoW audience lie?
I can’t give numbers but I can say they are both incredibly healthy.
Hardcore was a brilliant idea.
Do you talk to him about the vision for the game?
Oh yeah - all the time.
I wasn’t sure if he was off doing something else.
No, he’s guiding the ship.
The other thing I wanted to ask concerns the industry and everything that’s been happening to it.
Yes, we’re okay.
We count ourselves as fortunate.
That’s very good to hear.
