MMORPG Interview
MMORPG had an interview with:
Josh Greenfield (Senior Game Designer)
Jeff Parrott (Senior Art Director)
We've summarized the interview below, but you can see the original piece on MMORPG.
Interview Summary
Immersion
The goal is to make it so that everything really feels like Classic.
On the visual side, they're trying to be really respectful of anything new they're creating to make sure it doesn't feel out of place.
They don't want anything to break that immersion for the players.
They are also adding things such as environmental effects and lighting to increase the immersion.
On the combat side, they don't want players to overpower the world while leveling.
Once you hit level 10 to 15, it'll take 10-15 seconds to kill something, and if you pull 3 or more creatures, you're probably going to die.
Addons and UI
The approach is to mirror what Modern WoW is doing.
They're going to listen to feedback through Beta and after launch. If anything is problematic, they'll make adjustments.
The minimap isn't Modern or Classic; it's its own thing. Forever is its own game.
The built-in damage meter will be in. The Cooldown Manager will likely not be in for the Beta, but they are planning to add it in the future.
Profession Buffs and Camps
Each profession has a buff that they can provide at the camp.
There's no lesser version of the buff and a stronger version of the buff, so that everyone only wants the stronger one.
The higher-level camps will hold more fixtures, but there's not a big barrier to entry, and it's mostly level-restricted.
During playtests with people on the team, people just like to get a buff. It's the evolution of the buff high five when you run by people.
They'll keep an eye on the camp meta and make adjustments as needed.
You can place down campfires almost anywhere. You can't place one in cities or too close to another campfire.
One internal tester put a campfire on the road in Duskwood, and Stitches killed them.
Campfires will last for 10 minutes and have an hour cooldown. If yours despawns, they don't believe you'll have to go too far to find another.
Class Questlines
Some of the SoD class quests made it to Forever, some new ones were added, and some quests were expanded on.
If something didn't make it for launch, they have a lot of time.
They definitely want to do more class questlines.
Changing World
They want to be really careful of things that blow up the world.
Cataclysm was really cool, but there was a cost to that.
It's possible to change the world on a grand scale, but they want to be sparing about how they use that.
They generally want to be additive and not destructive.
They've added more quests in Azshara. Wetlands has new lighting and new art.
Horizontal Progression
They're taking a lot of cues from original WoW, where old raid tiers had loot that you still wanted.
They want to try doing more incremental increases in power.
There are hundreds of biome-specific effects, so there may be situations where you want to create a unique Dragon-slaying set, for example.
They want epic items to maintain their prestige, as Epic just became a color at some point.
Bank
The default bank is either twice or four times as large.
Bags will start the same size as the original.
Until you get to a point where you need it, they're probably not going to increase bank space much.
Over time, they expect to increase storage space.
The Legacy System
The Legacy system gives you bonuses and incentives for going down a certain path.
It gives you bonuses and incentives for leveling multiple characters.
It's a lot of stuff that isn't power gain, but will help with leveling alts.
They want to be really careful about alternate advancement systems where you feel like you have to grind it to be effective.
Discovery
They're obfuscating all items in the game.
You will not see item stats until it drops for you or on your server.
You will not know what your BiS is when going into the first raid.
They believe that the first week of the raid will be the Wild West, with people getting items and then the items going up on Wowhead.
There will be no Dungeon Journal.
Players will discover things and then write guides. There will be BiS lists, but they want to do that kind of shake-up.
