IGN WoW: Forever Interview
IGN interviewed the following team members on WoW: Forever:
Kris Zierhut, Principal Game Designer
Tim Jones, Lead Classic Designer
Interview Summary
Different Games
WoW Classic is similar to a museum. It's been that way for years with very little change. They can preserve that for people who want to see what it was like.
WoW: Forever is their take on what they could do if they never went to Outland and kept developing the world, whether that's adding new quests or Professions.
Choosing What Changes
When choosing what to change from WoW: Classic, they look at their four main pillars. The most important is likely "the world is the main character".
The Journey should be as important as the destination, and the world should feel full, no matter what zone you go to.
They loved how in Hardcore, it always felt like every zone was filled with other players; likely because players had to reroll whenever they died.
For "approachable and familiar", they feel that the base classic game is approachable, and they've taken careful consideration with familiar things like SD models.
Regarding the UI, while they're using a lot of modern UI conveniences, it still feels like a Classic game and not a copy of the retail UI.
They've also worked on "unsolving" the game so players don't have the perfect leveling path or profession choices.
Lightning and Shadow Improvements
People remember WoW in 2004 a lot better than it actually was, so they wanted to give players Azeroth as they remember it, not as it actually was.
They want to drive new players into the game. They want to bring in the next generation of gamers who are used to a lot of high graphic fidelity.
WoW Engine
The WoW engine is not spaghetti code. That's an unfair player characterization.
Kris Zierhut has heard many other devs comment that they want the WoW engine.
Developers have worked hard over the last 25 years to improve the engine, get a higher frame rate, and improve server response times.
Release Cadence
They've experimented a lot with release cadence throughout Classic.
They know that going without new content for six to eight weeks feels bad.
For SoD, they went to an eight- to ten-week schedule, and it felt too fast.
They believe that the correct update cadence is about once every 4 months or 3 times a year.
This is one of the advantages of telling smaller, more localized stories. They don't need 6 months to tell the giant huge story.
They come up with enough stories to fill a 4-month development period.
They do plan on having content in between, so there might be content that unlocks between that.
Places to Go
There are 3 types of content. First is the path you know: Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, and AQ. Forever will go there, but they're stretching out the timeline a bit.
There are places that are new that feel like they belong, such as the Riverglades. Some future dungeons and raids will fit here as well.
Then they can go out of their way to do something very different, such as the Skyborne and Zephras Isle.
The Dark Portal, Northrend, and Pandaria all exist, and they could make minor adventures in those areas, such as a dungeon or quest that takes you there and then comes back. They won't be doing this soon, and when they do, you will always come home to the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor.
Player Housing
They don't have plans to add player housing to Forever right now.
Horizontal Progression and Raids
They're aware there will be a point when there are too many raids and dungeons, and they don't know how to solve that yet.
They're thinking about how to solve it, with many plans and ideas, but right now they're focused on shipping the game.
Respeccing Talents
Dual spec is available at launch, and a third spec is not off the table for the future.
They do not want you to be able to change your talents on the fly, as this creates an expectation that you will change your talents for every encounter, and that isn't approachable and familiar.
They have been talking about making it easier to change your talent specs when you need it.
Griefing
Griefing is a problem that is part of gaming, and it is their duty to make a game that pushes people towards positive social interactions, and not pushing people towards toxic interactions.
They're doing a lot of things that they call pro-social design, such as the camping system or elite zone quests.
They also have 4 different group sizes: 5, 10, 20, and 40. If you don't have enough people, you might remember a good social experience you had and invite them to get the required numbers.
The more resilient and positive a social network, the less likely there are for players to be jerks.
Hyjal
Hyjal looks very different in Forever, as there is no flying and players are forced to view it from the ground.
There are callouts to the Mount Hyjal raid that players will see.
Other Locations
They want to go to the Emerald Dream.
They also want to go to Grim Batol, not like a dungeon, but as a place you explore like Blackrock Mountain.
There are definitely places in the Caverns of Time that they haven't explored.
Gilneas is on the map, but is inaccessible right now. There will be a whole story there to explore before it gets destroyed in the Cataclysm.
They would like to get to Silvermoon eventually, but as it's currently the focus of Retail, they would rather focus elsewhere for the time being.
Skyborne
Elves are the most popular races in WoW
The current races from Vanilla tend to cause a population imbalance. A lot of players don't want to be "a monster".
Downtime
There will definitely be downtime when you can play both games.
Retail is focused on max-level gameplay, and that comes in bursts, so between that you might play some WoW: Forever!
