The Sun - WoW: Forever Interview
The Sun interviewed the following team members on WoW: Forever:
Kris Zierhut, Principal Designer
Michael Nuthals, Senior Encounter Designer
Interview Summary
Zephras Isle and the Skyborne
Zephras Isle is the starting area for the new race, the Skyborne Elves, which can last players until about level 12.
It's an isle floating in the air, deep within the elemental plane of Skywall.
The elementals that raised them there have left and the island is falling down slowly, so they're looking to make new alliances.
Players will pick their faction at creation, and it gives access to different classes: Alliance can only be Mages, and Horde can only be Shamans.
Mount Hyjal
Players will get to see what Mount Hyjal was like between Warcraft III and the Burning Crusade and Cataclysm.
Two raids will be present in Hyjal: the 20-player Hyjal Summit raid and the 10-player Barrow Deeps raid.
Riverglades
The Riverglades are located somewhat north of Redridge.
Alliance players will likely come to the Riverglades from Redridge, and many of the stories will continue from Redridge.
There's also humans, orcs, ogres and a goblin outpost.
There's also a Black Market Auction House and a dock that was previously not used, the Steamwheedle Port, which connects you to Gadgetzan.
Shen'dralas
Shen'dralas is located at the south end of Desolace.
The Valley of Bones has some quests that send you to fight monsters there.
There's more story with the Magram and Gelkis centaurs which continues on from Desolace.
There's also the ruins of Shen'dralas, which connects to the Dire Maul story.
Experience and Leveling
Original Classic WoW did not require you to do every zone to get to 60, and there were multiple paths.
They've now created different paths such as doing the Riverglades instead of doing something else.
They did not change the experience curve.
Riverglades and Shen'dralas are in the level range where things slow down, and Hyjal is when you're getting close to 60 and it slows even further.
They wanted to give players options where the game slowed down a bit. They don't want people to just decide to grind, and would rather players instead do quests and adventure through Azeroth.
Dungeon Experience
Experience from dungeon monsters has been brought way down.
Experience from completing dungeon quests has been made "much, much, much higher".
The first run of a dungeon is incredible and you get tons of experience and rewards, but doing it multiple times isn't the best thing to do. They want people to be out in the world meeting each other.
Talent Trees
It's the original talent system; every class has three talent trees with 7 rows, with 5 points needing to be spent on each row to unlock the next.
There's still "gold medal talents" at 11, 21 and 31 which are special one-point talents.
They did add a new one-point talent at the 16 talent point mark, so each tree has four special one-point abilities which allows them to bring in new things for classes that needed more.
Some talents are gone, others are changed, and a lot are new.
Some talent trees were very bad in original Classic and the goal is to make all 27 talent trees viable for dungeons and raids.
End Game
There are three raid sizes: 10 player, 20 player, and 40 player.
The goal is to allow players to find social groups, and then build those social groups.
They want to encourage players to do different raid sizes and you can get your tier pieces across all three raids.
They're trying to slow down the rate of item progression. They are trying to make it so that raids don't go obsolete, and there's still a reason to go back and do them.
Chase drops will be present on every boss' loot table. These items have a lower drop chance, but are "very, very strong items".
Imagine if every boss had an item similar to Dragonspine Trophy's power level from TBC, so everything at 60 always stays relevant.
The Future
The world will evolve indefinitely, forever.
In an update, there might be a new raid, a new area. The idea is that every update has something for every type of player.
Some players like alts, exploration or just doing trade skills. It's not all about the raiders. There will be something for them, but not everything.
Timeline Deviation
They're starting from a place of canon, and the same starting line where everyone was in November 2004.
Molten Core will open someday, but not now. Players have done Molten Core a lot across the different games.
They wanted to start off with something new, and they can explore stories that might have happened.
