The Gamespot interviewed was a video interview that can be viewed on their website. For a brief text summary, check out our summary below.
Gamespot Interview
Gamespot interviewed the following developers on WoW: Forever:
Josh Greenfield, Senior Game Designer
Jeff Parrot, Senior Art Director
Gamespot Interview Summary
Approach to the Game
There's a saying for Classic+: Ask 10 players what they want, and get 11 different answers.
They wanted to approach designing this game from a mixture of having an ear to the ground, things that they're reading on social media, hearing from their guilds, etc., to determine what they want to do.
If they can get 80% of what almost everyone is looking for, then that's a success.
They did that with Transmog and HD/SD toggles so that it's your Classic+ as much as possible.
SoD
SoD was a seasonal experimental mode and it was always designed to be ephemeral. A lot of stuff is likely not coming to a Forever game mode.
Quests
There were probably around 3,000 to 3,500 actual quests in original WoW.
They're adding 1,000 more quests. There are 4 new zones with between 50 and 200 quests each.
Wetlands and Azshara got many new quests.
From level 5 onwards, you're going to start seeing new stuff.
Original World of Warcraft has many quests that are super memorable and iconic, likely because they explored the world at a relatable level.
New Zones
The goal for the new zones is to feel familiar but new, so that a player could ask, "Did this exist?"
Skyborne
The early designs of Skyborne involved talking to Chris Metzen about it.
They knew early on it was going to be some race of Elves as elves are very popular.
The Skywall culture kit was underutilized and hasn't been seen since Cataclysm.
