WoW 5.2 Staff Interviews Part 2: Dave Kosak; Ion Hazzikostas and Ghostcrawler

Vanion.eu Interviews Dave Kosak – February 28th, 2013.

When asked about the reaction for scenarios in World of Warcraft, Dave said that it’s a bit mixed. Some of them at release were long, while others will short. The design philosophy for future scenarios is to keep them on the shorter side. He says that Unga Ingoo worked out well as a scenario because it was open, but short.

Since some scenarios can take a bit longer than some of the actual dungeons in WoW minus the good gear, the rewards have been made even better for doing them. This will continue in the future along with added challenges that will give the player bonus rewards if completed.

For the Isle of Thunder, the single player scenarios were designed so that if a player is late by a few weeks, they can still experience taking the island for themselves. This way, they will feel like they were a part of the action even if they missed out on it when it first happened.

Although it may seem like they are trying to make content for smaller groups of people (going from 40 to 10 in raids to 5 in dungeons to 3 in scenarios to 1 for Brawler’s Guild, as Vanion puts it,) what they are really trying to do is create content for every player and play style.

There might be one more single player experience coming in the future. It will be called Proving Grounds. It is not confirmed yet, however. If it does get in, it will act as a test to see how good you are at your role. You will be given a score depending on your performance. This can be shown off to friends if it’s worth bragging about.

In regards to the hyped up feature that Ghostcrawler’s been vaguely talking about, Kosak says that they cannot say anything until the last patch of this expansion. He did say that it gives players a lot of new content to play with, however.

The biggest lesson Blizzard has learned from World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria is regarding the way they did dailies at launch. Though it was not their intention, it ended up feeling mandatory for a large number of players. It was originally meant to give players something to do besides raid or PvP, unlike Cataclysm where that was all you could do at level cap.

For WoW 5.2, Blizzard has changed how they approach dailies. The ones you do on the Isle of Thunder are not tied to important PvE gear like the ones at launch were. Instead, what they offer is just something extra, like tabards and mounts.

There will not be a level 90 heroic Ragefire Chasm. Speaking from a lore perspective, although Garrosh was experimenting down there, he himself is not connected to the Fel Orcs. In regards to that subject, Garrosh is strongly against it as he does not want to make the same mistakes as his father.

There is no word on how many more patches are left in MoP, although it seems like it will go until either 5.4 or 5.5. Blizzard is committed to continuing pumping out content quickly, but it will take some time for the next expansion to be ready. This will ideally not interfere with continuous patches.

Gamebreaker’s Gary Gannon, Olivia Grace, and Josh Allen interview Ion Hazzikostas and Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street – March 1st, 2013.

When it comes to developing raids in WoW, big tiers with a butt ton of bosses will now be the norm. In the future, normal mode will be less about checking DPS and more about checking the player’s understanding of the encounter mechanics. The formula should be: if you know the mechanics, you win.

Ion says that out of the bosses in tier 14, he enjoyed heroic mode of Spirit Kings the most. “It had a very, very dynamic feel to it,” he said. While it can be very frustrating for raid leaders, he thinks it is the best example of what raiding is about.

In terms of WoW 5.0 vs. 5.2 dailies, the new ones are supposed to be much more simplified and streamlined. This is done in order to give people something to do without it feeling mandatory or exhausting.

To be continued in part 3!