Tom Chilton, the Lead Designer of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, was interviewed recently by WoW WarCry Site Manager Whitney Butts. The interview looks back at the launch of the Burning Crusade and issues that face the players.
This is the first in a monthly series of Q&As we'll be doing with the Blizzard team. Be sure to leave your suggestions for future Q&A questions in the comment thread.
WarCry Q&A:
World of WarCraft: The Burning Crusade
Answers by Tom Chilton, Lead Designer
Questions by Whitney Butts
WarCry: There is a lot of interest in the flying mounts. How do flying mounts change the overall feel of the game? Were there any bumps along the road opening up the sky for flight?
Tom Chilton: Flying mounts give players the ability not only to fly without restrictions such as set paths and routes,
but also allowed us the means to create unique areas and encounters that are only accessible to those who have them. Unlike in Azeroth, we were able to create Outland with flying mounts in mind from the start. It was something we felt very strongly about making possible, and we found a way for the technology and our plans to meet up in a very good way.
WarCry: With the addition of a large amount of new raid content, do we anticipate players "farming" raid content like they have in the past? The thought of a new expansion every year certainly limits the amount of time players are going to have to experience each raid dungeon. What is being done to insure that players have ample time to experience all of the raid content?
Tom Chilton: We've reduced the amount of players needed for a raid as a starting point. Our newest raid dungeons have a maximum of 25 players needed to do them. It's made it easier for players to find enough people to get coordinated and do the encounter, as well as made individual contribution to a raid much more important. How quickly players get to that content is all dependent on how each player chooses to spend his
or her time.
We'd like to think we have kept everyone in mind while creating the latest raid dungeons. However, we also feel it's important to continue making them as challenging as possible so that the time spent learning and conquering the encounters feels worthwhile to them. Whether or not players get to the point of farming the encounters is yet to be seen. It seems as though there are always well-coordinated guilds that manage to do so.
WarCry: How did the transition between World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade affect players and staff? Did it go as planned? Better? Worse? What are some aspects of the transition that could have been changed?
Tom Chilton: We spent a lot of time working on upgrading our server infrastructure to support the new expansion. While players had some extended downtime prior to the release, we felt that it was necessary in order to better prepare for the launch of The Burning Crusade. It was pretty much all hands on deck as we got closer to launch and everyone was preparing for any contingencies that might crop up once things went live.
It seems that despite a few small issues, things have gone much better than we had even hoped they would.
Given the magnitude of this release, some people had an understandable expectation that we might stumble a little out the gate, but we didn't and managed to have a very smooth launch.
WarCry: Can we expect to see a "heroic" type Zul'Gurub, Onyxia, Molten Core, Anh'Qiraj, Blackwing Lair, and Naxxramas, or is it likely that players aren't going to have any need for those dungeons?
Tom Chilton: We don't have any plans
to add a heroic mode to these dungeons at this time. On the other hand, the players who feel they may have missed out on the opportunity to experience many of these encounters may find these dungeons much more accessible to them now. In fact, we're already seeing that many players are taking the newfound power they've obtained through new items, talents, and abilities as they've leveled past 60 to Aze
