World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - PC

Afterwords: World of Warcraft: Wrath Of The Lich King

2010-02-18T00:35:00Z

We normally publish our Afterwords interviews shortly after a game is released, but with MMOs, that concept doesn't quite make sense. These games continue growing and changing until...well, until another expansion is released. With the recently-completed patch 3.3, Blizzard's hit MMO World of Warcraft has finally reached the conclusion of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. We figured this would be a good time to check in with WoW game director Tom Chilton about some of the decisions made in the expansion.

Read the full interview to find out what hero classes almost got chosen to be added instead of death knight, whether or not we'll see any other new content before the Cataclysm, and how Blizzard is preparing for that next expansion.

I wanted to begin with a sort of “state of the union” question. How is Blizzard feeling as you wrap up the Wrath of the Lich King content and move toward the next expansion?

We’re feeling good. As far as wrapping up Lich King content goes, I’m happier with the way the Lich King fight and all of Icecrown leading up to it has turned out compared to anything we’ve done in the past. It’s quite a bit more epic than what we did with Illidan. It’s a cooler climax than Naxxramas back in the day pre-Burning Crusade. I’m happy with how that’s come along. In general, it’s been an awesome expansion. I think players have been pretty excited about it.

With as many death knights as there are in the game now, I sometimes forget that they weren’t there at one point. As the first hero class, death knights were a huge addition to World of Warcraft. What was the process like for introducing this new character to the game, and how difficult has it been to balance them?

Definitely a difficult process. Obviously a lot of that is because of the balance complexities that get introduced by creating a new class. We always knew that we wanted to add more classes to the game, and we had a variety of different ideas for what classes to do. With Burning Crusade, we felt that it was a little too early to introduce a new class. With our second expansion, it seemed like good timing.

When we knew that it was going to be a Northrend-based expansion, we started thinking about character classes that would make sense within the context of the expansion. Among those were the death knight, necromancer, and the runemaster, a character class from one of the Warcraft RPGs, pre-World of Warcraft. Those were our primary contenders.

As we fleshed out the concepts a little bit, it felt like the death knight had more going for it than the other two. It was going to work out better both in terms of how well it fits with the Lich King expansion and also in terms of how it fills some extra need in the game. Obviously, you can make the argument that there still aren’t enough tanks around based on Dungeon Finder queues, but I think it helped. There are people out there playing death knight tanks.

So you do still plan to introduce more hero classes at some point in the future?

It’s a possibility. We have that idea in mind still for the future. We know that we probably would not be able to support introducing a new class with every single expansion, just like we probably wouldn’t be able to support having new races with every expansion. It’s a good candidate for the future, but exactly when that will be or what expansion it might be in or what class it might be is too early to say.

Wrath of the Lich King also brought some graphical improvements to the game. I know you’ve always tried to keep a balance between looking good and being able to run on a wide variety of computers. I’m curious about how you’ve maintained that balance during Wrath of the Lich King, and, particularly as you move forward with an expansion that’s going to be re-doing visuals on a lot of the original game world, if you expect the system requirements to keep climbing.

I can’t speak for sure as to the final system requirements for Cataclysm. It’s too early to say. There’s a possibility that they could go up a little bit, although we would still be talking about machines that are many years old being able to run it at this point. We try to make sure that we support older machines, and we’ll continue to do so. But an older machine today is less old than an older machine when WOW first shipped or when Burning Crusade shipped. If you make that assumption that the system requirements will creep up a little bit, there’s more we can do visually, but we’ll see.

We know that we’re going to introduce things like the improved water. Water’s been one of those things that we’ve never been entirely happy with ever since the original version of the game. It’s what we were able to do with the system requirements that we were satisfied with at the time. As technology advances, it gets easier to do a better job at that kind of thing. We’re pleased so far with how that’s been coming along.

Like you mention, a lot of the old world will also get a facelift, not only for new technology but also for new techniques. Our tools and our level designers have just got better at making the zones. They’ve been doing it for a long time. They have a better idea of how to do things that look really awesome efficiently.

WOW's Lead World Designer Speaks On Newly-Launched Final Lich King Patch

2009-12-09T00:20:00Z

Today is the day World of Warcraft players have been waiting for since...well, since patch 3.2 launched in August. But more importantly, it's the beginning of a moment Warcraft fans have yearned for since first witnessing the rise of the evil Prince Arthas in Warcraft III. With today's launch of patch 3.3 for World of Warcraft, titled "The Fall of the Lich King," Blizzard finally wraps up all of the major content for their second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. And it's all leading to a major showdown with Arthas in his sanctuary of Icecrown Citadel, which is now home to three new five-man dungeons and one huge new ten- or twenty-five-man raid.

I had a chance to talk with Blizzard lead world designer Alex Afrasiabi about the patch, the build-up to this huge fight, and what's coming next for World of Warcraft. Read the full interview below.

Game Informer: Patch 3.3 is arguably the biggest patch you’ve done for Wrath of the Lich King, if not for the game as a whole. You’re adding three new five-man dungeons and the new ten- or twenty-five-man raid. Did you guys set out to make patch 3.3 this huge to lend it an epic feel since it’s the last major patch for the game before the next expansion? Or is that something that just happened as you were designing it?

Alex Afrasiabi: It was definitely intentional. With all the big fanfare around the expansion itself -- I mean, it’s called Wrath of the Lich King -- we wanted to make sure that the 3.3 patch lived up to the name of the expansion. It was definitely one of those things we set out to do. We wanted to go out huge.

GI: Was it planned that way right from the beginning of when you started plotting out patches for the expansion or was it a more recent decision as you started nearing patch 3.3?

AA: We don’t set everything out in stone as we start an expansion. Things change, playstyles change, and we have to be in tune with everything. But the final patch is certainly something that we planned on going big with.

GI: A couple weeks ago you announced that the final raid is going to be released section by section over the course of a month or two instead of all at once. That’s similar to how the bosses were released for the Trial of the Crusader raid in patch 3.2. Why did you come to this decision? And what’s your response to the critics saying that it’s just a way of stretching out the content to keep people playing until Cataclysm comes out?

AA: We feel really good about the content. We feel like the content we’re releasing with in patch 3.3 will definitely give the players goals and things to work on. One of the things we noticed about gated content is that it almost feels like a mini-patch as we release the content. Think about world events and things that you can prepare for every month. It tends to give you something to look forward to, and I think gated content definitely works in that regard.

GI: I know it’s looking a bit ahead since there won’t be another major content patch for the game until after Cataclysm is released, but now that you’ve done it twice in a row, do you expect future raid patches to follow the gated content pattern?

AA: We can’t really commit to anything. It’s entirely possible. We haven’t hammered out everything for Cataclysm raid progression. It’s definitely a possibility. We’ll take what we learn from Icecrown and obviously apply toward the game going forward, but that’s several months of learning left to be done.

GI: Whether people are interested in raiding or not, I think one thing everyone’s excited about in patch 3.3 is the big finale to the Lich King storyline, where players finally get to fight Arthas, which most of us have been wanting to do since Warcraft III. I talked about this a little bit with Jeff Kaplan a couple weeks ago, but I’d be curious for your thoughts as well. I think it’s really unique for an MMO to have a villain and a narrative that players are actually invested in. How has that affected the build-up to patch 3.3 and the execution of that final battle with Arthas?

AA: When we started Lich King, one of the big goals was to make a much more cohesive story than Burning Crusade. Burning Crusade was cool, and it was definitely a step up from vanilla World of Warcraft, but if you recall, there really wasn’t much about Illidan. Each zone was it’s own self-contained zone. There were hints here and there, but we really didn’t play the story or narrative up at all.

Going into Lich King, straight out of the gate, we decided it was going to be three acts, and we knew how it was all going to play out. We had it all basically planned out from day one. It’s playing out the plan. When 3.3 hits and once the Lich King is unlocked, players will have -- I’ll go on record as saying -- probably one of the most epic battles they’ve ever taken part in. I don’t think they’ll be expecting what they’re going to get for this fight. I think it will be something that they’ve never seen the likes of. The finale will be amazing.

GI: Like I said, fighting Arthas is something that Blizzard fans have been waiting for and building up the excitement for since Warcraft III. That’s a long time. Have you guys felt any additional pressure beyond what you would from a regular content patch because you want to fulfill players’ expectations?

AA: I wouldn’t say we felt pressure. We really had our eye on getting this thing out the door and making sure it would meet and then shatter the expectations that players have. Bold words, I know, but I’m really proud of what everyone’s done. I think this thing will be amazing.