I'm going to be doing an interview with developers from Blizzard on Monday, asking them about World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. If you have anything you want to know, tell me in here and I'll try to ask!
tell them to stop pissing about with WoW and release Diablo 3 already !!! edit - sorry for not been productive
What is the long term plan for the life of the WoW universe; how many expansions and updates are we likely to see? How are Blizzard planning on following up such a successful game; how will they approach it and what universe will it be set in? I'm bored of Azaroth
enough of world of warcraft, give me world of starcraft! seriously, do they consider making a wos? a more on topic question would be, will they ever raise the lvl cap? (quite popular in other mmos, ether saga online etc.)
WoW died when they messed with my characters. Do they regret any design decisions they made that has annoyed people over the past months?
With the same loot dropping from both 10 and 25man versions of a raid instance in Cataclysm, what exactly are the incentives to run a 25man raid over a 10man?
Would you ask them why Horde get one more race/class combo than Alliance and why there are so few races that can be druids (Nelf, Worgen, Troll and Cow-monster)?
I know its a long shot but try and get something out of them about their in production MMO based on a new IP
Can you ask them if they have an further plans to introduce more Hero Classes and if so on what basis? WoTLK introduced Arthas and the Death Knights to World of Warcraft. I know with many of the changes in Cataclysm one of the big changes was Malfurion returning to Azeroth from the Emerald Dream. (Or did that happen long before the Cataclysm content went live on the server a few weeks ago?)
This question is asked in nearly every WoW interview and the answer is always the same. "We haven't announced any plans for a new hero class but we don't rule out the possibility." Malfurion's return from the Emerald dream happened in 'The Shattering' novel, as far as I know. Blizzard expect us to read that book to understand why many of the things in Cataclysm have happened in between 3.x and 4.x. - I think the kind of questions specific to WoW and its in-game issues like "When will class x get issue y fixed/buffed/nerfed?" or "How many raids will you release in patch 4.1?" etc are better left to the WoW community site interviews because they're going to be asked anyway by a more WoW-focused community than bit-tech and with a greater appreciation of nitty-gritty gameplay issues and numbers amongst a WoW-focused readership. I know this interview is specifically about Cataclysm, but I think a bit-tech interview would be well served by questions about Blizzard and its games in relation to the wider gaming industry. The future of Blizzard games, how they see the direction of the pc gaming industry, digital distribution, piracy/drm, etc.. I'd love to see some straight answers about just how much of an impact the Activision Blizzard merger had on the development side of things, since Blizzard was traditionally a By gamers for gamers kind of company, similar to Valve and similarly praised as saviours of PC gaming. A lot of people see the release of purchasable pets and mounts for WoW and the pseudo-episodic release of SC2 as steps in the wrong direction for the company and its customer relations as well as its image of being a gamer-centric company. I'd love to see a response to that topic other than the party line of "We still do our own thing." TL;DR: "How has the Activision Blizzard merger affected Blizzard from a developer standpoint in terms of freedom, design goals and players' perceptions of the developer?" On a more positive side of things, I'd like to know where they see the balance between pre-endgame and engame content these days. Cataclysm seems to re-introduce an emphasis on the levelling experience while also bringing plenty of endgame content. It seems like a more balanced gameplay experience now than the previous situation of 'Only level 80 matters.', but I'd like to know if 'this is it' in terms of new pre-endgame content, or if they plan to continue adding more levelling/questing content for non-85 characters in coming patches. TL;DR: Will future patches add more pre-85 content for levelling players or does the Shattering patch represent the full extent of those changes? The recent 4.0.3a patch revamped the 'vanilla' areas in WoW with new quests and changes to the zones and it's been pretty widely praised and well-received by the players. Despite that, a lot of players feel like they hit a brick wall when they reach Outland (from the Burning Crusade expansion) after levelling in the new content from 1-60. Blizzard previously stated that the Cataclysm won't be affecting Outland or Northrend, but I'd like to know if they intend to respond to player feedback on the topic and do some work on those areas to make the levelling experience smooth from 1-85 instead of just from 1-60 and 80-85, such as applying some of the Cataclysm design goals to content from the previous two expansions. TL;DR: Given player feedback on the transition from the new 1-60 content to old Burning Crusade content, are the Blizzard devs considering returning to rework some TBC/WotLK content to make the experience smoother all the way to 85? Blizzard is frequently faced with accusations of catering to one side or the other of the casual/hardcore divide but has been praised by players on the beta for making dungeons difficult again in Cataclysm alongside the pre-endgame changes mentioned above. This is a marked difference to the damage caused to the game's reputation in WotLK by gradually allowing everything but the newest tier of content in the game to become grossly outgeared by the majority of players. Some players fear that this will happen again in Cataclysm. TL;DR: Are Blizzard planning to allow dungeons to become falling-asleep-while-playing easy again in Cataclysm as time goes by and player equipment improves, or are they determined to maintain a challenge in dungeons and heroics past the first tier of raid content? Many players felt that Wrath of the Lich King went too far in making the game accessible and in allowing players to catch up to the current tier of content with new alts, all the while devaluing previous content such as the earlier raids (Naxxramas, Ulduar, etc). It was widely expressed that the game lost a sense of progression for new alts and while it was easier to create a new character, get it to 80 and get raiding it was also expressed by many that simply skipping whole tiers of raid content and equipment cheapened the experience for any player who wasn't being pressured by their raid leader or guild to get prepared for the latest tier of content. In my view, it ran counter to Blizzard's own newfound philosophy of getting as many players as possible to see all of the content, because the fact that newer players almost never got to see content from the previous couple of tiers meant that they might see the inside of Icecrown Citadel without ever having been to Naxxramas or Ulduar. Hardcore guilds in the past expressed distaste at having to return to old content to gear up new characters, while conversely many players expressed distaste at their gear and efforts being devalued by the handing-out of high-level gear to keep progression-raiding guilds happy with the reduced management of player equipment. TL;DR: Does Blizzard plan to respond to the issue of previous tiers of content becoming irrelevant to players and to strike a better balance across tiers of content, or do they intend to continue with the Wrath of the Lich King model for the sake of the hardcore guilds who resent returning to 'cleared content' with new characters? Ghostcrawler and other devs have recently expressed the company's intent to improve how it communicates with the players, instead of just relying on so-called 'blue responses' in the forums to player questions and leaving questions on game design issues unanswered until specifically asked by players, but how is this intent going to manifest? TL;DR: The new WoW websites have made a great start towards providing a community portal and developers have hinted at improving communications with players on gameplay issues. Are we eventually going to see weekly Blizzard developer blogs from the likes of Ghostcrawler and Kalgan? (I propose "Ghostcrawler's Pony Stable" as a blog title.) I'd also like to know when Ghostcrawler is going to give me a pony.
Are they considering making a game completely unlike anything they currently are well known for? e.g release a game set in a completely new universe as Blizzard games are fantastic and I feel that they could do create some amazing games not set in the Warcraft, starcraft or diablo universe
Can they take a page from CCP and EVE Online and release a graphical overhaul to their game engine? It's really showing its age. It doesn't have to be mandatory and doesn't have to be all in one go, at least that's not what CCP did. Those with the rigs that could take it obviously opted for the high-res graphics, and those couldn't could just continue with the old engine. If you look at the graphics for that game now compared to when it was originally released, it's night and day really. Surely a goliath like Blizzard could do something similar!
The next MMO that they're currently working on (supposedly an MMOFPS with the project name 'Titan') is set in a whole new universe. They squashed rumours of World of Starcraft with that news a while back. Some light information about graphical upgrades and why they can't just blanket-upgrade every low-poly model in the game can already be seen in the interviews on this page: Interviews with Gary Platner and Jesse McCree (scroll down). I'd like to see information on this too, but I think the question would have to be phrased in such a way as to get an answer that tells us something we don't already know. They've already made significant upgrades to WoW's engine in both WotLK (shadows, draw distance) and Cataclysm (water, sun-rays, DX11) for instance, as well as much higher resolution gear textures since WotLK; and they're likely to respond with those facts if posed the question in a general sense, as well as the token answer about supporting a wider range of hardware than other PC titles for reasons of accessibility. It'd be good to know if they're planning a more significant overhaul (such as a Hi-Res pack like the one Juppun mentions for EVE) in the future to accompany the rumoured upgrade of player models - Shaders, depth textures and further-reaching polycount upgrades, for instance. I don't mean to criticise other people's questions (and my own are totally open to criticism!) but Blizzard do a lot of interviews and a lot of the same questions are asked every time, so we don't often get much in the way of new information from each one and a lot of what's asked can be found out just by checking sites such as MMO Champion. It would be nice both for the players and for bit-tech if the bit interview could ask the kind of questions we don't already see all the time, since it would help us to find out things we don't already know (as a community) and also likely bring a lot of traffic to bit-tech if it has something to offer in its interview that other sites don't.
Why have they totally ruined Warriors? -17% on nearly all stats, and no positives whatsoever. They've just ruined them. It's not as if they were that great to start with! Also... why no complete overhaul of WoW... graphics engine etc. nearly 7 years old, and showing it's age. If they think the new water textures and lighting bring it up to date.. think again.
Very few people get 60fps in raids to begin with, no one raiding raids at max settings or even close Want a good looking mmo play ff14 just don't complain when you get 5-10 fps on max There's 2 more expansions after cata then Titan is due out I guess that's there next big mmo.
Which MMO was I playing where one of the GFX options is to dumb down the GFX when joining raids? It was either WoW or Conan ... anyway, my point is that there is no reason to cripple an MMO's GFX just because one of the guys has a crap PC. The ability to rescale GFX on a PC is there, in which case, it should be used. And the guy wanting Bliz to take a page from CCP is correct. The GFX have been tripe for years. When I installed the latest patch I nearly cried when I heard the first "oooh have you seen the water? dribble!" ... oh joy.
