wow-dev-chat
Latest
WoW developer chat on Twitter this Friday
Community Manager Zarhym recently announced another fancy developer chat on Warcraft's Twitter account this Friday, July 16 at 5 p.m. PDT / 8 p.m. EST. This time around, players will be able to ask questions of the systems design team who is currently hard at work cranking out Cataclysm. The focus of the chat will be the recently released talent specialization and mastery system changes. At WoW.com HQ, we're hoping for more information on the radical talent changes that have shown up in the latest beta build. Want to participate? follow @warcraft and @ them your questions using the #BlizzChat hashtag between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m PDT (8 p.m. and 9 p.m. EST). And as always, if you happen to miss the Twitter chat, Blizzard will provide a recap on the official forums, and we'll provide coverage of the event right here on WoW.com. Don't use Twitter? Sign up now and follow @warcraft and @wowdotcom for everything WoW!
New Caverns of Time instance coming in Cataclysm
The recent Twitter dev chat confirmed what is fast becoming a tradition: We will be getting a new Caverns of Time instance with the upcoming expansion. It's certainly not something I have much trouble with. The Caverns of Time are an excellent tool for looking back and understanding old pieces of the story that brought us to the current world as it is. Unfortunately, the devs were not willing to drop any hints as to the exact nature of the new instance, but we can, of course, make our own guesses. The original questioner suggests War of the Ancients as a possible destination. In a way, that might be an interesting battle. It would, if nothing else, give us some insight into the character of Malfurion Stormrage, who promises to be a key figure in the expansion. That said, Rhonin, Broxigar, and Krasus have already traveled back in time to deal with the War of the Ancients, and you'd have to think that if you keep shoveling more time travelers back there, something's bound to give.
How Blizzard can improve the next Twitter chat
Coming up tomorrow at 5 p.m. PST / 8 p.m. EST is the next Blizzard Twitter chat with J. Allen Brack and Greg Street. Both of these guys have done plenty of panels before and are veterans in community interaction. They can easily answer and dodge any question they like; and if Ghostcrawler sees fit I'm sure he's got a few quips to hand out to the attempted troll as well. But despite the two figureheads at the top answering questions in the Twitter chat, it's important that we look back at the last chat and make a few critical, yet fair, observations: Target Audience and New Information The people following Blizzard on Twitter and paying attention enough to participate in a developer chat are going to be well informed individuals. There might be details here and there that they don't yet fully understand -- but that's the nature of a game as huge as WoW. Nearly every questioned answered in the previous Twitter chat was also previously answered at BlizzCon in one way or another. All of that information is widely accessible on sites like WoW.com and through the forums. The targeted audience of the Twitter chat, by the very nature of its medium and community involvement therein, should have been people already aware of the basics of upcoming changes; not people who want to know if Goblins are going to come with a new dance.
Twitter WoW Developer Chat: Transcript
Starting at 6:00 p.m. EDT, 5:00 p.m. CDT, 3:00 p.m. PDT we'll be liveblogging the Twitter developer chat that's going on with WoW's Director of Production and Game Director. We're seeing how this goes. We know a lot of you don't use Twitter, and that many places of business block Twitter. If this twitter-induced liveblog goes well for us, we'll do it again during future Twitter chats. If not, we won't! Enjoy it now either way. Update: Chat over! The transcript of the liveblog after the break. We'll do a review of this tomorrow, talking about our thoughts concerning the event overall. After you read the transcript you'll likely come to the same conclusion we did: Save for a couple items nothing new was really presented. There was a lot of fluff and very little substance.
