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Dave Kosak talks quest design in Cataclysm
World of Warcraft Lead Quest Designer Dave "Fargo" Kosak posted a long entry today giving a post-mortem of Cataclysm's questing experience. It's a very interesting read for everyone who wants a little insight into the inner workings of WoW's design right now. Of note is that Blizzard felt spread too thin with the ambitious revamping of the entire old world. That lead to less-than-ideal elements in the current endgame experience, which in turn is a key component of many player's dislike of Cataclysm. Say what you will about people's complaints, but it's a good thing that Blizzard is able to look at itself with such a critical eye and fine tune its future processes to make things even better. Some of the key points: The primary goal of Cataclysm was to remake the 1-to-60 experience, keep it relevant to new players. Blizzard is happy with the old world revamp. Blizzard felt spread too thin, which resulted from the total revamp of the old world. The 80-to-85 zones don't feel as connected to each other as Blizzard would have liked. "Phasing is like a story sledgehammer." They want future phasing to not split players up but to provide visual changes only you can see (like in the 4.2 dailies). "Cataclysm was in many ways Thrall's story." Future legendary quest lines will be a lot like the Fangs of the Father quests that rogues are experiencing right now. Blizzard is refocusing on core gameplay mechanics. The full post after the break. You can also take a look at our own post-mortem of Cataclysm's zones we did in late 2011.
