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WarCry talks with Tigole

eliah hecht
Updated ·2 min read

WarCry has a quick interview with Jeff Kaplan, a.k.a. Tigole, lead designer in charge of world design for WoW, mostly on BC instances. Head over to WarCry to see the full interview. Here's the question that caught my eye:

WarCry: In many ways, Karazhan mirrors instances like Zul'Gurub or the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj in terms of raid size compared to the 40-person raids. How did the development of Karazhan compare to the development of these previous raids? Are there any plans for future 10-person raid dungeons?

Jeffrey Kaplan: While there are definitely philosophical tuning differences between 5-, 10-, 20-, 25-, and 40-person instances, we don't have a vastly different approach in our dungeon-creation process. The same basic elements that make a 5-person instance great -- pacing, story, varied creatures, varied abilities, punctuating boss fights, good itemization, accessibility, and understandability -- will also make for a great 25-person experience.

Karazhan was a lot of fun to work on, and we really took our time developing and polishing it. Karazhan, more so than Zul'Gurub or the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj, had a very storied history in existing Warcraft lore, and we wanted to deliver on the high expectations. There are definitely plans for more 10-person content.

It's interesting to see that they think of a raid as fundamentally the same design problem as a 5-man. And more ten-man content, which we suspect Zul'Aman is going to be, is good news in my book. However, I think the approach of treating dungeons as similar to one another, regardless of size, is somewhat flawed. For instance, I'd say in a 5-man, trash mobs are almost more important to make interesting than bosses; in a raid, on the other hand, trash is an obstacle, and bosses are really what you come for.