Blizzcast episode 7 released
Episode 7 of Blizzcast, Blizzard's official podcast, came out this afternoon; it's been a couple of months since the last episode. This time, they did a little bit of a "WotLK Wrap-Up" with J. Allen Brack and Jeff Kaplan, as well as some chatting with Chris Metzen, the creative head, about what's been going on in various aspects of the story. Here are the parts I found most interesting:
When the development on the original WoW was getting wrapped up, Outland and Northrend were both in the running for the first expansion. They decided the timing was better to do Outland first.
There were three front runners for the hero class to appear in LK:
Necromancer, a ranged caster with corpse explode and such. Some of this ended up getting incorporated into Death Knight
Rune master: "think rogue or monk type character"
And, of course, Death Knight.
JAB thinks "the first month has really validated that decision" to go with 10- and 25-man raiding.
Lessons learned from Burning Crusade:
Don't funnel everyone into one zone (Hellfire Peninsula)
Put Arthas in everybody's face - most people in BC didn't get to interact with Illidan much.
Itemization: the items that drop in heroics are actually good.
From a conceptual story point of view, LK is divided into three acts, with the Wrath Gate cut scene separating act one from act two. [Where's the break between acts two and three?]
Ulduar is going to be "absolutely massive."
The second half of the podcast is called "The Story So Far," and in it Metzen talks about what's been going on in Azeroth while we were off in Outland killing space demons. It's not anything you haven't been exposed to if you've played through the expansion, but there is some additional depth and color in his commentary, so it's probably worth going to check it out. He does mention that the question of "how is Yogg-Saron tied to the Scourge or Lich King specifically?" is going to be important in future storylines; I'm betting we'll see more on that in Ulduar (based on dialogue at the Tribunal event in Halls of Stone). The Order of Tirisfal is also strongly hinted as something that the story might get back into "at some future point."
Overall I enjoyed this Blizzcast a lot more than some of the past episodes. It's certainly worth a read or a listen if you've got a few minutes.
[thanks, Chillblain]
