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Developer interviews on Convert to Raid and Final Boss
This past weekend, Lead Game Designer Ion Hazzikostas and Lead Class Designer Kris Zierhut sat down with both Convert to Raid and Final Boss to discuss raiding, classes, garrisons, and more. Between both interviews, almost all classes are touched on in some form. They mention another round of class tuning is due sometime today before mythic raiding opens up. One interesting tidbit about garrison followers is the confirmation that follower benefits are only calculated when you pick up your work orders. In a future patch, followers will need to be assigned to the building as each work order completes in order to grant the benefit. A change will also be made to allow followers to gain XP while working at a building. The Convert to Raid interview is embedded above, and you can watch the Final Boss show right here.
BlizzPro interviews Helen Cheng and Marco Koegler
BlizzPro has posted their BlizzCon interview with World of Warcraft Quest Designer Helen Cheng and Technical Director Marco Koegler about Warlords of Draenor and the future of WoW. The interview covers a variety of topics about the coming expansion, including why the team decided to return to a ten level expansion curve instead of sticking to the five it has been more recently (it makes for smoother leveling progression, plus level 100 is cool!), how (or if!) the time-travel aspect of Warlords will affect Azeroth itself (it shouldn't, provide we heroes rise to the occassion), and why there aren't any new playable classes or races for this expansion (new character models are resource-intensive). But those are far from the only topics discussed during the interview. Cheng and Koegler also go into whether or not Garrisons will be character-based or account-wide, and what the different challenges are within either approach. Cheng also talks in depth about daily quests and their history in the game, the shortcomings of that particular design, and how Blizzard hopes to create a more balanced questing experience going forward so as to avoid some of the problems with quests in Mists of Pandaria.
Greg Street and Marco Koegler Korean Q&A on WoW and its future
Some very interesting things were revealed in this Q&A from Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street and WoW Technical Director Marco Koegler. The interview was conducted in Korea, so there's a bit of down time while translations are being made between interviewers and interviewees, but the hour-long video is worth watching for a few meaty tidbits. In particular, Ghostcrawler has essentially stated that Garrosh will not be replaced at the end of patch 5.4. Oh, his days as warchief will be over for sure, but the patch is intended to end with his defeat at the hands of the players. These actions will set in motion a chain of events which will lead to the new warchief's implementation--but not in patch 5.4. So it seems that the mystery of who will next lead the Horde draws on! Other bits of information worth noting include the confirmation that patch 5.4 will be the final raid patch of Mists of Pandaria, which leads us here at WoW Insider to speculate on the timeline of the next expansion. Considering that traditionally new WoW expansions have been announced at Blizzcon--still a few months away--and given that the next warchief will not be revealed quite as soon as we expected, it seems reasonable to speculate that there might be a non-raid 5.5 patch in the works to take us through to 6.0. However, there is no mention of that in the Q&A and really, it's just idle speculation on my part. Still, I'm now more fascinated than ever to see what the future holds in store for us denizens of Azeroth! How about you?
All Things Azeroth interviews Hearthstone developers
Since the announcement of Hearthstone at PAX East, many developer interviews have been circulating (including our own!). This week the All Things Azeroth podcast featured Hearthstone production director Jason Chayes and game designer Ben Brode, and there are a few interesting tidbits to take away from the interview that you might not have heard before. In particular, they detail an example of the types of fun cards they're developing to keep gamers on their toes. The example they discuss is King Mukla. You might be familiar with King Mukla if you've quested through The Cape of Stranglethorn, he's the enormous gorilla you need to kill to complete the Princess Poobah questline. In Hearthstone, Mukla is a cheap card to play that packs a punch, but the catch is that he'll give your opponent bananas which allows them some extra abilities, so you've got to think carefully about when you play him! Other topics covered during the interview include some more details about card crafting and the rationale behind it, the Golden Card upgrades, and some of the developers' thoughts on things like a client for Hearthstone in WoW to ease the pain on those long DPS dungeon queues. I must say, the more I hear about Hearthstone, the more fun it sounds. I've got high hopes for this game, not least because I think there's a good chance that it might be the magic video-game bullet that finally piques my boyfriend's interest. Hey, he's resisted all my attempts to get him into WoW so far, I'm getting desperate! You can check out All Thing's Azeroth's conversation with Jason Chayes and Ben Brode in episode 339. Happy listening!
Dungeons and Dragons Online: Menace of the Underdark goes live [Updated]
Hope your dice are polished and your character sheets fresh from the copier: Dungeons and Dragons Online's first expansion has gone live on Turbine's servers. Menace of the Underdark is now available for all players who have purchased the digital expansion pack from the studio. Menace of the Underdark represents a sizable addition to the game. With it, DDO is expanding into the Forgotten Realms campaign setting and offers a new class, the Druid. Players will also be able to level up to 25 and expand their characters with the epic destinies system. "Menace of the Underdark delivers a wealth of content for our players and introduces significant engine upgrades that allow us to bring to life in a striking, visually impressive manner two of the most requested features, the new Druid class and access to the Forgotten Realms setting," said Executive Producer Fernando Paiz. While you patch up the game, you can check out the last of Menace of the Underdark's developer interviews after the jump! [Source: Turbine press release] [Update: Turbine just announced over Twitter that the game is now available on Steam!]
Free for All: Going on a hot date with Lucent Heart
Lucent Heart has really gotten under my skin. While my recent schedule has not allowed me as much time in the game as I would liked, I have been poking around the official site and Facebook page and sneaking in a few quests here and there. I really enjoyed chatting with the devs from Gamania during E3, and they asked whether I'd a personal tour of the game afterwards. We were finally able to hang out for a while, and I captured a lot of it on video for your viewing pleasure. We decided to look at the Cupid system and a bit of a dungeon, but we could have gone on for a lot longer. The fact is that the game, like many of its foreign counterparts, simply packs more gameplay and new systems into every square inch of its design than many Western MMOs. With the Japanese version of Lucent Heart two years ahead of the U.S. version, more content is guaranteed. Click past the cut to check out my hot date with Mark, Product Manager of Lucent Heart, and to hear a bit more about the game!
Massively interviews Shannon Posniewski about Champions Online's F2P changes
Champions Online has made quite the big change with the recent decision to go free-to-play. We got together with Shannon Posniewski, Executive Producer for CO, and asked quite a few questions about how the F2P changes will impact new, current, and returning players. In addition to these questions, the CO devs have compiled a huge FAQ covering many of the common queries regarding F2P, as well as a primer on how archetypes will work. We tried to avoid asking many of the questions that have already been answered somewhere else, so be sure to check those out as well.
Massively interviews Champions Online's Shannon Posniewski
Although it has been quite a while since the last big content update for Champions Online, Cryptic is moving forward with the Demonflame adventure pack slated for release next week. We previewed the adventure earlier this week, but we also snagged an interview with Executive Producer Shannon Posniewski, who talked with us about the new adventure pack. Poz also gave an enlightening view on the state of things to come in CO, as well as the development hurdles the team has to go through designing content that scales for all levels and team sizes. We also talk with him about player housing, voice acting, and the future of some old zones. Hit the jump to read more!
Battle of the Immortals shows off new armor art
We spend our time stomping around in MMOs wearing (or coveting) armor that someone dreamed up, but sadly we don't often get a chance to hear about the time and effort that went into creating these interesting bits of art. That's why we are particularly intrigued by the new series called BoI Blueprints from the crew over at Perfect World Entertainment. This time we're treated to a quick Q&A with Liao "Fruit" Shuiguo, the Lead Art Designer on the Battle of the Immortals Development Team, who gives us a bit of an insight into how one of the sets -- the above pictured Soul Gear Prometheus set -- was made. For those who have always been curious about just what goes into making armor sets, then you'll want to pop by the Battle of the Immortals site and give this interview a read. While it's a small starting salvo, we're hopeful that the BoI team will dig in and bring us many more tasty developer interviews in the future. That said, more videos with sneak peeks like the one we've got after the break of the animated Soul Gear Prometheus set wouldn't hurt, either.
Fan questions answered in DCUO Q&A video
SOE Austin recently put up a call for DC Universe Online fans to ask questions via Facebook for a video Q&A. Well, the team's answers are now live over at the social networking site and we think you'll be pleased with the results. New information has been fairly sparse for the last few months, which makes this video feel like a sudden spring shower after a long dry winter. The questions run the gamut from weapons and equipment to PvP and how the game's tech and design goes the distance to make players feel like a DC style superhero. And don't worry if you missed out on submitting a question or if yours wasn't answered this go around, because the devs are very careful to say more of these are scheduled for the (hopefully near) future. [Thanks, Max!]
Games Day '09: All about Warhammer Online's live events with Mark Davis pt. 2
How long does it take to put together your average live event? We usually take about three to six weeks for brainstorming and conception. Then there's the approval process, where I send the ideas to my boss, who sends them to "The Hickman," who sends them upstairs, who sends that to Games Workshop to make sure we're staying true to their concepts. Plus we have to coordinate with all of the other departments, like RvR, the items team, and Combat and Careers. Then the production side takes another three weeks to maybe seven weeks on top of that. We'll be planning and producing the event usually the version before the live event is scheduled to take place, otherwise it would never be done in time. Then after that we'll have the playtesting and the QA sessions to make sure the bugs are worked out, and that takes another week to two weeks. So, in short, you're looking at three months of work from inception to the final event. And these aren't available on the test server, right? Well... they're not suppose to be available on the test server. They're suppose to be hidden.. *smiles* But we have little breaks where the live events show up on the test server for a couple seconds. "Just the sheer joy these events provide players should be reason enough for another developer [to make them.]" It amazes me because in that short period of time when the live event is available, somebody will screenshot all of the objectives for all of the quests and then have that up on the internet before we can get the live event down. We try our best, but it always seems to slip out for a matter of seconds. We want to be secretive and we want players to have a sense of discovery with our live events, plus they really can't be tested publically in such a short window. Live events focus on the whole world, and getting testing and feedback done is not all that useful to us. What's your favorite part about the most recent live event? From a developer's perspective, it was the opening cinematic to the RvR public quests. We did a custom cinematic with an airship flying in and exploding which results in the start of the RvR PQs. That was surely my favorite part, it was glorious! From a player's perspective, it was the RvR that occured because of the live event. We created a center point for RvR in the event in Thunder Mountain. There were a number of different tasks that centered on this one area and that area was a hot spot for RvR the whole week. From the warcamp landing to the hot spot, the travel time was only about 3 minutes, but people in my warband would be killing others the entire way there. Thunder Mountain was locked most of the time when I was fighting in this event, but the RvR was just hot all the time. Whenever I was looking for a fight, I just went to Thunder Mountain because I knew it would be there. We had warbands coming in and attempting to camp the area, but they could only hold it for a small amount of time before another warband came in to unseat them. It was a lot of fun. Many other developers don't bother with live events. Plus when they give out exclusive items, they always seem to show up later and become unexclusive. So what would you say to another developer who was thinking of doing these exclusive live events? Just look at the metrics. For our game we get more gameplay, more people in the game, and a lot of positive feedback. These events are only a limited time, so players come in and play and the realize all of the possiblities our game has to offer in that limited time. Just the sheer joy these events provide players should be reason enough for another developer. "Live events gets to take all of that great stuff and put it all together into this nice package of fun." We even see all of this in the cold metrics. Look server population the day of the event and the day after the event, and the event population will be higher. Every game has its niche. For Warhammer, it's the RvR, the public quests, the living guilds, the city sieges. You hear us harp on this stuff over and over, because it's what we do. Live events gets to take all of that great stuff and put it all together into this nice package of fun. We bring to the front what we do the best through our live events. We've got events planned for the rest of the year. We just put up the Northern Watch weekend event, and it was immensely successful. There was only a title offered as the reward, and it was easily one of the most successful events we've done. Any sneak peeks you can give us as to what's coming? Ah... well I can't really say anything because we need to go through all of that long approval process first, but the live event in the summer is going to be doing something that I don't think any MMO has done before. Ever. It's that level of magnitude for that event. We're going to challenge what people have come to expect out of our live events, I will say that much. Ha ha, sweet! Ok then, let's end it out. Order or Destruction? Order all the way. Engineer, baby! I feel like the combat and careers guys made that class for me. You blow stuff up, you shoot people, you have explosions! What could be better? The sands of the Tomb Kings are coming as the final release in the Call to Arms live expansion, the Land of the Dead approaches! Massively has your back with coverage from Mythic Entertainment at Games Day '09, so get your WAAGGGHHH ready for RvR mayhem as Massively re-arms for WAR!
Games Day '09: All about Warhammer Online's live events with Mark Davis
Mark Davis knows Warhammer Online's live events well. He should, because he's the man behind them! During Games Day '09, we had the chance to catch up with the live events lead and discuss some shop talk with him -- including a look at the newest live event, "Rise of the Tomb Kings," and a little about what goes on behind the scenes.How long does it take for a live event to be produced? What are some of Mark's favorite moments? What can we expect in the live events to come? And, most importantly, what are we going to find in the Rise of the Tomb Kings? All of these questions, and more, are answered within!
LOTROcast chats with Aaron "Rowan" Campbell
While there are a bunch of great podcasts out there covering lots of different MMO games, we're always glad to see a new, promising show join the group. One such show that we've recently latched on to here at the Massively offices is LOTROcast, which is a mid-length, bi-weekly Lord of the Rings Online podcast put out by Moormur. While there are still a few technical bugs that need to be worked out in regards to formatting, for three shows thus far, it's proving to be well worth the listen. In this most recent episode of LOTROcast, Moormur sits down with Aaron "Rowan" Campbell, Live Producer for Lord of the Rings Online and talks about a variety of different topics like the development of ideas and testing for Book 7; some of the upcoming dev love in terms of new content players can expect; different things from mounts to mailboxes; and more. He also touches briefly on the roadmap for 2009 and Book 8, and fields a few reader questions. In all, definitely worth a listen if you love the lands of Middle-earth. Also, be sure to check out our latest LotRO developer tour if you're looking for more Book 7 goodness!
Fill the void with The Conduit developer interview
Let's face it -- most of the gamers who read this (or any) gaming blog aren't the audience Nintendo was targeting during their E3 2008 press conference. Many long-time members of the Wii camp felt betrayed by Ninty's "major" announcements -- that's why we thought we'd try to buck-up your spirits with a GameTrailers developer interview for a title that's been gathering quite a bit of attention from fans of the pint-sized home console: High Voltage Games' The Conduit.Voltage's Chief Creative Officer, Eric Nofsinger, doesn't exactly dish any new dirt about the title in the above video, though the gameplay shown looks solid, and fairly attractive by the standards of its designated console. Whether or not it's worthy of the hype surrounding it, we'll have to wait until the first quarter of next year to find out. In the mean time, you'll just have to feign excitement over the Wii's thoroughly unexciting Noise Creation Engine.
Shiny new interview with Age of Conan devs
Eurogamer got a chance to sit down with Ole Herbjornsen (associate producer), Joel Bylos (quest designer) and Erling Ellingsen (product manager) from the Age of Conan development team and chat them up about what's been going on with Age of Conan recently. Some of the subjects touched on are a bit familiar, such as the issue of the mature game content. The more interesting bits are further into the interview when the developers are asked about the combat system and what's changed since the player feedback during closed beta testing. The only thing that wasn't discussed -- that we would have been very interested to hear about -- was further information on mounted combat. Overall, it seems as though Age of Conan is shaping up to be a nice alternative MMO for players interested in something a bit different. The narrative aspects of the game -- which are closer to something out of a Bioware title -- are much more involved than your usual quest text. Another thing that AoC has going for it is that obviously FunCom is very interested in listening to player feedback and adjusting the game accordingly if need be. Now-before-later is always greater; especially when you're talking beta invites!
Age of Conan director sits down for two-part interview
Gaute Godager, the man behind the Age of Conan's loin-cloth, if you will, recently sat down for the second round of a massive two-part interview with RPGVault, to discuss some of the finer points of the game's development. This round of the interview focused on some more extraneous elements of the game's development, including their approach to marketing the game in the Asia and their justification for bumping the game's launch back into 2008. This comes on the heels of the first interview piece they published, which was focused on slightly more interesting elements like the combat and the siege system.More than any other developer in recent memory, it seems like Funcom has been willing to talk to people, usually at extremely great length, about what makes their game stand out from the pack. Whether they're just providing a fan-service or trying to hedge doubts in the gaming community about their game remains to be seen. Personally, I'd rather see them talk about the game less and work on opening up the beta so more of us can decide for ourselves. Talk is cheap, as they say.
Age of Conan interview on Uberguild podcast
In the latest episode of Uberguild's "Grenade" podcast, the boys sit down for a chat with Age of Conan designer Jason Stone. While we were prepared for a bit of a puff piece, you'll be happy to know that they actually take Mr. Stone to task, taking listener questions and generally raking Stone over the coals for specifics about the hotly-anticipated title. Of particular interest was Stone's discussion about Funcom's choice to de-emphasize the role of healing classes in the traditional sense, moving away from the chain-healing prevalent in games like World of Warcraft. Their plan to achieve this involves proliferating cheap, readily-available healing potions, and giving the game's hybrid healing classes more heal over time abilities instead of spam heals. They also go into depth about the guilds, large-scale PvP, the siege system, and more. If you're anticipating AoC as much as we are, it's probably worth throwing on the iPod.
