It’s been more than a couple of months since the last episode of the Wrath of the Lich King. Blizzard’s official podcast, Wrath of the Lich Episode 7 of Blizzcast, came out recently where they gave a WotLK Wrap-up with Chris Metzen, the Senior Vice President of Creative Development along with J. Allen Brack (Production Director - WoW), and Jeff Kaplan (Lead Game Designer - WoW). Here’s a run-down of interesting information:
During the development of the original WoW was getting wrapped up, Outland and Northrend were the top contenders for the first expansion. Timing spells a big difference in WoW so the creative team picked Outland first.
Three front runners were set to appear for the hero class in the Lich King:
o Necromancer, a ranged caster with corpse explode and such. Some of this ended up getting incorporated into Death Knight
o Rune master: “think rogue or monk type character”
o And, of course, Death Knight.
• Brack thinks “the first month has really validated that decision” to go with 10- and 25-man raiding.
• Lessons learned from Burning Crusade:
o Don’t funnel everyone into one zone (Hellfire Peninsula)
o Put Arthas in everybody’s face - most people in BC didn’t get to interact with Illidan much.
o Itemization: the items that drop in heroics are actually good.
• From a conceptual story point of view, Wrath of the Lich King is divided into three acts; with the Wrath Gate cut scene separating act one from act two.
• Ulduar is going to be “absolutely massive.”
The podcast has a second half titled “The Story So Far,” where Metzen talks about what’s been going on in Azeroth while we were busy slaying space demons in Outland. It’s not anything you haven’t been exposed to if you’ve played through the expansion. The additional depth and color in his commentary is worth to check it out. He mentions that the question of “how is Yogg-Saron tied to the Scourge or Lich King specifically?” is going to play an important role in future storylines. Another one is The Order of Tirisfal which the story might get back into in future expansion WoW.
Click here to listen to Blizzcast 7.
