We were really lucky and actually managed to get a hastily-arranged one on one interview with WoW’s lead producer (and extremely nice guy) J Allen Brack. It was late on the second day of the Worldwide Invitational and we only had a few minutes, so I asked him some of the questions that you requested we pass on.
We talked about the spider kingdom in Wrath of the Lich King - Azjol Nerub, new hairstyles and customization. I also asked him about Blizzard’s take on the Alpha leaks, and how fansites should handle the info that comes from the leaks.
Brack spoke about the teaser images we saw in the week leading up to the event, and revealed who was responsible. He also mentioned that Blizzard are keen to make more instances in the Caverns of Time, and when I suggested the War of the Ancients, he seemed excited about seeing it become a reality.
Sadly, there was no more news of the movie, but even if there was, we’d expect a big announcement, maybe in October at BlizzCon?
We also discussed other topics concerning WoW and the next expansion, so check out the video below to see what Brack had to say in reply to your questions!
If you can’t watch the movie, here’s the transcript :
Q: Are you going to do anything with Azjol Nerub (the spider kingdom in Northrend), will it be an instance or just an area for players to quest?
A: Yes, the plan is to have at least one dungeon that is Azjol Nerub themed, and then at some point in the future we really want to expand Azjol Nerub, the history of Azjol Nerub and how it plays into Northend culture is something that would make a lot of insight into, with just the release of the game we’ll have a lot of quests in a lot of areas where Azjol has kind of come up out of the ground. We do really like the storyline of Azjol Nerub and we want to explore that more at some point in the future as well. We’re really excited about it.Q: Do you plan to feature any other instances in Caverns of Time?
A: The big one is Stratholme, but we love Caverns of Time. Players seem to really like it, we really like the ideas and flexibility that we have to do whatever neat idea comes up so we’ll definitely continue to use Caverns of Time.
Q: Any particular instances you have in mind?
A: I don’t know what the next thing we’ll do is, we’ve got a couple of ideas we’ve tossed around but we haven’t really committed to anything. Any favorites you want to see?
Q: War of the Ancients?
A: Yeah especially as more of the books get released and tell a lot of that pre-history, that back story, I think to see some in-game visualization of that would be great.
Q: Is there going to be a collector’s edition of Lich King?
A: I can’t answer that yet… That’s a really good idea, I would love to have a Collector’s Edition.
Q: The tier sets in Lich King, will they be 5 piece still, or will it go back to 8 piece like before BC?
A: The current plan is for them to be 5 piece. 8 piece sets, such a small percentage - I don’t actually know any one single person myself, but I’m sure it’s happened, where people actually collected all 8 pieces. It’s very rare because you don’t need all 8 pieces to go on to the next tier of raiding, that’s why we’ve reduced the number of pieces in TBC. Plus, a lot of those pieces you didn’t really see visually, so we kept the 5 big most visible pieces.
Q: Who was responsible for the splash/teaser images we saw in the build up to the WWI?
A: That was our web team, they had a good time putting together a lot of different ideas, how they did that reveal and open it up to the community.
Q: And they kept a close eye on what everyone was guessing?
A: Absolutely, and made some changes based on what everyone was guessing.
Q: What is your personal position on the Alpha leaks, and how does it affect Blizzard as a whole when stuff is leaked, what difference does it make to you guys, why would you really not like it leaked?
A: Well, I think the big thing is, it’s not a huge issue, obviously we don’t really like leaks. Why do we not like them? We’re professionals, and we like people to kind of see everything to come out when we feel like it’s at a good state, and if it leaks early then you’re going to see things that are not done, and that people are going to comment on. Particularly if I’m an artist on the team, and someone’s commenting on something that I know is not done, then it makes me sad to hear people complaining about how bad my art is, when in fact I know it’s not done. But I think people are very curious about the game, that’s the opposite side, it shows how excited people are to see stuff from Lich King, so it’s not really a big deal. It’s not something that we’re super super angry about, but it is a little disappointing.
Q: How would you advise non-affiliated fan sites to cope with the leaked information?
A: We would ask them to remove it. And then we ask them a bit more officially.
Q: Hairstyles, are they going to get a bit more wacky, will we see more Mohawks?
A: We haven’t actually revealed what the hairstyles are going to look like, I’ve seen some of the hairstyles and they’re pretty good. Some of them are just different versions of what we already have, but some of them are a little more eccentric, I hope the players will have a good time with them.
Q: The new Spirit Shards that players will get from Lake Wintergrasp, will the rewards for them be for players of all levels between 70 and 80, just for level 80, or just for mid-low 70s? Will it be like the current Spirit Shard system in Terrokar Forest, whereby players only collect the loot around the mid 60s?
A: It’s definitely going to be a more used loot system, we haven’t done the itemization for it yet so I can’t say what is going to be there but we’ll definitely have high level rewards that will make it very useful. I can’t say whether it will be exclusively high level though, we may have some low level stuff too.
Q: Is there any news on the WoW movie?
A: Not really actually. There was something on BlizzCon and Chris Metzen gave an overview, and he talked about our next step, about hiring a director, and then start to make the progress forward, but we haven’t really announced anything beyond that.
