This afternoon at the 2008 Worldwide Invitational Blizzard put many their most respected developers on the stage to host an open mike Q&A session for all World of Warcraft questions. Included in the panel were: Tom Chilton (Lead Game Designer), J. Allen Brack (Warcraft Lead Producer), Rob Pardo (Executive Vice President of Game Design), Cory Stockton (Lead Level Designer) and Frank Pearce (Executive Vice President of Product Development).

There were many questions asked that covered a wide range of topics. Some even turned into jokes. Overall though the community was given some very good answers that should provide solid insight into the reasoning decisions have been made the way they were.

Question - Why are there no Gnomes in any of the World of Warcraft cinematic videos.

Answer (Frank Pearce) - Actually there are lots of gnomes, they are just so short you can not see them!

Question - How about a ranged weapon for feral druids?

Answer (Tom Chilton) - We are in the process of re-evaluating the way we gage target distance, so hopefully that is something we can address with the beta of the WotLK. It is not something he can say for sure yet though.

Question - Currently each class has 1 talent tree that is essentially PvP based and not raid viable. Any comments on that?

Answer (Tom Chilton) - It is certainly not intended for any tree to be a PvP tree. I think that what tends to happen is players min/max their characters one tree emerges to be the most well like PvP tree. As much as we reasonably can we try to make all trees viable for all parts of the game.

Question - The new profession of inscriptions will it be meant primarily for casters, melee or both. Also what will the primary gathering talent to go with it.

Answer (Tom Chilton) - The inscription trade skill will be for either melee or casters. The primary mechanic is that you will be able to chose between several major or minor inscriptions that benefit any characters spells. Currently it looks as though we will be using herbalism as the primary gathering skill.

Question - I am wondering if you have plans for linux client support, and if not what are the main obstacles as you see it.

Answer (Frank Pearce) - We don't a have any immediate plans for support of a linux client. As far as obstacles, not to many, early on in the development phase we had a linux client for compatibility purposes. So it's certainly something we can do, we just don't have any immediate plans for.

Question - Question about the future design of the warrior class. Currently Druids can tank and DPS all from one talent tree. From this mornings seminar I understand the Death Knights will fill both roles effectively. Currently Warriors are severely handicapped unless they invest all their points in the prot tree.

will have versatile talent trees able to do damage and tank. What about warriors, are there plans to address them?

Answer (Tom Chilton) - Yes, there are plans to improve the warrior in both respects.We plan to help the prot warrior do more damage than it currently does in relation to other classes, through strikes such as the heroic strike improvements and revenge improvements and potentially give shield slam to all warriors that would improve the other aspects of the tank.

Question - In the beginning the game classes had very specific roles. Then due to them being boring most classes became hybrids and allowed varied game play. What are you plans for rogues and hunters that are still basically single function classes.

Answer (Tom Chilton) - Well as to the question about originally classes were one dimensional and boring, that's just plain wrong. So we actually did design a lot of the character classes to kinda have hybrid capability right from the beginning. As much as possible we focus much of our effort to ensure the classes are still distinct despite having cross over roles. So as far as our continuing philosophy, we plan to keep the classes as distinct as possible. Even though we have more classes that can tank from when the game came out they all tank differently. So we still feel that it preserves the integrity of different classes.

Question - Do you think that adding new classes will disrupt class representation in 25 man raids?

Answer (Tom Chilton) - Yes, I think that it's inevitable that the classes will be disrupted somewhat, but I think that the question is are we happy with the outcome. I think that what we want to see is that all classes are reasonably represented in a raid, at the end of the day what really matters is that 25 people are showing up. Whether those people may be playing different classes, maybe, maybe not, but hopefully everyone still feels like their class still has a chance to have success at a raid.

Question - How viable are you planning on making the Death Knight in 25 man main tanking role, and how do you see them working with the other pre-existing tanking roles?

Answer (Tom Chilton) - We for the most part want the tanks to feel interchangeable at least at the 5 man level. at the 25 man level we are hoping to specialize the tanking at a certain level. For example the death knight is specialized for casters and even on other encounters it shouldn't be far behind.

Question - Will we be able to use flying mounts in Northrend?

Answer (Cory Stockton) - Yes we are planning to allow players to use flying mounts in Northrend. We want you to not necessarily have to re buy the mount from the beginning, so you might have to go through some process of attunement. We haven't exactly gone through the process of how we are going to give you the flying mount.So, yes you will have flying mounts in Northrend Their wings might just need to be defrosted a little bit. We do plan to allow players to use their flying mounts at level 77, and then new mounts at 80. Potentially mounts that allow passengers.

Question - So far the retribution paladin has still not seen proper itemization, is this being addressed. We understand that some changes are being made, can you tell us about the changes you are going to make.

Answer (Tom Chilton) - So there are several things that are coming along the pipe, for one thing we plan to have the itemization shared with warriors and death knights. We also plan on continue to enhance their group utility and how much DPS they can put out themselves.

Question - Will feral druids get new skins in WotLK, because we have the same skins as originally.

Answer (J. Allen Brack) - That is something that we have talked about and there has been Druid community desire for. We have to be careful with what we change because while it may be a good idea to one it may not be to another. Fore example a while ago we accidentally changed the rouge animation and got lots of feedback to change it back even though we felt the change was better. We have to balance keeping things as they are and new type stuff.

Question - So we now have Gnome Death Knights, how about Gnome Paladins?

Answer (Tom Chilton) - (Audience Boos!) Well I was going to say yes, but by popular vote, I'm going to have to say no. (Audience Cheers!)

Question - Question about PvP and Arenas, how do you plan on improving class balance?

Answer (Tom Chilton) - With season 4 starting we do have some slight class balance tuning to favor casters a little bit. In addition it's very hard to say anything about the expansion, any time we add 10 levels, all those new spells and talents, never mind a new class we affect balance. Balance is going to change, the game will not be what it is today, balance will be different. But certainly by the time we ship the game hopefully will be at the new acceptable level.

Question - I play a hunter and I feel that line of sight seriously gimps us, is the new arena in Northrend going to have the same issues.

Answer (Cory Stockton) - There is a lot of lessons that we can learn for the arenas that we have out, line of sight being one of those. So one of the things we are planning in Northrend in arenas we are looking at adding dynamic line of sight into arenas. Such as pillars that go up or down on a timer basis. It's just a matter of how much of those random elements we want compared to player skill.

(Tom Chilton) Initially early stages of testing we did it in open arenas with no LOS and they were kinda boring, not as exciting as we felt they should be. So we felt it was important for there to be something, we just have to strike a balance of how much.

Question - As you saw even Nihilum had issues with Sunwell, are there any plans to nerf it before WotLk?

Answer (Cory Stockton) - There is no plan to nerf sunwell as he is designed to be the overall end boss of the Burning Crusade and he fits that role.

Question - For the moment PvE players have to do PvP to be optimized for PvE and vise versa, are there plans to better separate the two?

Answer (Tom Chilton) - It's actually a very fine line that we try to walk. We don't want PvP players to feel that they have to PvE that they absolutely have to PvP, or PvE players have to PvP, but at the same time we want there to be enough stuff in there to reward you if you do, so that you don't feel the different games cut you out. We will continue to try to resolve that in the expansion.

Question - Over the course of patches the game have gotten progressively easier and therefore increasing the number of noobs.

Answer (Tom Chilton) - They are just trying to get it to where Frank can play through the game.

One of the things we value very much at Blizzard is that a game is easy to get into and hard to master. We try to ensure that there is content that overall the game is easy to get into but have some very difficult. The question earlier about nerfing the sunwell is an example of that.

Also with low system requirements as people upgrade computers many more people can get into the game.

Question - Question about the character selection screen, any chance of some management tools so that you can select the order of characters, such as time played, drag and drop.

Answer (Tom Chilton) - Definitely a good idea, it is just a question of when we would be able to prioritize it and get it in.

Question - At the current time sword spec is the only viable raiding spec for rouges, are there any plans to change that?

Answer (Tom Chilton) - So, we definitely do plan to make improvements in WotLK, daggers fell behind and we do intend for daggers to be very strong in WotLK for rogues.

Question - Is there any plan for an epic ground form for Druids?

Answer (Tom Chilton) - No plans for a druid epic ground form, just epic arena wins with their current ground form.

Question - A question about armor and the WotLK expansion. Will we lose all of our sets right off the bat again and gain a rainbow of armor. Are the upgrades going to be worth changing to as quickly again and will they look as bad.

Answer (J. Allen Brack) - (laughing) Yes there was a lot of clown action. It will be better than it was but can not promise that it will be perfect. It was either be a little more careful or make everything gray so it would match.

Question - Are there any planned changes for the soul shard mechanic for Warlocks. It is very annoying to have to go and collect shards before a raid and no other class has to.

Answer (Tom Chilton) - There are plans to allow some form of emergency soul shard generation, but overall we are happy with the mechanic and there are no plans to remove it as it is something that defines a Warlock.

Question - With the current balance issues required for PvE and PvP why do you not allow two talent trees (he meant two talent builds) and allow players to switch between them.

Answer (Tom Chilton) - So, we actually are working on a plan to on how we will give players more easy access to two different talent specs and will give more details in the future.

Question - Why does the animal boss in Karazhan (KZ) have such crappy loot.

Answer (J. Allen Brack) - Actually that was a very specific idea that we had, where we wanted to allow you to have a boss that would drop loot that did not require you to have 10 people. The idea was hey you have 8 people and are waiting for 2 people to log on lets go kill something. It is not meant as part of a full clear.