World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

Cory Stockton

WoW Lead Level Designer Cory Stockton met with the US press during the last day of Blizzard Worldwide Invitational '08 last week. The full gamut of World of Warcraft questions were discussed, and even though Stockton was loth to discuss specifics on anything beyond the upcoming retail expansion Wrath of the Lich King, Stockton did confirm that a number of top player-requested items were still on the priority list.

Browse the questions and responses by topic below, and please note that this was an open-forum for US press and fansites. We can't take credit (or blame!) for most of the questions that were asked and, for the sake of carlity, the questions and responses are listed by topic rather than chronological order.

General

• How will Blizzard fill the content gap until Wrath of the Lich King arrives?
• What has Blizzard learned from Burning Crusade that’s going into Wrath of the Lich King?
  
• Will faction changes with server transfers be permitted at some future date?
• Any more news about the WoW movie?
  

Raiding

• Will the difficulty of Sunwell Plateau / Kil’Jaedon encounter ever be reduced?

Social & Appearance Options

• More appearance options during character creation with the Barber Shop?
  
• Will the Barber Shop go beyond new hairstyle options with tattoos, etc.?
  
• More word on the Dance Studio concept?
  
• The latest word on housing and guild halls.

User Interface

• Increases in quest log capacity and more information on quests and guildmates in the UI?
  
• Progress on integrating popular addons like ThreatMeter and Outfitter into the UI.

Classes & Professions

• What’s Blizzard’s plan to continue to combat class exploits?
  
• General reaction to the Death Knight.
  
• The process of creating and balancing the Death Knight.
  
• The latest on Inscription.

PvP / Battlegrounds / Arenas

• How will the arena season handle players’ level-up transition to 80?
  
• Will we see a battleground based on the popular Warcraft III addon “Defense of the Ancients (DotA)”?
  
• Do the boats used as transports in the Northrend Battleground have any offensive capability?
• Will we see player-controlled boats as siege vehicles in the future?
• With the addition of another battleground, will we see server battlegroup size reduced to prevent the further spread of the PvP population?
  
• Rewards for collecting spirit shards in Wintergrasp?

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