World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

The announcement of Cataclysm wasn’t exactly a surprise for anyone who follows sites such as ours. How did the studio react to the leak? How did it go over internally, and what if anything is going to change in reaction to the leak?

I think we went through the five stages of grief. We had white-hot rage where fire shot from our eyes and we were just like, so angry, and then as time went on and the day went on and the weekend came then Monday rolled around, we sort-of transitioned into, you know, people are just really excited about it. It shows excitement for the game, and that’s just awesome. It’s a high-class problem, it’s something that we like to have. But it’s hard not to have that initial irritation about it.

Maybe fire shooting from our eyes was an exaggeration. Okay, fire shot from our eyes, there was a lot of cursing and swearing and ‘I’m gonna get...’ type things.

Did you find out who leaked the news?

We can’t comment about an ongoing investigation. (laughter) We had fantasies about holding certain individuals up and having Mike Morhaime congratulate them on being the first person that Blizzard publicly fired. (laughter) They’re fantasies - they’re never going to happen. It’s hard to work on something and build up a surprise and want to have just this awesome reveal. Jay [Wilson] was fortunate enough to be able to do that with Diablo 3 when we did WWI in France, and it was such an awesome experience for the fans, drove them completely crazy. But the reality was that the fans still went completely crazy, so it’s not a big deal. And by the time BlizzCon rolled around, we were ready to go.

Pertaining to lore, how closely related are the WoW novels and the upcoming WoW movie?

The script is actually not finished for the Warcraft movie, so I can’t comment on that. The good is for it to be a great story first, and a great experience that you enjoy, and be consistent with what’s going on.

So we won’t have to read up to know what’s going on in the movie?

The goal is for it to be a great movie and that you can, as a fan, sit down and really enjoy it. And you can bring along your friends who haven’t experienced Warcraft and they can enjoy it. This sounds cliché, but Peter Jackson did a fantastic job of doing something great and doing a huge service for the fans of Lord of the Rings, but if you had never read Lord of the Rings, you just saw some damn good movies.

What role will the new Tirisfal Council play in Cataclysm?

That’s a great question, and I’m sorry to say I don’t know the answer. I don’t know if we’ve talked about the Council of Tirisfal and how it’s going to come together. The big rival council is going to be Twilight’s Hammer, which is owned by Deathwing and carries out Deathwing’s deeds, so we’re spending a lot of time doing that culture kit and what his plans are.

Have you had a chance to get some player impressions of Cataclysm?

I actually haven’t seen as much of people playing the new experiences as I would have liked. The stuff that I have seen, it’s been interesting the number of people that have gone ahead and chosen worgen over goblin. That’s something that’s understandable, we knew that we did a good job with the worgen and that it would be something that’s very appealing to people. I’ve had a lot of people come to me and say that, ‘You’re going to force me to play Alliance now, you dirty bastard.’ Sorry about that.

I think the worgen has an instant appeal for a lot of the people, it’s a big part of the culture, people have much more of an association with the worgen than the goblin. But the 1-5 goblin experience we have is awesome, I think you’ll really enjoy it. The problem will solve itself. This is the first year we’ve had feedback stations after the demo, and I’m really anxious to get back and read what the players had to say.

That leads to the next question. Both goblins and worgen start at level 6. Are you talking about what the first five levels are going to be like?

Brack - We know what the first five levels are going to be. The reason we started you at level 6 for goblin is because level 1-5 wasn’t done, and we really wanted to have both experiences playable at BlizzCon. On the worgen side, you start out as a human. You go through this experience where you’re affected by the curse, so you actually unlock your worgen form. That was something that we felt like: it’s a great experience, but probably not a great BlizzCon experience. When you sit down and you want to play the worgen and you look like just another human. Maybe it’s a bit of a letdown. But we have extensive plans for 1-5, we just weren’t ready to show it to you.