Jeff Kaplan interview on GameInformer
GameInformer.com sat down with Jeff Kaplan (Tigole) to talk about World of Warcraft's past and future. It's just like any other World of Warcraft interview without anything really new (it's still worth reading!) but there is a very interesting answer here. Tigole confirms that there will be a cinematic just like the Wrath Gate one in Patch 3.3, most likely featuring the Lich King.
It's not on PTRs yet and a minor patch released a few months after 3.3 to introduce Season 8 and the Cinematic is very likely. They could always push the season 8 models and the cinematic in the final version of Patch 3.3 but I don't think they would do that without testing at least the models of Season 8 armor. (And they're definitely not here for the moment)
Quote from: Tigole (Source)
GameInformer: I would agree that the game has gotten much better at showing rather than telling, but Wrath of the Lich King also saw the introduction of cutscenes to the game. Its obviously much easier to tell the story in that, but youre also taking the player out of the game. Do you think that those will keep showing up future expansions as well? Is it something youll use sparingly?
Jeff Kaplan: Cutscenes will always be something that we use sparingly, yes. We never want to interrupt gameplay too frequently or for too long of a period of time. The Wrathgate cutscene was a big experiment for us. It was our first foray into in-game cutscenes in World of Warcraft. I dont think weve fully refined how we want cutscenes to work with future World of Warcraft content.
We debate like crazy. We debate the length, we debate the frequency, and we have a lot of theories, but Blizzard is a really iterative development house. I think whats going to have to happen is that youll see more cutscenes come into the game for us to really refine our strategy with them. We definitely have an eye toward more cutscenes, but at the same time, we dont want to become just a cutscene game.
Even before Cataclysm, in patch 3.3, theres going to be a really exciting cutscene moment thats going to be our next experiment with that.
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Shaman (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Elemental "sacrifice" to debuff the raid
We want classes to have to take a hit for buffing the raid, but we don't want it to be a gigantic one. Again, on the one hand players are eager for these buffs because it "secures them a slot!" but on the other hand, they want someone else to do the buff so they don't have to.
The problem is some of our implementations (and to be fair, more of the newer versions of these buffs) come with less opportunistic cost, or the talent specs make it easier to include the buff, or it happens automatically instead of requiring player action. We realize these are rough edges that still need to be polished down.
We made some pretty massive strides in Lich King to overhaul the way buffs and debuffs work. It's in a lot better place than it was, but we still have a lot of work to do.
[...] I said that Ele shaman don't want to have to drop ToW because of the personal dps loss, but they also want to have ToW because it's an attractive raid buff. That is what I meant. (Source)
Fire Totems changes in 3.3
We like the fire totem changes. It's a new change and I'm sure it will require some iteration before it feels exactly right, but we like the mechanic overall. It's not critical that Searing Totem be an uber form of dps in the same way that Sentry Totem's very existence might offend you. We did a big update of totems for Lich King. They're not perfect yet, but when you remember what they used to be like, they're in a much better place now.
We see Elementals "turretiness" as a slightly different issue, and one we want to fix. No spec should be so terrified of moving, even one dependent on stationary points on the map where their totems are.
Also be very careful that you aren't just describing totems in general as a clunky mechanic. I see that kind of thing a lot, but totems are virtually synonymous with shaman in our minds. If you really, really hate totems, you might not be playing the class that best suits your play style. (Source)
Warlock (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Warlock DPS too low?
I'm sorry, but I find a lot of this to be QQ. "I can't top the meters, so it must be my class that's to blame. Now my raid is going to sit me." If you're playing a warlock and your raid is seriously considering sitting you just because you're a warlock, you need to spend some more time doing Internet research. If your raid is considering sitting you because of your personal performance issues, I would also suggest doing some more research.
If you look at some of the PTR parses, there are fights (or at least certain individuals) who are topping the damage meters as Affliction. At the same time, we're not very worried that Destruction is going to somehow vanish. I suspect Demonology's dps is still a little low, but because of their buff they are still going to be somewhat popular in PvE. To be clear, that's not an ideal design and the kind of thing we're trying to move away from, but it's better than Demonology being a dead spec. (By comparison, Subtlety is largely dead in progression-focused raiding, which we consider a much bigger failure.)
And I don't at all mean that there aren't aspects of the warlock class that need improving, and we have already announced some of them coming up for Catalcysm. But all of this "Locks are going to be Sunwelled" is a little overblown. Let's try and focus more on actual mechanic discussions and less "I read that I was bad."
[...] We don't put a ton of faith into highest dps ever ranks or simulation output unless it is very carefully analyzed. Sadly it almost never is. Usually it is just linked or someone says "Simulationcraft shows us as the lowest, etc.")
If you really love analyzing highest dps contests, I would recommend doing something like going to World of Logs and looking at the highest damage done on Heroic 25 Northrend beasts. I suspect you will find a lot of locks high on that list. If you find a few rogues above the locks, or you think there are more rogues overall, I'm not sure that means "locks always lose." I'm also not sure you could get a lot of meaningful data out of looking at 25 normal, given how on farm that is for so many guilds.
Now if you look at something like Yogg, warlocks will be all over that list. We've seen locks high on the PTR runs, but of course the sample size is small and the PTR tends to select either for very progression-oriented guilds and for players just messing around who want to see the content. We'll have better numbers once the sample size is in the thousands.
But again, interpret those lists in context. You can't directly translate "Who was ever able to do the highest dps on a given fight" as "My guild would benefit from swapping me out with another mage." If you aren't doing 8000 dps on Northrend Beasts (and very few of you are, especially heroic) then I don't know how relevant it is that the best hunter in the world does more damage on that fight than the best warlock in the world.
P.S. Those players talking about specific mechanics or concerns they have about the class are doing the kind of thing we want to see in these forums. I don't have the bandwidth to answer every question but I try and hit some of them when I can. If your post pretty much says "We're terrible and Blizzard doesn't care," then that's QQ, and that's not really what we (and I suspect most readers) want to see here. (Source)
Shaman (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Warlock (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Demonic Pact / Totem of Wrath
Yes, we want to fix the discrepancy. We'd like to get it done before Cataclysm. I'm not going to promise we're going to be able to for the reasons I can't and don't ever promise anything. You can see how many shaman have even hung on to my saying "we'd like to fix it by Cataclysm." I think in the future I'm going to have to be even more careful about saying stuff like that.
I'm pretty sure you all know the issue, but for the record (and being brief to the point of being flippant):
More...
GameInformer.com sat down with Jeff Kaplan (Tigole) to talk about World of Warcraft's past and future. It's just like any other World of Warcraft interview without anything really new (it's still worth reading!) but there is a very interesting answer here. Tigole confirms that there will be a cinematic just like the Wrath Gate one in Patch 3.3, most likely featuring the Lich King.
It's not on PTRs yet and a minor patch released a few months after 3.3 to introduce Season 8 and the Cinematic is very likely. They could always push the season 8 models and the cinematic in the final version of Patch 3.3 but I don't think they would do that without testing at least the models of Season 8 armor. (And they're definitely not here for the moment)
Quote from: Tigole (Source)
GameInformer: I would agree that the game has gotten much better at showing rather than telling, but Wrath of the Lich King also saw the introduction of cutscenes to the game. Its obviously much easier to tell the story in that, but youre also taking the player out of the game. Do you think that those will keep showing up future expansions as well? Is it something youll use sparingly?
Jeff Kaplan: Cutscenes will always be something that we use sparingly, yes. We never want to interrupt gameplay too frequently or for too long of a period of time. The Wrathgate cutscene was a big experiment for us. It was our first foray into in-game cutscenes in World of Warcraft. I dont think weve fully refined how we want cutscenes to work with future World of Warcraft content.
We debate like crazy. We debate the length, we debate the frequency, and we have a lot of theories, but Blizzard is a really iterative development house. I think whats going to have to happen is that youll see more cutscenes come into the game for us to really refine our strategy with them. We definitely have an eye toward more cutscenes, but at the same time, we dont want to become just a cutscene game.
Even before Cataclysm, in patch 3.3, theres going to be a really exciting cutscene moment thats going to be our next experiment with that.
Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff
Elemental "sacrifice" to debuff the raid
We want classes to have to take a hit for buffing the raid, but we don't want it to be a gigantic one. Again, on the one hand players are eager for these buffs because it "secures them a slot!" but on the other hand, they want someone else to do the buff so they don't have to.
The problem is some of our implementations (and to be fair, more of the newer versions of these buffs) come with less opportunistic cost, or the talent specs make it easier to include the buff, or it happens automatically instead of requiring player action. We realize these are rough edges that still need to be polished down.
We made some pretty massive strides in Lich King to overhaul the way buffs and debuffs work. It's in a lot better place than it was, but we still have a lot of work to do.
[...] I said that Ele shaman don't want to have to drop ToW because of the personal dps loss, but they also want to have ToW because it's an attractive raid buff. That is what I meant. (Source)
Fire Totems changes in 3.3
We like the fire totem changes. It's a new change and I'm sure it will require some iteration before it feels exactly right, but we like the mechanic overall. It's not critical that Searing Totem be an uber form of dps in the same way that Sentry Totem's very existence might offend you. We did a big update of totems for Lich King. They're not perfect yet, but when you remember what they used to be like, they're in a much better place now.
We see Elementals "turretiness" as a slightly different issue, and one we want to fix. No spec should be so terrified of moving, even one dependent on stationary points on the map where their totems are.
Also be very careful that you aren't just describing totems in general as a clunky mechanic. I see that kind of thing a lot, but totems are virtually synonymous with shaman in our minds. If you really, really hate totems, you might not be playing the class that best suits your play style. (Source)
Warlock DPS too low?
I'm sorry, but I find a lot of this to be QQ. "I can't top the meters, so it must be my class that's to blame. Now my raid is going to sit me." If you're playing a warlock and your raid is seriously considering sitting you just because you're a warlock, you need to spend some more time doing Internet research. If your raid is considering sitting you because of your personal performance issues, I would also suggest doing some more research.
If you look at some of the PTR parses, there are fights (or at least certain individuals) who are topping the damage meters as Affliction. At the same time, we're not very worried that Destruction is going to somehow vanish. I suspect Demonology's dps is still a little low, but because of their buff they are still going to be somewhat popular in PvE. To be clear, that's not an ideal design and the kind of thing we're trying to move away from, but it's better than Demonology being a dead spec. (By comparison, Subtlety is largely dead in progression-focused raiding, which we consider a much bigger failure.)
And I don't at all mean that there aren't aspects of the warlock class that need improving, and we have already announced some of them coming up for Catalcysm. But all of this "Locks are going to be Sunwelled" is a little overblown. Let's try and focus more on actual mechanic discussions and less "I read that I was bad."
[...] We don't put a ton of faith into highest dps ever ranks or simulation output unless it is very carefully analyzed. Sadly it almost never is. Usually it is just linked or someone says "Simulationcraft shows us as the lowest, etc.")
If you really love analyzing highest dps contests, I would recommend doing something like going to World of Logs and looking at the highest damage done on Heroic 25 Northrend beasts. I suspect you will find a lot of locks high on that list. If you find a few rogues above the locks, or you think there are more rogues overall, I'm not sure that means "locks always lose." I'm also not sure you could get a lot of meaningful data out of looking at 25 normal, given how on farm that is for so many guilds.
Now if you look at something like Yogg, warlocks will be all over that list. We've seen locks high on the PTR runs, but of course the sample size is small and the PTR tends to select either for very progression-oriented guilds and for players just messing around who want to see the content. We'll have better numbers once the sample size is in the thousands.
But again, interpret those lists in context. You can't directly translate "Who was ever able to do the highest dps on a given fight" as "My guild would benefit from swapping me out with another mage." If you aren't doing 8000 dps on Northrend Beasts (and very few of you are, especially heroic) then I don't know how relevant it is that the best hunter in the world does more damage on that fight than the best warlock in the world.
P.S. Those players talking about specific mechanics or concerns they have about the class are doing the kind of thing we want to see in these forums. I don't have the bandwidth to answer every question but I try and hit some of them when I can. If your post pretty much says "We're terrible and Blizzard doesn't care," then that's QQ, and that's not really what we (and I suspect most readers) want to see here. (Source)
Demonic Pact / Totem of Wrath
Yes, we want to fix the discrepancy. We'd like to get it done before Cataclysm. I'm not going to promise we're going to be able to for the reasons I can't and don't ever promise anything. You can see how many shaman have even hung on to my saying "we'd like to fix it by Cataclysm." I think in the future I'm going to have to be even more careful about saying stuff like that.
I'm pretty sure you all know the issue, but for the record (and being brief to the point of being flippant):
- Some shaman are convinced they won't be brought if ToW doesn't compete with or trump DP.
- ...
More...