At the biggest Russian games event, IgroMir, which took place on November 5-8, Blizzard Entertainment presented two Blizzard games: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm and StarCraft II. Chris Sigaty (lead producer on StarCraft II) and J. Allen Brack (production director on World of Warcraft) visited IgroMir for the first time, taking a moment out of their busy schedules to talk to the Russian audience about these eagerly awaited games.

IgroMir coverage page:
http://eu.blizzard.com/events/en/igromir2009/coverage.html

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm panel:
http://eu.blizzard.com/events/en/igromir2009/coverage.html#Cataclysm

StarCraft II panel:
http://eu.blizzard.com/events/en/igromir2009/coverage.html#SCII

"Boring" Gear
I think gear might get really boring if you didn't have set bonuses (and perhaps trinkets) to look forward to.

Somewhat boring gear is okay... to a point... in PvP, where you need to strike a balance between skill and gear. Players want to enter PvP thinking they have a relatively level playing field, but we still use the gear reward as an incentive to participate.

PvE gear is already relatively inflexible on primary stats. If anything I wish there was more variability from tier to tier. Players have become pretty intolerant though of gear that doesn't feel like an unambiguous upgrade. That's not intended as an insult to anyone. It's just the state of a five year old game. (Source)

Gear Inflation
They're just numbers. We don't think it starts getting scary until the human mind literally has trouble processing the digits. If your new staff has 152,420 spell power, well, yeah that's a mouthful. But if your new staff has 4000 spell power, the only thing that can really be freaking you out is that 4000 is just a really big number compared to the 100 spell power you might be used to. Automobiles used to cost hundreds of dollars instead of tens of thousands of dollars too....

When players say we had scaling problems in Lich King, what they mean (or at least what they *should* mean) is that we picked the end numbers we wanted for percentages such as crit and dodge and then picked ratings that would get us there. When we inflated the item levels to account for hard modes (with a little help from things like glyphs too) then the percentages ended up higher than we intended. That doesn't mean that exponential scaling on gear is bad. It just means that we misjudged our endpoints.

Gear inflation is just part of MMOs, or at least the kind of MMO that we make. Players are going to freak when they see the Cataclysm gear (because believe me, we did), but it's also exciting too. (Source)

Tanking Classes Disparities
Warrior tanks can tank every boss in the game, and more often than not get the world first and server first kills on those bosses. More raids use warrior tanks than any other. Most cutting-edge guilds use warrior tanks. We can't detect a higher "failure rate" on warrior tanks, and frankly I'm not even sure what that means given that most everyone here agrees there are far more experienced warrior tanks than other tanks out there. Some of you are arguing "when we switch to the undergeared paladin, we do better," yet very few groups are actually switching. The best we're stuck with is some kind of fuzzy "it's harder on the healers," which is pretty hard to quantify, especially since the healers aren't running out of mana healing anyone.

This is why the developers keep going back to what we are seeing happening in the game, which is warriors tanking stuff.

[...] Yes, if we see paladins or druids (or warriors or DKs for that matter) repeating what happened on Sarth or Vezax, then we will do something while Icecrown is still relevant.

When is the appropriate time to buff or nerf is something that is always going to be subjective. Buffing someone when we aren't convinced they need it (assuming it affects relative power compared to another class) is as dangerous as not buffing someone when they do need it.

And again, it's not as simple as guilds having a favorite tank for specific fights. Druids on Thorim or warriors on Anub adds didn't cross the line for us, though I understand why it might for some people. (Source)

Item stats on PTRs
Many of the stats have gone in relatively recently. If you tried out the PTR a few weeks ago, bosses weren't dropping loot at all. We recently went back and changed our paradigm for how we wanted to handle sockets on these items. Sockets have a budget and in this case the other stats were not adjusted correctly for the socket change.

We are adding over 1400 PvE items to the game in 3.3. There are going to be some bugs. Usually we catch them all before they go live, but some still slip through. We don't try to catch them all before we make a PTR build. Sometimes we're right in the middle of doing something (e.g. changing sockets in this case) and it's not worth holding up all the massive machinery that generates a build just for a few simple bugs that aren't really going to affect the PTR experience anyway. Also consider that item bugs generally aren't as serious as class bugs since the former only affect a smaller percentage of the latter. Bugs are bugs though. I won't try to justify them. (Source)

Shadowmourne Quest (The Sacred and the Corrupt)
The quest requires friendly Ashen Verdict rep to begin. It may also only be acquired by Warriors, Paladins and Death Knights. (Source)

Armored Froswtyrms confirmed to be PvE Rewards
There will be a Frostwyrms up for grabs for Icecrown raiders, achievable in a similar way to previous rewards such as the Ulduar proto-drake. (Source)

Icewell "Radiance" (Chill of the Throne)
The "Icewell Radiance" is designed to account for very high avoidance levels. It lets us lower the damage bosses do per hit because their hits will connect more often, keeping boss dps the same but lowering spike damage.

However, I also know what that message says to some people. It says that if I go into Icecrown and wipe on a boss all night that Blizzard lied to me about boss damage. We're just sort of bracing ourselves for the inevitable "I couldn't beat Marrowgar because he hits so hard. I thought bosses wouldn't hit hard."

Bosses hitting less hard does not mean bosses can now be facerolled. It just means they hit less hard. To be fair, most of the folks posting in this thread understand the difference. But it's not uncommon for us to see our quotes misused in other forums where we can't necessarily bop in to correct the misunderstanding. (Source)

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Feral Tanks in Cataclysm
We talked about druids in bear form also getting AP from strength. Strength won't appear on leather and no piece should have Str and Agi together, so it's not like they would really double dip. That lets us still have tanking necks, rings and cloaks with strength on them that are attractive to all 4 tanking classes.

Almost all the items in the game are going to have to change. In many cases this is just a sweeping pass we can make on all gear, such as replacing the Agi + AP on leather with just Agi. So don't worry too much about what happens with old gear and talents mixed with the new stat system. The gear and talents in many cases must change. (Source)

Mage (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Fingers of Frost
The Fingers of Frost issue is really challenging to solve. It it procs on hit then the procs don't get eaten but you may have to interrupt a Frostbolt. If it procs on cast, the procs can get eaten. Those are really the only ways it can proc though. Mixing travel-time spells and instant spells can muddy things up. Things also get more complicated when you have silly amounts of haste, which through no fault of their own, many mages do.

Fingers of Frost seems to work fine so long as you have Frostbite, but due to some technical limitations, the two talents don't play well apart. A long-term solution might be to make Frostbite a prereq for FoF or just merge the two talents together.

Letting Fingers of Frost display its charges is a good idea. We might not be able to get that in for 3.3 but we'll put it on "the list."

Our thanks to Lhivera and others among you who have explored these issues so throughly. (Source)

Rogue (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Rogue Weapon Swapping Addon
We also killed the addon, but we didn't want to do it without also trying to fix the problem it was trying to fix. (Source)

Shaman (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Elemental Tier 9 Nerf
We don't want players to stick with older tier sets when new pieces become available. (It's one thing if it's a really good trinket -- it's another if it's your entire set..)

We balance some things around absolute values (we're shooting for a target) and other things around relative values (how X looks compared to Y). A lot of shaman were saying they weren't going to upgrade to tier 10 despite the, frankly, gratuitous stats on the new gear. We concluded that was because the T9 set bonus was too good and the T10 set bonus was too weak. We suspected the T9 was too good for some time, but didn't want to nerf it while the T9 was all that was available. We did the same thing with a few other sets (or relics).

We try to pick interesting set bonuses, but that means that they will sometimes end up being over or under-budget once players figure out the best ways to optimize their play style around the bonuses. A little of that is okay -- it's interesting when a new set changes your spell rotation a little bit. But when an older set is so good that players feel like upgrading is a bad thing (ignoring the pain of having to get new enchants and gems or whatever) then we think we have a problem.

From a player point of view, I can understand why the attractive answer is always just to buff the new stuff. But continually buffing an outlier instead of bringing the outlier back into the pack is a good way to lead to power inflation on gear. (Source)

Warlock (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Soul Shard System in Cataclysm Q&A (Source)
I can't answer Q&As like this all the time or even very often. I probably won't be able to keep coming back to this thread to answer follow up questions. Understand that when I do answer some questions and it drives expectations that everyone is entitled to have *their* questions answers, things get complicated. Sorry for all of the caveats, but I've kind of learned what to expect.

1. Will it be implemented in Cataclsysm or faded in through patches considering the seemingly huge gap in content?
Cataclysm.

2. Even with the new system will warlocks be given a secondary defense to fall back on, on a long CD should fear become useless?
You mean like Demonic Circle?

3. Are there plans to link the system to a warlock pet? I know fel domination is one of them, but popping soul shards for more power for the pet are being considered? Example- Refreshing CD's?
Sure. We don't have a lot of details we can share yet.

4. What is going to happen to those spells that required soul shards?
They won't. Some of them may change though. Perhaps the un-enhanced version will be weaker than the current shard version. Stuff like summoning (people and demons) just won't cost shards.

5. Are there plans to change hellfire to an AoE knockback snare like a secondary defense warlocks can fall back on or will it be outright removed?
No, there are no plans.

6. Are there plans to extend Inferno's duration similar to before where we have to enslave him, but with no capping prohibitions?
As I opined recently, IN-FER-NO probably just needs a different mechanic. The trade-off for getting the demon can just be the cooldown.

7. Are there plans to reduce slot problems with curses? Like CoT and CoEx being merged?
Yes to the general question, no to the specific example.

8. Are there plans to add dispel resistance to curses through talents?
Probably not. We'd rather tone down the potency of dispels in general, not require everyone to stack more defenses for them.

9. Will CoD be modified to be castable on players? If so will you modify the damage/duration/CD on it or will it remain the same?
We haven't talked about it.

10. Do you plan on fixing the debuff problems to pets. The fact the duration on debuffs remain the same until the pet is out on the field while buffs continue their duration course regardless of the pet being summoned or not?
This isn't really a soul shard question is it? That is more of a technical limitation and not a design goal. The answer has more to do with prioritization than intent.

11. Will soul link be removed from the demon should it despawn/dimiss?
Don't know yet.

12. What are the plans for drain soul in the new shard system?
Don't know yet. One idea is an emergency backup system for long fights or situations where you screw up. Ideally we don't need this though so we haven't resolved it.

13. Are there plans to make enslave demon a little more viable for PvP and example is the doomguard and inferno?
If you're talking about warlocks stealing each other's demons, I'm not sure that will lead to those demons getting more use. It might make you giggle when you steal one though.

11) Will the soul shard system allow you to empower our primary nukes chaos bolt/soul fire for increased damage on a short cd?
Yes. The example we used at Blizzcon was some kind of duration-limited or "your next spell" limitation. We haven't set this in stone yet.

12) What will happen to soul fire? Will it still require a shard to use? Could it find more acceptance in our normal rotation considering its potentially our most powerful nuke
It won't require a shard. It might require a shard to make it something you want to cast though (imagine a PoM - Pyro).

13) How will the soul shard change work in regards to different trees?
No idea yet. The talent trees aren't done. One thing we threw out at Blizzcon was maybe Demo gets an extra shard, but that's just hand-waving at this point.

Icecrown Citadel testing has been progressing very well over the last few weeks, and this has been a huge help to the encounter design team. We want to thank everyone who has logged onto the PTR and tried the encounters there.

As we're now getting closer to the release of 3.3.0, we wanted to talk about our plans for access progression within Icecrown Citadel. Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live. At this point we can't give precise dates for these release dates as they are determined by when patch 3.3.0 goes live. Once dates are known with more certainty, I'll update the community so they can plan appropriately.

The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters. Progress beyond that point will be prevented for several weeks. Then the Plagueworks will open with Rotface, Festergut, and Professor Putricide becoming available. After another period of time, the Crimson Hall will open and you can then fight the Blood Princes and Blood-Queen Lana'thel. The final Frostwing Halls unlock then occurs after that, making Valithria Dreamwalker, Sindragosa, and the Lich King available. We believe a staggered release of the content will allow players to experience Icecrown Citadel at a sustainable, measured, and ultimately more enjoyable pace.

There are other elements that gate access along the way. Players may not attempt any Heroic versions of 10 player encounters until they have defeated the Lich King in a 10 player raid. Similarly, players must defeat the Lich King in a 25 player raid before they can attempt a Heroic 25 player encounter. So players must master every normal difficulty encounter in Icecrown Citadel before attempting Heroic difficulty.

The Lich King may not be attempted until Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, and Sindragosa are defeated. Furthermore, the Heroic difficulty of The Lich King encounter may not be attempted in any week unless the three aforementioned encounters have been defeated in Heroic difficulty that week.

The Ashen Verdict provides reinforcements and material for players to assault Icecrown Citadel, but this support is not endless. Raids will have a limited number of attempts total each week to defeat the four most difficult encounters in Icecrown Citadel: Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. As these boss encounters are unlocked, the number of attempts available per week will increase. The initial number of attempts provided for defeating Professor Putricide is only five. When Blood-Queen Lana'thel unlocks, the amount of total attempts remaining will increase to 10. Then when Sindragosa and the Lich King unlock, 15 total attempts will be available to defeat all four bosses. After a raid has exhausted their attempts for the week, the Ashen Verdict must withdraw their support and the four most difficult bosses all despawn and become unavailable for the week. The limited attempt system is a feature of both Normal and Heroic difficulty.

There will be no explicit rewards for defeating the Lich King with a specific number of attempts remaining as there was with Trial of the Grand Crusader. There will also not be an achievement to complete Icecrown Citadel without being defeated by a boss encounter, or letting a raid member die. (i.e. A Tribute to Insanity).

In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available. This represents the Ashen Verdict growing more powerful and gaining a stronger foothold in Icecrown Citadel. To further help raids, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream will begin to provide assistance by inspiring the armies attacking Icecrown Citadel. This is represented as an additional zone wide spell effect applied to all players that will increase their hit points, damage dealt, and healing done. This effect will also increase in effectiveness over time. Players may opt out of the spell's effect if they so wish.

Miscellaneous

• Item - Shadowmourne Legendary has been changed once again - Your weapon swings have a chance to drain a Soul Fragment granting you 40 strength.  When you have acquired 10 Soul Fragments you will unleash Chaos Bane, dealing 1900 to 2100 shadow damage split between all enemies within 8 yards.

Engineering

• Iceblade Arrow has been added to the game - Creates Iceblade Arrow x 1000. / Reagents: Crystallized Shadow x 2
• Shatter Rounds has been added to the game - Creates Shatter Rounds x 1000. / Reagents: Crystallized Earth x 2

Paladin
Protection

• Divine Intervention no longer clears the effect of Exhaustion and Sated on target. (Important - The official notes were changed to : This ability now also removes Exhaustion or Sated from a target if the recipient is out of combat when the effect end)

Rogue
Asssassination

• Improved Poisons now increases the chance to apply Deadly poison to your target by 4/8/12/16/20%. (Up from 2/4/6/8/10%)

Poisons

• Deadly Poison now has an additional effect -  Once stacked to 5 times, each application of Deadly Poison also causes the poison on the Rogue's other weapon to apply.

Warlock
Affliction

• Improved Drain Soul now reduces the threat caused by your Affliction spells by 10/20%. (Up from 5/10%)

Destruction

• Destructive Reach now reduces the threat caused by Destruction spells by 10/20%. (Up from 5/10%)

Items

• Shaman Tier-9 4-Piece Set Bonus (Elemental): This set bonus now does an additional 10% of Lava Burst’s initial damage over time instead of increasing the size of the Lava Burst.