Interview to Ion Hazzikostas (Press Tour Versailles) by WoWChakra (in english)

[Deleted]

Here a English translation from the interview to Ion Hazzikostas from Spanish fansite WoWChakra

source: http://www.wowchakra.com/noticias/en...kostas#english

[Korgoth]

FR: Do you have any plans to do something with player's equipment and character stats for low level dungeons allocations?
Ion: It's something we were working on. We don't have plans for the initial 6.0 Warlords of Draenor release but it's a feature we are continuing to work on. We've already seen players scale gear down on Challenge modes and other process. We also have the ability to modify level as has been seen in battlegrounds. So the hope is that we can combine this two and let players scale down to do older content. We still didn't talk about how will work or how will fit on level max content but it's something we are working on.

WC: ¿Will you continue to support the MoP farm or do you have something planed for cooking? Maybe you will put it into the Garrisons...
Ion: Yes. I mean, the farm of Mists of Pandaria isn't going anywhere. You are only available to plant crops that are Mists of Pandaria food, and Mists of Pandaria herbs, and they will less useful as you move into the Warlords and higher skill professions. A farm is one of the buildings you can build in your Garrison. And so from that you will be able to do plant de crops that will be useful in Warlords cooking.

FR: Jaina and Varian will become more and more important figures on Warlords?
Ion: A number of mage heroes and figures from both the Alliance and Horde come through the Dark Portal to Draenor with you. Varian and Jaina are really central figures in the Warlords plot, just not currently. But surely we will be hearing from them more in the future. They will be going important in the future.

WC: Few days ago we saw a blog about PvP improvements. Will we see something like that for PvE? For example fast kill ladders or something like that.
Ion - We have no current plans, but I think definitively it has some potential interest in explore some sort of PvE board or scoreboard. Currently what we at least do is provide to the armory tools for third party sites to create rankings on their own. For example sites like wowprogress to track progression, or warcraftlogs more recently to track kill speed and allow guilds to rec themselves and compete.



FR: Some screenshots at BlizzCon showed some builds and a couple of upgrades on the Garrisons for 10.000 gold. Is it final or is it a temporal placeholder?
Ion: Any currency values that have been seen in the screenshots are all placeholder for now. We still haven't done the final tweak on pricing.

WC: Continuing with the PvP and Pve. Do you still think you don't need to separate PvE with PvP talents?
Ion: We don't think we do need to do that now. We have a handful of abilities that do work differently in PvE versus PvP. It's something that always existed in World of Warcraft. I mean, duration of CC for example, if you polymorph a mob it lasts 1 minutes, and if you polymorph a player it only lasts a couple of seconds. I mean, that level of separation is what we are going for. We want to avoid going out of the road where to many abilities work very differently, or have different talents from PvE versus PvP, because we want to feel like a unify game. We want that when a player cross over from questing out of the world to the battleground we want that abilities held the same way.

FR: ¿Will Shattrath city be a instance raid or a battleground?
Ion: It's an outdoor location in the zone Talador, which is where Terokkar Forest was in Outland. It's not currently used as an instance, raid or battleground in 6.0, it's just an outdoor location. But we will make more of it in the future.

WC: ¿Will you continue with the MoP model about patches? I mean one raid patch, one content patch.
Ion: We don't have currently a completed specific plan. but we think that worked for us and we'd like to continue like this in the future. Raid content patches need to be spaced. If we try to make raid content every 2 o 3 months it will be to fast for most of the players, because they wouldn't have finished the previous one. But there is room for a hundred of new content faster than having to wait 6 month for the next raid. So, alternative between a big content patch and outdoor content does work well.

FR: You are updating players characters models. Are you going to update other models like armors, weapons, mounts or houses?
Ion: This was something we wanted to do for a long time. We are really happy to be able to update player models. In terms of going back and update other assets it's something we do periodically, suddenly on buildings in the world, we try to increase the resolution over time. There are a lot of things to do eventually, but it's not like we are going to spend significant time to going back and revisit old armor sets from 7 years ago. We rather put that time in creating new resources and new drops and new environments for the players, since ultimately if you spend time on the old stuff it need to come away from making more events.



WC: ¿Can you share some info about the system you will use for the new legendary?
Ion: Some things. We are generally happy with how the legendary quest worked out for the course of Mists in terms of giving players an epic story line to progress through, and feeling to be rewarded for the dedication to the expansion on every step on the way, for each patch and each tier. There were a few mistakes, like the 6.000 VP step, that got reduced to 3.000 VP, but still feel pretty grindy and it wasn't really interesting. But there were a lot of successful stories like single person scenarios that came along the way, like the Chambers of Thunderforge, or the other things you had to do. So I think we are looking to some similar type of structure for a new legendary item in Warlords of Draenor, but we will have more information about the details in the future.
WC: So it will be for all again?
Ion: Yes.

FR: With the new character models some players could not be satisfied with their new looks. Will they be able to change it at least one time for free?
Ion: I don't believe that's planed. We have barbershop where you can change your hair cut and things like that, but if you want actually re-customize your appearance that's a pay service. However, the plan is too really match up in the new looks with the old ones, so the hair cut should be the same, or the look of your eyes, your face...

WC: Will you work on the Chat Voice feature?
Ion: We added voice chat way back in 2.2 I think it was. At this point it's something we'd like to revisit it someday but we have no immediate plans to do that. I think that third party void chat solutions have come a long way since then and the options are there that fulfill most of the players right now.

FR: ¿will Karabor and Bladespire be the Capital cities of Warlords of Draenor?
Ion: Those two locations are not going to be player cities in strictly essence. We are looking more at having outposts to build outside your Garrison in the two respective zones. They will have basic functions like banking and so for. And so we expect players of each faction to gather there near the Garrison.


WC: ¿Will you be able to adjust the difficult of raid bosses with all this random stats that are coming for Warlords? For example if a guild is lucky and have 5-6 drops with random stats and another one have 0.
Ion: Random stats like utility or movement speed aren't really going to massively affect your power. Even more dedicated stats that affect your abilities will have a small impact compared to something more basic like how many weapon drops you got, or how many trinkets you got. Today, if one guild has 5 weapon drops on the first clear and another one get only 1, the first guild will have the advantage, in theory. Yet in practice we have never seen that really maters when it comes down to the race between two guilds that gonna get the World First Kill. It's not because of the drops they got, but because they got a better tactic, and executed better.

FR: There are Draenor zones not directly related to Outlands, how is this?
Ion: Yes, several of the areas don't really have a direct plot from Outland. For example the Spires of Arak. The zone is only the homeland of the Arakkoa, the rest was created from the scratch. You saw a little bit in Skettis in Outland. Similar in the North. Gorgrond is the home of a lot of Iron Horde presence in Draenor, and is a madness area full of time events coming out of the ground, and that don't have any direct plot also. I think the only two zones that really translate between Draenor and Outland are Shadowmoon Valley and Nagrand. They preserve their name, and a loot of look and feel.

WC: ¿Can you share more info about the new bosses we will see and the new mechanics for raid groups?
Ion: Well, we have 17 new bosses waiting for players in 6.0, and it's going to be a mix of existing mechanics and new ones. A wide array of Ogres, Orcs, Beasts, some machinery, Elementals... Something we are exiting about is the really close collaboration between encounter designers and the dungeon artists making the actual buildings. We are really working together to customize the environment to do encounters in a way that we haven't to do much popular. Siegcrafter Blackfuse in Siege of Orgrimmar is a good example of success we can achieve. So one of the fight could involve a boss just destroying the room around you, destroys the floor under your feet and the environment is gonna play a major role in fact.

FR: ¿How much time it take to create a new area in Warlords of Draenor?
Ion: For creating a zone you need the textures, geography, etc and you then need to populate it with quests and creatures, and all stuff. Probably it takes a few months per zone. It's a very involve process, taking a zone from concept on paper to something it's available to play in game, yes probably about 3 months for an entire zone.

WC: It's already past 6 months since we saw first released Siege of Orgrimmar. And you just started a new PvP Season now. Can we expect some more PvE content before Warlords? Or maybe an event for Warlords of Draenor release.
Ion: I think we are planning a world event that will precede arrival of Warlrods of Draenor. I wouldn't expect any major content like a raid or dungeons. I think at this point we are focusing completely on finishing Warlords of Draenor and getting it to players as quickly as possible. Anything that we try to do will take time directly from getting Warlords to play as quickly as possible.

WC: And the Final Boss of the Expansion?
Ion: that's an answer that players need to see for themselves. The leader of the Iron Horde at the start at least is Grommash Hellscream, but who knows the story will take us.

[Deleted]

The leader of the Iron Horde at the start at least is Grommash Hellscream, but who knows the story will take us.

at the start at least

Ooooooh! Bet Gul'dan will become leader and Horde 2.0

[Noqr]

I think a really cool idea for the launch event would be an invasion on Azeroth. You spend two weeks fighting off the orc armies, and then a few hours before the expansion launches, an AQ-like event takes place where you push them back through the portal.

[Edlarel]

I think a really cool idea for the launch event would be an invasion on Azeroth. You spend two weeks fighting off the orc armies, and then a few hours before the expansion launches, an AQ-like event takes place where you push them back through the portal.

As long as they allow us to fight the war by turning in Runecloth, I'm all for it ah Nostalgia.

OT, some very interesting tidbits here. I'm glad they're being a little more open about information now.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Ooooooh! Bet Gul'dan will become leader and Horde 2.0

I think Gul'dan will get his own expansion after WoD. With Fel Ogres and Dark Naaru.