By now I’m assuming you’ve read the liveblog or seen the announcement post and heard: Diablo 3 is go.

By now you have probably also heard that there really weren’t any other announcements at the opening ceremony. Don’t get me wrong, Diablo 3 is awesome. But as much as we’re Blizzard fanboys (and fangirls) here, we’re all about the WoW first, and we need some WoTLK news to sustain us too — and we still don’t know what that mysterious “next generation MMO” in development is either — it seems most people are assuming it’s Starcraft now though. Me, I’m not convinced. After all, there’s a Starcraft game in development too, so it could presumably be either franchise, or simply an updated WoW 2.

There’s quite a few things that could come out about WotLK today and tomorrow, of course. I’m still hoping for an opening cinematic and an official release date to start. While we’re at it, how about giving us a demo of the Dance Studio or Barbershop, or better yet, some other unannounced new major feature for the expansion? I might even settle for new skills, talent trees, or even a new battleground preview.

What are your expectations and hopes for news from the World Wide Invitational as it soldiers on?

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We’re here at the Blizzard’s 2008 Worldwide invitational in Paris, waiting impatiently for the opening ceremonies to begin so we can finally quash the endless speculation about Blizzard’s splash screen. We’ll be reporting to you live as the ceremony continues, so read on!

Gallery: Worldwide Invitational 2008

11:30 AM CEST: T minus 15 and the hall has been jam-packed for quite some time. From those early enough to secure seats to the mass of people standing at the back, it’s clear that there’s a lot of excitement in the air — people can’t wait to hear what Blizzard have to say today.

11:45 AM: The lights dim and a video containing a montage of WoW and Diablo imagery fills the big screens, segueing into Starcraft. Presenters Anthony Kavanagh and China Moses take the stage to say welcome.

11:47 AM: Frederic Menou, MD of Blizzard Europe, steps up to the podium. He thanks players for their continued support and for showing up to the invitational, making the event possible. He talks about WoW’s 2 million European players; they are making a Russian language version and looking forward to WotLK. He tells us to enjoy the invitational: Amusez-vous!

11:50 AM: Several Blizzard ‘celebrities’ are highlighted in the audience — it seems anyone who’s anyone in the company is here. Now on to the players, particularly the pro-gamers who’ve travelled from around the world to be here, who take the stage to loud applause. The Starcraft competitors take bows, followed by the Warcraft III pros.

Now on to the WoW players: the 16 arena team finalists. Teams from the US step out first, remaining cool onstage. The European teams get a louder cheer — Nihilum Arena’s fans are deafening. Finally, the Asian teams step out. They’ll all be competing later today.

12:03 PM: The presenters wish good luck to the competitors.

12:05 PM: Mike Morhaime takes the stage. Comments that the invitational is the largest gathering of Blizzard players in Europe, ever — it’s “breathtaking”. He talks about how technology enables the world to become smaller and allows communities to transcend conventional boundaries. Blizzard were told European market was too small for WoW; we proved them wrong.

12:08 PM: This past year has been incredible for us. Last year: TBC launch sold 2.4 million copies in first 24 hours. Fastest selling PC game of all time. Also announced merger with Activision (they “leveled up”). Shouldn’t notice any difference as a player. Blizzard’s focus remains “to continue making great games”.

12:10 PM: Video of highlights from last year’s invitational is played.

12:13 PM: Mike outlines the events coming up: tournaments, hands-on computers for WotLK and Starcraft II, developer panels, costume, dance and machinima contests.

12:15 PM: World premiere video of Diablo III played onstage. Audience goes wild.

12:18 PM: Jay Wilson, lead designer on Diablo III, takes over. WWI audience will be see a demo of Diablo III in action. Diablo “reinvented the roleplaying action genre”. Gameplay demo on big screen.

12:20 PM: Introducing Barbarian, one of several Diablo III classes. Overcomes enemies with pure brute force: no such thing as too much power. Several improvements: Hotbar to help players use skills quickly and easily. Quick swap between two skills using mouse wheel or Tab key. Game is so simple you can play it with just hte mouse but allows deeper, more satisfying combat. In demo, axes enchanted with frost/electricity to stun/freeze enemies.

New type of dropped item. Red globes allow you to recover health and fight without having to use potions. Shows the Barbarian fighting berserker and cultist enemies. Environment is a big part of Diablo III, can destroy it, interact with it. Can also work against you. Treasure chests might be traps!

Loot: gear custom designed for each class’s unique look. Endless stream of items to be found. Shows barbarian using a wall to crush zombies. Whirlwinds through enemies to loud cheers from the audience.

World of Diablo III will have quests and story events — ‘more so than previous games’. Shows character interacting with the npc Deckard Cain and embarking on a quest.

12:30 PM: “Diablo III is first and foremost a co-operative game.” Witch Doctor is a brand new class, uses ancient tribal magic: diseases, pets, mind control. Can cast locus swarm to devour multiple enemies. First pet is the Mongrel, can become empowered by Witch Doctor’s attacks to do additional damage. When near death, can be killed by the witch doctor to destroy nearby creatures.

Witch Doctor’s Horrify spell causes enemies to flee. Firebomb attack is slow but very powerful. Mass Confuse spell to temporarily turn some enemies against each other. “You’ve seen walls of fire, ice and bone, but have you ever seen a wall of zombies?” We see a party of barbarians and witch doctors battle a siegebreaker assault beast as a demo fight.

12:40 PM: The presenters are back on stage. Running through all the European countries — the attendees are from all over the world.

12:43 PM: A dance piece is performed on stage, set to a new piece of Diablo music against a “Diablo III” backdrop. If you were late to the ceremony, you’d still be in no doubts what the big news is today.

12:50PM: End of the ceremony — that’s all folks!

Gallery: Worldwide Invitational 2008: Diablo 3

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Any discussion about WoW PvP nowadays inevitably involves Arenas. With the onset of Season 4 and its new rules and requirements, Arena play is getting more intense than ever. Of course, as the competition heats up, the cries of an imbalanced contest grow louder than ever. Blizzard seems to be aware of the issues and have taken some steps in the development of the Wrath of the Lich King to address class and spec viability.

During the panel on “PvP Game Systems”, however, lead designers Tom Chilton and Corey Stockton devoted most of their Arena discussion to the new maps rather than the hairy, and probably inconclusive, issue of class balance and representation. The new Arena maps follow Blizzard’s philosophy of keeping things simple yet have room for innovation; having dynamic points of interest; having conceptually different starting areas; and leave allowance to make adjustments during development.

Design philosophy
The design principles that Blizzard used in designing the new Arenas have been tempered with experience gained from the current maps and how they affect the dynamics of matches. Keeping the map simple is important to keeping matches short. Large, sprawling mazes would have extended matches unnecessarily, so the idea behind the current and new maps is to have players find their opponents quickly, get into battle, and finish it.

The curious thing about the other design principle — “dynamic points of interest” — seems counter to the idea of keeping things simple. In previous interviews, Blizzard admitted that map gimmicks such as a random Cyclone that used to spawn in Nagrand Arena about 1 minute into the match, detracted from the fight itself, removing the feature in Patch 2.1. On the other hand, the proposed features in the two new maps of Dalaran and Orgrimmar seem to me very much like gimmicks. Moving objects add more randomness to fights, and even the idea of damaging environments seem counter-intuitive to a balanced eSport map.

Throwing up the starting areas could either be a stroke of genius or a boneheaded move on the part of Blizzard. With only 10 meters separating players at the beginning of a match, a Frost Nova rush seems like an obvious strategy to start the encounter. This immediate proximity might tip the scales in favor of players with AoE snares. Or it could result in an untimely death due to overextension. On the other hand, the mechanic of forcing players — or spitting them out — into the Arena was met by cheers from the audience. Anyone who has played Arenas know the annoying instances of turtling in the starting area, particularly in the Ruins of Lordaeron. The concepts were all pretty rough when they showed them, so there’re bound to be changes to the maps and how they work before the expansion actually goes live.


Dalaran Arena
When Dalaran flew off to Northrend, it took a chunk of the ground with it. Dalaran Arena is set in the sewer system of Dalaran, with a fairly simple equilateral lay-out and a sewage pipe jutting from the ceiling in the middle. The twist is that the sewage pipe expels a stream of line-of-sight-breaking sludge into grates on the floor at (random?) periodic intervals. There’s a raised platform in the center of the room and small, permanent crates where people can stand and hide to abuse LOS. Opposing teams start on opposite sides of the map nested in sewage pipes and getting spewed onto the Arena floor by a stream of… sewage, presumably.

The size of the Arena looks to be small, judging from the presentation, which creates some apprehension for kite-dependent classes such as Hunters and Mages. The dynamic line of sight is an interesting, if questionable, mechanic. It adds more randomness to maps, allowing for strategy, yes, but also introduces a luck factor that might not be welcome in competitive play. The Arena is fairly small, with specific entry points that enable access to the central platform. Although I haven’t examined the map in detail, it seems to me like a Line of Sight nightmare, with two separate levels and a random pillar of LOS-breaking sludge in the middle.


Orgrimmar Arena
There’s a curious area in the Valley of Honor called the Ring of Valor, which is an empty arena that players cannot enter — there’s an invisible wall that prevents jumping in. The new Orgrimmar Arena is theoretically this arena, but Blizzard’s description of elevators and rising pillars and spikes is a novel concept. Similar to the Dalaran Arena, the Stockton explains that the starting areas will provide a new dynamic to each match by having both teams start very near one another, atop elevators rising from beneath the ground.

The rising pillars will work off a specific timer, signified by moving gears prior to its descent or ascent. A wall of spikes may or may not be tied in to the pillar rotation, and players will be able to get across the obstacle but will take some damage. Chilton explained how this could lead to some interesting choices in strategy, like getting a HoT before moving across the spikes. The rising pillar can create interesting strategies for players who would like to get out of melee range, positioning themselves atop the pillar just as it rises, enabling presumably unmitigated sniping. It is also interesting to note that Orgrimmar Arena is proposed to have NPC spectators who are reactive to the players, cheering bloodthirstily, for example, if a player’s health becomes dangerously low.

The verdict
The new Arena maps are a long ways off. There’s no way to tell how much of what was presented will actually make it to the release. However, a quick glance at the maps for me indicate too many random factors to make for a reliable match area. An ideal Arena would be one where the better team will win each time. A map with mobile structures or, worse, deals environmental damage, can create situations of luck. In a balanced map, you try to eliminate randomness as much as you can. On the other hand, Blizzard has admitted to liking a bit of randomness in PvE encounters (e.g. Prince Malchezaar) and perhaps wanted to apply a similar philosophy to Arena PvP.

From what we’ve seen so far, the new maps employ the very gimmicks that Blizzard felt didn’t contribute to the match. It’s just as random as a cyclone in the middle of the map. Worse than having a killing blow dodged or resisted is having a pillar pop up to break LOS just as you’re about to deliver the strike. With map design like this, it almost feels like Blizzard is taking the fight away from the players and giving the environment a hand in dictating the match. In my mind, an Arena map should be simple (they said that) and allow the most straightforward encounters while still allowing for creative — and not random — movement in kiting and counter-kiting.

While the size of the Dalaran map causes concern for some ranged classes at first glance, what struck me was Blizzard’s audacity to actually create such a close quarters map. To me, this indicates a possible mindset — that Blizzard understands the difficulty that some classes, Hunters in particular, have in small format PvP. Instead of fixing the map, however, they will be making changes to the class to allow it to be viable within strict confines. We may yet see it happen, given their close attention and responsiveness to making underrepresented specs more Arena-viable (Dire Cat Form, perhaps?).

The Arena maps are clearly a work in progress, and it’s far too soon to make any worthwhile analysis. My fears about the randomness of maps remain, however. LOS issues plague the current maps, but dynamic LOS might not be the right answer. On the other hand, pillars moving up and down and damaging spikes make me a bit nostalgic. To heck with balance. Let’s have some fun!

[Ed. note: Check out Zach’s analysis of Lake Wintergrasp, the Wrath outdoor PvP zone, as well!]

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Here at DeathknightWoW, we pride ourselves on bringing you the latest, greatest news about the WoW we all know and love. (You haven’t all gone off to play Diablo, have you?) What this means is that we crawled out of bed at what our watch says was three in the morning, even though by local Paris time it was already mid-morning under a sunny sky. We’ve fought our ways through crowds at the Worldwide Invitational to bring you a front-row seat to today’s PvP panel, starting shortly. For the latest updates on the game’s PvP system — right from the developers! — keep reading for live updates from the panel.

1:30 PM CEST: Tom Chilton (Lead Game Designer) and Cory Stockton (Lead Level Designer) take the stage.

To start off, Chilton talks about Lake Wintergrasp.

• Non-instanced PvP
• Siege vehicle combat: we’ll talk about that more later
• Air combat: there are two types of air vehicles
• Destructible buildings: wouldn’t be fun to have siege vehicles if there wasn’t stuff you could blow up
• Supports both large and small scale combat: Blizz has been trying to predict average participation and make it fun for small and large groups
• Attack / Defend game type: Like the Spirit Towers. One team claims territory, but only holds it for a set amount of time before the other side has a chance to attack again. Each time territory changes hands, the attackers become the defenders.
• Rewards: Northrend “Spirit Shards” that you can use to buy rewards you can’t get through other mechanics (read: honor or arena points). But these won’t be more powerful than other PvP items — just alternatives. Don’t want people to feel they aren’t competitive if their faction isn’t winning. Also honor and marks of honor just like you’d get from a normal instanced battleground.

1:39: Stockton talks about the iterative map design process — from a very simple hand-drawn map, to a carefully drawn out map, to detailed in-game maps, to the same with notes on where they’ll add items, destructable buildings, etc.

The placement of water in the zone is important because siege vehicles can’t move through water, so these will be potential chokepoints.

1:43: Graveyards will be like graveyards in other battlegrounds with a basic 30 second respawn. You’ll also be able to capture graveyards so your team isn’t always respawning across the map.

Stockton shows off a keep. All parts of the keep are destructible. The scale is described as “epic” — it’s large enough for siege weapons to fit inside. Had to make them big enough for gameplay because, since it’s non-instanced, there could be 50 people in the zone or 200 people in the zone.

1:46: Siege vehicles! Chilton covers five different types, all usable for both factions:

• The Demolisher: baseline vehicle. Has both short and long-range attacks and a ram attack. Can carry a driver and three passengers. (The passengers are exposed, can be targeted and attacked — but it also means you can fight back!) Drive-by shootings. The driver is also the gunner.

• Forsaken Catapult: much quicker than The Demolisher (says Chilton: more agile). Not as long range as The Demolisher, doesn’t do quite as much damage, doesn’t carry any passengers, has a flame attack. Lowest cost vehicle.

• The Siege Engine: hardest-hitting and longest range vehicle. Carries a driver, gunner, and passengers (but not exposed — which means they can’t attack).
• Flying Machine: a flying vehicle that’s very quick but fragile. Vulnerable to anti-air weaponry. Carries a pilot and a gunner.

• Goblin Shredder: an anti-air vehicle that fires rockets and can rocket boost yourself into the air to reach air vehicles (or jump over walls!). Essentially a personal armor suit — if the suit is destroyed, you can jump out and keep fighting. Close-range melee attack. Vulnerable to siege vehicles.

They’re still considering how to obtain the vehicles, but they want the process to be fast-paced and fun.

1:55: Time to talk Arenas. Design ideals for these are:

• Keep it simple
• Still leave room to innovate (keep it simple, but add some new twists)
• Dynamic points of interest (read: moving objects)
• Unique starting areas/events. Might put starting teams close to each other.
• Room to grow: we need to be able to make quest adjustments during beta

1:57: Stockton takes center stage again to talk about the two new arenas in Wrath: Dalaran and Orgrimmar.

Dalaran Arena:

• Located in the sewers of Dalaran city. When Dalaran came over to Northrend, it took a large chunk of rock out of the ground with it, including the sewers.This environment seemed like a great fit for the arena.

• Dynamic line of sight: we can move objects in arenas and have the line of sight move with them. Think about the pillar in the Nagrand… and think if that pillar could move. We could make these move randomly or based on a specific timer. This can mix up the gameplay.
• Simple layout
• Mounts will not be usable. It’s a small arena and wanted to let people get right into gameplay.

There’s a pipe in the center of the arena that water will occasionally pour out of. While the water is falling, it will block line of sight. It’s a simple layout, but a few dynamic elements that will mix it up. There’s a pipe on either side of the arena where each team will start, and a blast of water will push people out of the pipe early on.

It’s currently in playtesting.

Orgrimmar Arena:

• There’s been an arena in Orgrimmar for a long time in the Valley of Heroes, but Blizz has never done anything with it.
• Elevating pillars will create line of sight (on set timers — there will be little wheels and gears on the side of the arena that will spin before the pillars move)
• Triggered objects that damage players (thinking as the pillars go down, a wall of spikes may come up — you can get across them but you’ll take some damage)
• Extremely close starting areas: players start on elevators that rise out of the ground ten yards apart from each other. The elevators will be surrounded by spikes that will drop a couple of seconds after the elevator reaches the top — so you’ll have a couple of seconds.
• Mounts will be allowed inside — this arena is a bit larger than Dalaran. Thought this was the perfect place to get NPC spectators who cheer, etc.

These dynamic elements will make each arena feel different. Not testing yet.

2:09: Chilton comes up to talk about Northrend’s new battleground

• Tital isle located off the southern coast of Dragonblight
• Attack/Defend gameplay, but a bit different since it’s instanced. You play half the game on defense and half the game on offense, switching mid-fight.
• This battleground will have siege vehicles and destructible buildings
• Based on the Titan lore. A lot of Northrend circulates around Titan lore.

2:11: Stockton explains the layout. Attackers will come in on boats and assault the city. Siege vehicles will need to be used to break through the city’s walls and break in. The further you get, you’ll capture points allowing access to more siege weapons.

They’re currently planning it to be 10v10 or 15v15. They BG is currently being play-tested.

Q&A

2:17: Q: Now we have one source of honor, Alterac Valley, and everything else is a source of marks. Some people lose on purpose to get marks quicker. Is there anything being done to solve this problem?
Chilton: It’s a very very difficult problem to solve. We find that if we give no rewards for losing a battleground, it’s very punishing. That’s why we have systems to report players for not participating and we’ve lowered the number of players who need to report someone. (There is a certain point where the system can’t determine how hard you’re trying.

2:19: Q: Do you have plans to implement a spectator mode?
Chilton: Definitely on our list of things we want to do. To add to that, we also have the idea of using that spectator mode to extend to other things, in raids for example

Q: Unique (racial) combat moves?
Chilton: We don’t plan to add any more racials.

2:24: Q: My girlfriend and I love PvP, but since the Burning Crusade, we feel like we’re forced into arenas
Chilton: We do plan to keep a pretty similar sort of reward items.

Q: For the frost mage, some crowd control talents seem to be PvP-oriented, don’t you think this could cause unbalance?
Chilton: It’s always going to feel that way because bosses tend to be immune to crowd control, but we’re trying to open it up.

Q: What do you plan to fix Warlock pet scaling?
A: Right now we’re pretty happy with pet scaling. It should be a viable tactic to spend some time attacking the pets. A player has to make a choice. We feel like if that scales very well, it’s going to be a viable tactic to just focus on one.

2:34: That’s all she wrote, folks! The Invitational’s final WoW panel has come to a close.

Gallery: Worldwide Invitational 2008

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Another interesting thing to note from the Dungeons and Raids panel of the WWI earlier today is the topic of Heroic attunements. We’ve known for some time that Blizzard has wanted to move away from reputation requirements for Heroic keys, and we saw an example of that in Magisters’ Terrace. This was reinforced early on in the panel when Cory Stockton stated that there will be no faction and reputation requirements whatsoever for any of the Heroics.

This doesn’t particularly surprise me, because Heroic keys at Honored is little more than a formality and way to waste a little gold. You hit Honored with most places just through leveling up, so by the time you’re top level you can probably already go into those Heroics. Requiring Honored might as well be no requirement at all.

However, the possibility of a Magisters’ Terrace style attunement was something I assumed they would do. Run the Normal at least once before the Heroic, or by completing some other type of task successfully. That, too, was shot down later in the Q&A. A question about attunements was answered with the fact that none of the Dungeons or Heroics will have any attunement at all, and neither will the first raid zone, Naxxramas. I don’t mind this too much, it leaves it up to the player to judge whether they’re ready for Heroics or not. I still would have liked to have seen some attunement quests for Heroics, because I think the added flavor or added challenges those quests could provide would add some depth to things. It seems we’re not getting those, and I’ll cope with it I’m sure, it just feels like a lost opportunity.

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At the Worldwide Invitational, the Dungeons and Raids panel is about to begin. We’ll be bringing you updates on the anatomy of dungeons and raids straight from Blizzard’s mouths, and of course any tidbits of information about dungeons and raids to come, all after the jump. Stay tuned!
10:45 AM CEST: The panel’s about to begin and the audience’s impatience is palpable. Instead of the panel beginning, we’re treated to a panning camera showing us.. ourselves. Well, it’s better than nothing I suppose. Finally, Blizzard devs take the stage.

10:52 AM: Cory Stockton, lead level designer; J. Allen Brack, lead producer and Tom Chilton, lead game designer are on the podium. They’ll be talking about WotLK plans and theory, with a sneak preview towards the end of the panel.

10:54 AM: What’s new for WotLK? 10 and 25 player experience for every raid dungeon. Probably the biggest change they’ve made - allows them to have a lot of new content, compared to earlier separate development on 10/25 man content. Now they can double the amount of content.

Heroics will return: really happy with the way heroics played out in TBC, want to bring it back. Lots of plans for heroics, more tuning, changing things up from standard 5-mans. Thinks players will like the direction.

More nonlinear content. More choices for players, don’t always have one path to take in dungeons. Give players a bit more of a choice so dungeon is a different experience if you do it more than once. The Occulus is a good example.

New gameplay scenarios. Been trying to do this since shipping WoW. Gauntlets, timed events, nonlinear play. Being able to do things in a different way, so not every dungeon is the same thing that just looks different. Different experience too.

Spirit shard reward system for all raids/dungeons based on Wintergrasp PvP. Whoever controls Wintergrasp can get spirit shards from all bosses in all dungeons/raids in the game. Use them to buy unique items, enchants, etc. Still working on reward system but connects pvp with pve. Help the two merge together over time, somewhat separated, same goal for player: advancement.

10:58 AM: Lineup. 8 level-up dungeons. Similar to TBC. Were really happy with that amount of content. Can always do more dungeons, but would rather keep quality.

4 level 80 dungeons. Heroics for all Lich King dungeons. So total 12 5-mans, 12 heroics. Three first-tier raid zones.

10:59AM: Why 10/25 man raids? Opens up raid content to a larger audience. Takes more organisation and planning but doesn’t mean that content shouldn’t be available. Sometimes the hardest part of a 25 man raid is getting 25 people. So why not give that experience to people in smaller guilds?

Loot separation. Separating loot by a full tier worth of stat points, ultimate endgame content is 25-man so ultimate rewards. Still get great rewards in 10-mans. More loot per boss kill in 25 player raids (because there’s more players). Been talking about giving more loot in 25mans for a while, will see that change in Wrath.

11:01 AM: Lessons from TBC. A big project, heroics were an interesting tuning problem, hard enough to be a challenge but easy enough that people just starting out could do them. Were a great success. But too hard, want to make them more accessible. Don’t want e.g. lacking a prot spec tank, holy priest, etc to bar people from doing heroics. Should be available to more players, open up to different classes and groups.

Some dungeons were too long. Took longer than they planned. Like to keep dungeons to ~1 hour long. Not their intention to have players stuck in dungeon in 3 hours. Going to really check length before releasing new dungeons.

Quests did not feel as connected as they should (kill end boss/kill 10 creatures). Really trying to allow dungeon quests to have interesting goals. Gundrak is cumulation of a long questline encompassing the whole zone. You know why you’re killing the endboss, and what the outcome will be, connects players to dungeons beyond killing bosses for loot. More of an impact on the world.

Summoning changes worked out great. Stones/warlocks summoning into instance (audience applauds). Main reason was to remove barrier to entry to dungeons that were annoying to get to. Wanted to make it convenient.

Patch order. Has an impact on what players have available to do, have to make sure things feel right when releasing patch. They wanted to get Black Temple out asap so Zul’Aman ended up being released later, probably would have been better to deliver ZA first since most players weren’t ready for BT but keen for 10-man content. Learned that lesson with WotLK. Arthas is final endgame boss so delivering content in the order they thinks works best for the players, whether that’s a new 5-man, raid etc.

11:07 AM: Naxxramas… Again? Audience cheers; ‘that’s about the same way we feel about Naxxramas’. Huge labour of love. Always felt it was a dungeon that WoW needed. Most players never got to experience it because of the release timing. Loot was still really great but TBC superceded it. Made sense to come back to it and give everyone a chance to experience it. 10-man accessible. Extremely proud, want everyone to play it.

Lore-wise Naxx fits in perfectly, with Arthas/Northrend, history behind Naxx lends itself well to being a part of WotLK and something players can get into really early. Chance to retune it and make it even better. Huge dungeon with a ton of bosses, over 15 bosses in one raid dungeon, non-linear (wings) giving players a lot of choice.

11:10 AM: Itemisation. PvP gear will be available through PvE as well as PvP. Spirit shard system. Players that want to get started in arenas who love dungeons can get started through PvE. Won’t be the best gear, but will give you a chance. More items per boss kill in 25 player raids. More items desired by more classes, big project. Trying to remove unnecessary stats because there are too many different types of loot, what if a ret paladin item drops and you don’t have one? Merge some of the stats so that items will work across a group of ~3 different classes. Players can get loot that’s more useful and accessible, killing a boss feels better.

11:12 AM: Recipe drops, pretty rare right now. Specific plans only drop off one boss at really low drop rate. Doesn’t mean they won’t put unique plans on hard to reach bosses but want most plans to be accessible, earlier bosses, easier dungeons. Might not feel like such a grind to get that one rare pattern.

11:13 AM: Faction. Want to make it not feel like a grind. Championing — Earn faction outside of your current dungeon. Choose a specific faction to earn rep with, system will use tabards, put tabard on in any heroic and every kill will give rep towards the faction whose tabard you’re wearing as well as dungeon faction. Small bonus if you wear the tabard of the dungeon faction too. Details not final but this is the direction. Don’t want you to feel you have to grind certain dungeons mindlessly.

11:15 AM: Remove faction requirements for heroics. Don’t want people to feel like there are so many barriers.

11:16 AM: PvP rewards will show up in faction too. Similar to current lowlevel pvp faction sets. Will continue this trend. Greater variety of faction rewards full stop. Only a certain amount of items they can make in the time they have. Items that fit different specs and classes. More recipe plans, something done in TBC but not all trade skills were represented in factions. More rewards in general from faction.

11:17 AM: How does the Death Knight fit in? Will be able to tank both raids and dungeons. Not intended to be ‘the new tank’ but is a unique tank and want to make sure they can tank raids and 5-mans, heroics, as well as DPS. Just going to do it in a different way, keeping classes unique. Looked at what players need — people always need a tank. More tanks = more dungeon runs.

11:19 AM: Sneak Peek: The Occulus. Level 80 dungeon located in Borean Tundra (Coldarra). Unique; first dungeon players can fly in. Get a drake partway through the dungeon and do mounted combat as if it were a vehicle, individual spells on different drakes. Tank drakes, heal drakes etc. Nonlinear; started as a high fantasy pitch and has become a high concept design.

Occulus is a series of rings floating in the sky, can pick and choose bosses. Concept art shows circular and frozen themes. Dungeon design shown, they design on paper and try to feel how big the space is, is it big enough to fight the boss, the trash. Layouts turn into concept art and ‘blockout’ phase, turning 2D image into 3D so they can run around it in 3D. Dungeon is complete, internal playtesting at the moment.

11:24 AM: Halls of Stone. Part of Ulduar, located in Storm Peaks. Tied to Titan lore. Level 77-79. Will need a flying mount to access. Nonlinear. Want to make you feel like you’re infiltrating Titan area, feel like it’s something new even though scope is very different. Epic scale. Level 80 dungeon in Ulduar (Halls of Lightning) and raid dungeon too, but Halls of Stone is first dungeon players will experience

Wanted the scale to be big but not annoying (to the level of wanting a mount to travel through it). Showed blockout, walked 5 players through game to see if there’s basic things like enough room to pull mobs, enough room for cameras etc. Platinum Discs quests from Uldaman — this is the next evolution, continuing the story. Location where we can read the discs and maybe find out information about how Azeroth was created, deliver lore to players.

11:31 AM: CoT: The Culling of Stratholme. Player response to CoT was overwhelming, allowing players to play through story rather than just read it. CoT: Stratholme located in CoT, Tanaris. Removing faction requirement o