Blizzcon, Day 1: Raids and Dungeons
Blizzard’s dungeon, raid and encounter designers shared some of their tricks of the trade Friday at Blizzcon.
The first, and perhaps biggest, was to plan more than they end up building. Zones are planned out, discussed, changed and discarded.
Jeff “Tigole” Kaplan showed an early list of the original dungeons for the basic World of Warcraft game, which had at the time was to run from levels 1-70 and featured the Caverns of Time, other expansion dungeons and something called the Dragon Isles as a raid zone.
Prior to the release of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, Kaplan promised a new 25-man raid dungeons with six bosses, harder than the Black Temple. (Probably the Sunwell, although he said he wasn’t allowed to say so.)
A new five-person dungeon is also a possibility before the expansion.
Zul’Aman will feature more heroic badge loot, including lots of gear for atypical class builds.
The excessive amount of trash NPCs in Gnomeregan was a mistake, the team acknowledges, and at some point, they’ll get the chance to go back and thin things out.
In an upcoming patch, the Mount Hyjal Caverns of Time zone will have its trash changed to drop loot and give faction (3 points per kill). Likewise, the monstrous kaliri of Skettis will drop loot and grant faction in the near future.
There are eight single-group instances planned for Northrend, although, “I can almost guarantee this is going to change,” he said.
Given the overwhelming popularity of Kharazan in The Burning Crusade, look for many more 10-person raid zones in the new expansion, as well as dungeons and raids set in the “old world.”
Instead of keying or attunement, some dungeons will be unlocked as the Ahn’Qiraj dungeons were, “minus the linen.”
To further make keying and back-flagging less painful, the team is considering guild flags or having whole accounts flagged once a single character completes a flagging quest.
Naxxramas, which few players got to experience prior to the release of Burning Crusade, fits into Northrend so well that the team is considering flying it over to the new continent and retuning it so it is roughly comparable to Molten Core in difficulty, but for level 80 characters.
Although nothing has been done yet, Kaplan hopes to see the siege engines and destructible buildings featured in PvE raid content.
And all that resistance and specialized gear used on raids? The core UI will soon make dealing with it easier, as the functionality of Item Rack and Outfitter is incorporated into the basic system, but with a twist, since being part of the official UI means it can have “real space to store the extra junk.”
A threat meter also might be incorporated into the core UI.
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