We've already heard of 3 dungeons at Blizzcon: the Temple of the Jade Serpent, the Stormstout Brewery, and the Shado-pan Monastery. Assuming the new version of Scholomance and Scarlet Monastery is included in the total, can you tell us more about the 4 other dungeons?
One of the other ones you didn't see today would be the Gate of the Setting Sun, and that takes place at the Great Pandarian Wall. Which kind of fits in with our whole concept of the Asian theme we’re doing. You actually fight across the wall. You’re trying to hold off an invasion of the Mantid. It’s at the edge of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, and that’s kind of the main gateway that leads in. The Mantid are trying to get in from that side and the Shado-pan are holding them off. So you’re in that dungeon basically trying to hold them off from breaking through the wall. It feels really cool because it’s outdoors. It takes place on top of the wall and some of our Mantid fly. So you end up not just having the combat right there on the wall, but some things come flying in, so it feels a little bit different. One of the other ones is Mogu'Shan Palace. That was the dungeon on the opposite end of the Vale between the two player hubs. So it will feel similar to when people did Violet Hold in Dalaran. There was a dungeon right there in their local city and that’s basically the seat of power from the ancient Mogu empire. So that dungeon is going to feel really epic from the sense of the Mogu use to run the entire empire, so it’s got this really grand feel. It’s huge. But it’s been broken into by the Saurok. Which is the race we saw earlier today, the lizard men. They have run crazy across Pandaria and this is one of the places they have been able to break into. So you’re going to run into them as well as Mogu, and really the reason for that is we wanted to try to break up the bosses. We don’t want you to go into a Mogu dungeon and then fight a Mogu boss, a Mogu boss, and a Mogu boss. So making it a Saurok in there we can really change up the full thing and make it feel different.
I don’t know if we’re going to cover every dungeon today, we’re trying to keep a few, but we do have a Mantid dungeon as well. The Mantid is one of the races we’ve talked about before, but we haven't revealed it yet today, but it’s the other biggest antagonist outside of the Mogu and the Sha. The Sha is all around the world. The two zones we didn't show today, the Dread Wastes and Townlong Steppes are both crawling with Mantid. So of course we would have to have a dungeon specifically for them. They’re basically attacking one of the local temples. You saw the Jade Serpent today in Jade Forest; there’s a local god for each of the individual zones and the god in this zone is the ox. The Ox Temple is under attack by the Mantid. You can see a theme here, the Mantid are attacking everything. So you’re coming in here and trying to clear them out, but the whole goal of the dungeon is a little bit different. It’s more of an infiltration mission. So you’re going to come in and going to set charges and do a little bit of a different vibe than what you would see in some of our other dungeons. We’ll talk about the last one later.
What can you tell us about the raids that will be available at release?
We have three raids and 14 bosses across those raids. Then we are also going to have two world bosses at launch. So in total we will have 16 bosses, 14 will be available through the actual Looking For Raid system. The other two will be world bosses. As far as locations go, we have the Mogu raid that’s called the Mogu’shan Vaults. And that’s going to have a similar look as the dungeon I was talking about earlier; the Mogu dungeon. But just on a much more grand, epic scale and it’s really going to reveal some of the history of the Mogu and what’s been going on with them. We’re really trying to pull people into the story and let them know what’s going on, and that’s one of the things that without having changed our progression and not having a grand villain we really want to pull people into the story of Pandaria - what happened here? Why are we here? What are we trying to save? Since they use to kind of run the whole place, it kind of made since that they left all this history everywhere. But in this raid you’re actually fighting more of a ghost side of the Mogu. So as where you would be fighting living Mogu in the dungeon, here you will see a ghost version. We got new models, we have a whole different kind of vibe and look for this place. It’s going to explain a little bit more of not just the Mogu past, but where did they come from? Who exactly created them How did that work? That’s one of them. We have a Mantid raid where you’ll be fighting the Mantid empress who’s basically kind of the leader of all the Mantid in the this local area. Super awesome unique look. I think dungeon and raid art wise it’s one of the craziest things we've built just from that visual standpoint. Part of what they do is build into these giant cypress trees. So if you can imagine a visual of this humongous cypress tree and it’s been overrun by this really beautiful grand architecture that’s kind of the mix. So you’re getting a little bit of nature but also some architecture mixed in. That will be a chance for people to do these really epic fights against some of our Mantid; our new creatures that we’re doing for them. Our third one is the Sha raid. So we talked about the Sha quite a bit. We built a new Sha boss model that looks just unbelievably awesome. It’s a super super huge raid boss and that whole raid circles around him and he has turned other local creatures into Sha and that’s what you’ll be fighting leading up to him. So those are the three we are planning for ship, and obviously we will be adding more raids as we go along.
You introduced scenarios during Blizzcon as a replacement for group quests. How are they going to work exactly? Are they instanced? Do you expect players to run them repeatedly while leveling?
They are definitely instanced. We’re looking to do almost all of the introductory scenarios that we’re gonna have for Mists of Pandaria at level 90. We could do them along the leveling path, but we really felt like they would have more impact at 90. What we’ve been trying to do is create as much in-game content as possible. There’s so much content in the leveling already, it felt like they would be a better fit for max level. The reason why they are instanced is we can do so much more. When you have an instance you don’t have to use phasing. We can do all kinds of different NPCs and creatures that might not be in the normal world, but we can do it here and it doesn't effect the other players that might be in the area. So it gives us a lot of control. As far as replacement for group quests, in our eyes a lot of people didn't do group quests because they couldn't find people to do them with. They were really awesome experiences in some cases. So we’re able to take the ones we think are the best and implement them through this system and it’s a system that has a lot of room to grow. It doesn't have to be just for group quests because they are going to reward you with faction. So imagine the Tillers farmers faction we talked about earlier today. It’s not just daily quests, you could also do a scenario and earn faction for them. There’s also even the possibility we could make scenarios that work for professions. Imagine a scenario that would send you into a mine and you have to fight off a number of creatures, but in between you might be able to mine nodes and you could repeat that scenario and it would be one for a mining profession. We’re not planning to do this necessarily right now, but I think the system has a lot of growth potential. We’re going to focus on doing scenarios for the factions across Pandaria and then from there I still think there’s a lot of other places we can go with it.
The Pet Battle System is a very interesting addition to the game. How did this idea come up, and what benefits do you feel that it will add to the game as a whole?
It’s definitely something that we’ve talked about doing for a while. Which is the concept of a mini game. We’ve wanted to put mini games into WoW for a long time, but we never really had an idea that we felt fit right and didn't feel jammed into the game. Mini pets are really popular, everyone has companion pets, it feels like something a lot of people like, a lot of people collect them. So the thought was “Why don’t we just put these two things together”. There’s so many it feels like we could create a game out of it. We could use all the exciting pets because doing a game would require so many new assets, with this, we can take all the pets and give them all this new game play with abilities and leveling and stats. Then take a new selection of pets, put them into the world, and let players go find them. So you can go into a zone and there might be a pet that only spawns during the rain, in Stranglethorn Vale. There might be a pet that only spawns at nighttime in Uldum for example. So we can do that kind of stuff and it adds a whole lot of gameplay to the whole world because now you can have exploring, you can have achievements. If you like the general combat system, you can get really into the combat. It’s a turn-based system. It has a lot of depth. It’s optional content. It brings options to the game, and that’s huge for WoW.
WoW is the kind of game where we have to deliver the core content, dungeons, raids, leveling, battlegrounds. We know these are core things we always have to do, but then we also want to add new things for people that want to move out of those core things that we’re always doing, or attract new players that might not even be into those things. Achievements for example are something that's a completely optional activity, but has added so much to the game. The concept is, you get a pet, and then you have what we call pet cards. So we’ll have a whole new pet journal interface. It will show you the pet. When you select it, you’ll see stats for the pet, you’ll see its level, and then you’ll see its abilities. The abilities actually work kind of similar to our new talent system. So when you learn an ability, you’ll get an option of two choices, and then you can pick that choice, and any time outside of battle you can swap that choice. So even once you get a pet and you get it to max level, you can still make lots of changes to it by changing its abilities.
Can you tell people about the new talent system and how it helps balance things?
There wasn't really a lot of choice in the old system. It’s a system we’ve worked on for 7 years. We’ve been tuning and changing and making little tidbits trying to get it just right. In the end, I think people just end up going to a website and finding a site because there’s so many talents to pick, you don’t want to pick the wrong one and there are talents that are key to being really able to play your class with the right dps. We just didn't feel like that was fun to be honest. It wasn't offering a lot of choice. A lot of people, if we wiped talents, they would be sad. They wouldn't be happy to get a talent wipe: “I have to fill this whole thing out again”. So we had a couple core concepts in mind: “Make the choices matter”. The choices you make should matter and make your class feel unique to you. Also to make sure we don’t put anything that offers pure player power in the talent tree. We put all those things in your specialization. So when you pick your spec, you’re always going to have all your heals, you’re always going to have everything you need. What you get through your talent tree is some customization. You can maybe turn a heal into an AoE heal. You can maybe make a heal jump to another character. When we do add power, we balance it because we know you have to pick one of these three. You can’t miss it, and then when we add power, we can know that each one is adding that very close similar amount so that we can balance it.
We want to make people feel like they can swap when they need to. I think it’s a very common thing to think that going through a dungeon a player might swap on each boss. I don’t think they are going to want to swap on each pull. But we expect that a player will swap on a boss. A boss might have a certain ability that makes it so that you need AoE heals. So at that point, you might want to change your spec and change up something that will buff up your AoE heals, because you’re going to have them by default because they are in your spec. But all you’re doing is giving yourself a little bit of an advantage by maybe buffing them up a little. So that’s how that kind of plays in.
Can you tell us more about the patch and world event that will introduce Mists of Pandaria before the release of the actual expansion?
Yeah, we’re essentially planning to do a couple things. One of the things we’ve talked about is doing a scenario and introducing the game with this scenario, to be a new type of gameplay that players have never seen before. And doing a scenario that would involve Theramore, and really kick off whats happening with the Alliance and Horde, and pushing home this whole red versus blue kind of concept. So that’s one part. We have another thing where we would like to introduce the Pandaren in a way that feels really natural. So we’re talking about taking Chen Stormstout in, and having him show up in some of the local cities and get players more excited about whats happening in these two weeks right before. Chen has an idea of what’s happening, but he’s not going to give out all that information. So it gives people a chance to see some new gameplay, but also to get hyped up about Pandarens and going to Pandaria. A special event everyone can take part in. We usually do like to give simple rewards for all the launch day events.
Could the gear scaling that is being added for challenge mode dungeons be applied in a similar manner for older content, allowing players to go back and play through old dungeons with an appropriately powerful character?
It’s like someone is reading our minds. That’s something that could 100% work for that. What we are starting with for challenge modes is the concept of doing it with the shipping dungeons for Mists of Pandaria. Then we’re going to watch it, see how it plays out and see how things go. Then the idea is if that goes well, we totally want to backdate that to some of our older dungeons. I mean, obviously it will probably be in thing like Scholomance, because that’s coming as new dungeon. But if it works out well, there’s no reason we couldn't backport that to older dungeons. That could end up being in any of the more classic dungeons that players really like. That’s the kind of tech that we develop at the beginning to know that it could work in other places. Gear scaling that is something that could also work in a scenario if we really wanted to because it’s an instance. We could decide that we could build a scenario for say level 35, it takes place in say Southern Barrens, but then you could also play that scenario at level 90 because we could scale your gear. So in that way we could make content that works for the level up, but also for the max level. So there’s a lot of options of being able with being able to scale gear on players that we can use.
So you mentioned Scholomance earlier...which has changed drastically including the art.
We have been playing it internally, and it’s definitely much better from the gameplay standpoint. Especially Jandice’s room is very different. I think that’s something we all have the labor of love for. We really felt like that for Deadmines and Shadowfang, but we didn’t get a chance to upgrade the in-game art as much as we did here. Here we could do whole new layouts, really change the flow but keep all that stuff about Scholomance that made it feel so cool. So I think players are going to be really stoked.
People have been complaining about mount models being "recycled". Do you think Mists of Pandaria will give you the freedom to work with more exotic models?
I’m actually totally the guy working on making sure that we have a huge selection of mounts. For Mists we’re planning on trying to do less of the sharing of colors for individual mounts for different rewards. So for example the achievement for completing all the raids on heroic that usually offers an individual mount. We’re trying to make sure that mount is different than the mount that you get for the dungeon hero. So if you remember back to Cataclysm it was essentially a protodrake with different colors. So what we are trying to do here is trying to create mounts that have a different look for each one. That’s not going to be everywhere. Obviously we’re still going to have mounts that have multiple colors and will give the mount in different ways, but I think the goal is to make sure that if you get a mount like that you feel unique. Our perspective on this is that mounts are kinda like a sacred thing. There’s only so many flying mounts that you can give out before they start to feel too common and everyone has them, that kind of concept and we know that. That’s why something like the flying Kwai-Lan we were talking about as a reward for the gold medal in challenge modes, you’ll only ever be able to get it from that. The concept is that when you see someone, you’ll know they have really accomplished something, and that it feels great. But our total mount count is looking really great. Actually for Mists I feel like we already have more mounts than we did for Cataclysm. We have multiple of versions of all of these different mounts, and we're trying to not just do the mount, but maybe do a modified version that has more armor on it so that it feels a little bit different. So I really think players are going to be stoked. I think they are going to get more content then they got even in Cataclysm in that specific category.
Is there anything else that you would like to add? Any interesting change or feature we've missed?
One really cool thing we’re doing is for Looking for Raid, which has been super huge for us in 4.3. The amount of people that are raiding now in comparison to what were raiding pre 4.3 is exponentially larger. I mean very very significant. So we felt that has been a huge success. But one of the places we have had trouble with is loot. Turns out everyone just rolls need, on everything in LFR. It doesn't really matter if it’s for you or not, everyone just needs. So one of the big changes we’re going to make with Mists is the introduction of a per-player loot system. So that will be just for LFR, but essentially every person will get to roll individually on the items that are on that boss. So if you win that roll, then it will look at the loot table on that boss, and if there’s an item for you, then you’ll get that item instead of just having it be everyone can roll, and if you win you guarantee get it. Instead you’ll roll individually and if your roll actually comes up as a win, if there’s an item that works for you, like say if you’re a druid, and there’s a druid item, you would get that item. That doesn't mean you’re always going to get a guaranteed thing when you win your roll, because there might not be an item on that boss for you to begin with. What it does mean is when you do win, you’re always going to get something that is right for you and it fits your class and feels specific. I think that’s really going to help with people feeling like they are running it constantly and “I never get my weapon” or “I never get my item”. That’s something that if it works there, we could definitely open it up to more parts of the game but that’s where we feel is a good place to start.
