World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Interview

[GameBanshee News]

The MMO Gamer brings us a three-page Wrath of the Lich King interview they did with Blizzard's Jeffrey Kaplan during a recent press event at the company's headquarters.

Curse: Isle of Quel’Danas was, honestly, probably the best introduction to the game patch-wise… the event, Magister’s Terrace, Sunwell Plateau, all of that. Can players expect events similar to that in Wrath of the Lich King?

Jeffrey Kaplan: I hope so. We do want to do an event to kick off Wrath of the Lich King, but it will be different than Isle of Quel’Danas. I think why Isle of Quel’Danas feels really good to players right now is we’ve sort of embraced the philosophy of—and we’ve always thought along these lines, but we’re really trying to prove it through what we deliver in patches—that there’s not a right or a wrong way to play WoW.

It’s not that WoW is about the hardcore 25 person raiders, or WoW is about the guys who like to do dungeons, or WoW is about the guys who like to solo and do quests… all of those players exist in WoW, and none of them is right or wrong, and it’s our job to make sure that they’re all getting content, and they feel like their way of playing is right and supported. I really hope that’s what Isle of Quel’Danas represents.

It really proves that there’s something for everyone out there. I think that philosophy is going to translate directly into Lich King with how we’re itemizing and how we’re building content, and then in terms of the event, we also want to do a kickoff Northrend event, too. And then more events where areas build up, I think that’s cool, players feel like they’re contributing.

We always wrestle with the dynamic event idea, players in MMOs always go, “I want to go into the village and burn it down, and from that day forward the village is always burned down!” and then I’m the guy who comes a week later, “Dude, where’s the village?” You know? “Oh, it was epic, we burned it down, it’s not there any more!” Well, I wasn’t there for it!

An event like this you feel like everybody, even if you miss the event, you gained from it having happened, rather than you feel like something was taken away from you.