The good folks over at The Escapist magazine have a whole issue devoted to Cataclysm.
This week in Issue 267 of The Escapist, we look at just what the changes to the world of Warcraft mean to a handful of people. Blizzard's own Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street speaks with us about the art of designing an apocalypse, Quintin Smith examines the memories that go hand-in-hand with fictional places, Dr. Mark Klein reflects on the emotional attachments player have to games, and Brendan Main learns that, sometimes, you just can't go Gnome again. Whether good or bad, though, the end of the world is coming and there's no stopping it.
John Funk
The editor's note starts off by pretty accurately portraying what it first felt like to experience Azeroth as a place and as a world, and goes on to ponder how it's all changing. He wonders if the hill he stood on as a low lvl character will still be there. Pretty great stuff!
Also in the issue there's an article covering how Cataclysm was actually built from a design perspective and there are several new bits of info (at least for me) in there from Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street:
"We kind of identified Deathwing early on and we knew we wanted some kind of explosive thing coming out of the ground. Originally it was a whole new continent we were going to do and we had a couple of ideas for zones."
He even goes into the whole casual/hardcore divide "We have very casual players who may not have played a lot of videogames before and then we've got these super hardcore guys who have been with us forever."Appealing to both groups requires a design that's simple on the surface but still has lots of depth, which Blizzard cites as the motivation to restructure the game's stats.
"Horde players, in particular, are going to start out thinking, 'Garrosh Hellscream is such an asshole; we want Thrall back.'" But the quest designers tell the story in such a way that you really begin to feel some respect, if not sympathy, for Garrosh.
Yeeeea no we won't. Garrosh must die. And I don't just mean an Alliance raid (which I will happily change factions to join) will kill him and then he'll respawn, I mean permadeath. Ok I'll stop now.
In any case the issue has some really great articles and you should check them out, regardless of the amount of new info on Cata they have.
Also in the issue there's an article covering how Cataclysm was actually built from a design perspective and there are several new bits of info (at least for me) in there from Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street:
"We kind of identified Deathwing early on and we knew we wanted some kind of explosive thing coming out of the ground. Originally it was a whole new continent we were going to do and we had a couple of ideas for zones."
He even goes into the whole casual/hardcore divide "We have very casual players who may not have played a lot of videogames before and then we've got these super hardcore guys who have been with us forever."Appealing to both groups requires a design that's simple on the surface but still has lots of depth, which Blizzard cites as the motivation to restructure the game's stats.
"Horde players, in particular, are going to start out thinking, 'Garrosh Hellscream is such an asshole; we want Thrall back.'" But the quest designers tell the story in such a way that you really begin to feel some respect, if not sympathy, for Garrosh.
Yeeeea no we won't. Garrosh must die. And I don't just mean an Alliance raid (which I will happily change factions to join) will kill him and then he'll respawn, I mean permadeath. Ok I'll stop now.
In any case the issue has some really great articles and you should check them out, regardless of the amount of new info on Cata they have.
Glad you're still around here Starym :D
Ye my summer holiday should be done soon (and by holiday I mean playing Starcraft 2) so then I'll be back for realz.