World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Q&A Feature

The Wrath of Lich King is finally unleashed upon the World of Warcraft, giving the 11+ million subscribers of Blizzard’s behemoth MMO another fresh dose of features, quests, and battlegrounds to contend with.  Following a similar extravaganza to The Burning Crusade’s launch in 2007, midnight saw a host of events across the globe, and the UK wasn’t left out in the icy cold of Northrend.

As the queue snaked outside and around the flagship HMV store on Oxford Street, London, TVG sat down with Blizzard Entertainment’s Chief Operating Officer, Paul Sams, and Associate Producer, Lee Sparks to discuss the second WoW expansion pack, their thoughts on why World of Warcraft continues to dominate the MMO space, and what they think of the recently confirmed Star Wars: The Old Republic…

TVG: Tonight sees the launch of Wrath of the Lich King; how important is it for Blizzard to do these midnight events and what do they mean to you?

Sams: It’s to connect with the players to be honest.  We’ve got a very large group of players globally who are really passionate about the game, and there’s nothing more fulfilling, and that drives you into trying to do greater things than to talk with these people, to experience at first hand the passion they have, and to hear what they think about the product.  We’re very big on trying to listen to the customers and [we] try to make things that really feel right for them; this is a way for us to do that.

Another thing is that we’re a global company, and so if we were just sitting around in the US doing that, we’d have the perspective that the US player might have, but we wouldn’t necessarily have the same perspectives from the European or Asian players in the various countries that we have the product available.  It’s really a cool thing, and it’s a good motivator for the team too.

TVG: Do you notice a cultural difference between the various global launch events?

Sams: I think that the players around the world have a passion for the game, and how they do it differs somewhat.  There are certain players that like to dress up, although there are certain races that players in different countries identify with more so than others, and so it’s a really cool thing.  But then you get similar types of requests for items that allow us to tweak the game and improve it to properly fulfil the needs of the different players.  You can’t just assume it’s going to be the same for everywhere.

TVG: What have you achieved with Lich King so far as the new features are concerned?

Sparks:  Well we’ve raised the level cap up to eighty from seventy; we have the brand new continent of Northrend that you’ll be able to explore from level seventy.  One big, big thing that we’ve focused on in this expansion is story – making sure that players are immersed and involved in the storyline throughout that experience, and not just the end game like The Burning Crusade.  This time throughout the game, we’re making sure you understand what the Lich King is doing, and why you’re there to stop him from doing it.  We have a new PvP zone called Wintergrasp, which is our first non-instance PvP zone where we’re featuring new vehicles and destructible buildings; we’ve also got a new battleground Strand of the Ancients, which also features the vehicles and destructible buildings.

We have a brand new class, the Death Knight, which fits the theme of Arthas and the Lich King.  We’re really happy with what we’ve done with the Death Knight, not only from a class design and balance standpoint, but also from the quest list as well – when you first create a Death Knight, you really have an immersive and epic gameplay experience that only Death Knights get to have, and we’re really proud of what we did there.

TVG: You mentioned there that players are more involved in the story this time around; do you feel that’s an area World of Warcraft has been lacking in the past?

Sams: I don’t think we lacked on it at all before, I just think it just wasn’t prevalent throughout the entire experience, and we wanted to get everyone immersed in the story this time around from the get go.  Not to say that this expansion has more story [to it], it’s just that we’re making sure that it’s really at the forefront.