Summary
This year, World of Warcraft will get its 10th expansion, the War Within. There's an air of change around Blizzard, at least as far as World of World of Blizzard operations go. It's personified by executive producer and vice president for World of WoW, Holly Longdale. She talks about the team trying to be more transparent and share development more openly with the community. The War Within, unlike any previous WoW expansion, will belong to a trilogy - the Worldsoul Saga. Expansions two and three - Midnight, and The Last Titan - are already in development, and should combine to deliver the most ambitious connected storyline the game has ever seen. New playable race is the Earthen, and there's a raised level cap. New mechanics include Hero Talents, Warbands and Delves. Blizzard's new Warband system looks a lot like Diablo's log-in screen. The iconic exclamation and question marks are getting a refurb. The War Within will be released sometime in the late summer, early autumn. The best way I can describe it is I referenced Star Wars earlier. So we're thinking of an episode one, episode two, episode three. Each episode, in and of itself, is a contained story that has its own arcs. As to the content, we're still getting our legs under us with the eight-week patch. But we're starting to hold back because it depends on what players' feedback is. Is there a chance Plunderstorm could remain as a permanent fixture, given how well it seems to have done? It's not designed for that, currently. What we don't want to do is put something out there that wasn't intended to last. Blizzard's World of Warcraft: Classic and World of World of War II are both 'incredibly healthy' 'We're employing a lot of data to be able to guide us on how to parse our content' In this week's Daily Discussion, we look at the role of the internet in the world of gaming. This week, we're talking about the role played by the internet.
