The Facts
Here it is ladies and gents, the “meat” of the report. Listed below are all of the facts and snippets I managed to glean throughout the day, achieved by heckling the Blizzard guys relentlessly. A lot of this material wasn’t covered in the presentations, which were (dare I say it) quite basic, so most of this content is direct answers to questions I asked.
I recorded information in a notebook and using a Dictaphone, now sorted into three broad categories; Server Information, Dates, and Gameplay Information. The sound files I said I would try to get (of my one to one interview) are not included in this report, as Blizzard requested to check the sound files prior to them being uploaded, which would have slowed down this report, so I’ve omitted them, but included all of the information I learned during.
This report is mostly aimed at seasoned followers of the game, so I will let the facts I’ve found out speak for themselves; for newer visitors wanting to gain insight into the World of Warcraft, it may be advisable to go check out some other parts of WorldofWar.net, and then refer to this article to fill in the gaps.
Server Information
Servers will be split into the regions of US West, US East, Europe, and Asia (Korea), with the possibility of Chinese servers down the line. Each region will support 4 times the present capacity of the stress test, which I think was 12 servers in itself. They plan to have the hardware on hand to scale up or down the servers needed at will.
They aim for each server to cater to 3000 players at any one time.
All European countries will be able to play at launch.
There was 10 times the European interest in WoW that they were expecting, and they are taking the market very seriously. Apparently in 2008 the number of MMO gamers in Europe will equal the US market – and I think they want a piece of the action!
Initially servers will be forced. This means that people in the US will have to choose between East and West. Europeans wont be able to play on the US servers and vice versa. The Asian servers will obviously also be cut off from others.
The servers are being forced as the Producer stressed the need for a low latency, but I was told that there will be an option shortly after launch for people to change to any server (against Blizzards recommendation), as they know there are people desperate to play on specific servers regardless.
Blizzard are keen for the customer support level to parallel that of the USA; by forcing servers initially they believe they can improve this support, for example as GM’s will be on in your prime time for your country.
The eventual choice of which server you play on will be down to changing your payment method – not importing a box from another country. Essentially I got the impression it would mean somehow switching payment method to Euros / dollars depending what server you wish to switch to.
Dates
The Blizzard tour is doing a country a day!
The release date for the US is not confirmed, however the Producer mentioned the Euro launch would be out likely before Christmas, and that the US release would be a couple of months before that…
The European beta is coming soon, likely within two weeks. In fact, the Producer said, they are counting down in days not weeks!
There will not be a worldwide release. US and Asia will be released first, with Euro a couple of months after (this winter for Euro, it was hinted).
Gameplay Information
Professions can be unlearnt.
I couldn’t find out anything specific about how production was going, although I found out Chris Sigaty (the Producer I was talking to) was fairly recently transferred from working on the Warcraft 3 and TFT games, over to WoW, and I got the impression it was “all hands on deck” over there.
I found out that Blizzard guys like to put on cheat modes during demos, such as turbo, insta-level up, and teleport. And invisibility. =P
There will be various payment methods, including charge cards, papal, credit cards and more.
Heroes will not be in at launch, however some aspects of heroes will, such as talents (vague I know).
At launch the level cap will be 60, however this will likely be raised as more content is added in.
I asked about high level content; specifically, what will keep players playing. Chris admitted there was a gentler curve in WoW than some of the other MMO’s (you level faster), and that a lot of the top-level activity would be PvP based.
There will be rankings and prestige (for PvP), points systems (for factions), titles such as “Defender of the Realm”, and even extra content for PvP’ers of a sufficiently high standing, such as specific PvP instances, with special NPC vendors selling elite items that only the PvP “elite” will be able to access. There will also be item rewards for certain PvP feats.
Balance therefore is also crucial to the game. They are trying to balance all aspects, however Chris admitted that in one or two cases, certain classes would likely always have the edge on others.
There will be special guild content such as raids.
Housing is something to be considered after launch; there may be some small part implemented at launch, but don’t hold your breath.
Talents are mostly class based, and they are apparently where the individualism is going to come in. They will also try to tie in the “hero” feature to existing Warcraft 3 hero types (e.g Demon hunter).
As far as “battlenet-brats” go, I was assured that griefers would be stomped on, however feature exploiters probably wouldn’t, but the feature they were exploiting would be analysed. I raised the issue of bush-yoinking, and he suggested for example, a fix such as clicking on the bush within a certain range to “tag” it.
The talent tree is very reminiscent of the Diablo II skill tree. We wont be seeing the ability to alter strength, dexterity etc at will as there were fears that this functionality would lead to cookie-cutter builds, and that people weren’t seeing any difference in pushing things up by one or two points.
The dark portal opening quest will be in! This will involve a series of raids that will probably need the cooperation of several guilds to pull off. Once open, the dark portal will be explorable by everyone.
Unlike professions, talents will be hard to unlearn and you will likely have to do a quest to do it. You will also likely be only able to do it once, and penalized also. Initially they didn’t want players to have the ability to “mess up” their characters, but at this stage (when it comes to talents), the kid gloves come off and you have to live with your choices. Presumably this is also to prevent cookie-cuttering and to produce some variation among characters.
You cannot maintain Alliance and Horde characters on the same server. Therefore most people will maintain a presence on two servers (one for Horde and one for Alliance). Amongst other things, the reason for this is to stop people jumping over to the “winning side” all the time!
There are story related quests, such as the titan mine in the badlands, which we were briefly shown.
There is a focus towards not throwing casual gamers in at the deep end; they will be adding a “help text” feature for really new players.
Demo play was on the European server, so they do have them up right now! I’ve played on it! =P
Next patch: Druid and shaman talents, level cap being raised to 60, big download, balance changes, warlock reevaluated.
They will be getting back to me on the subject of a few questions I couldn’t get answered (due to time constraints).
zrodlo
http://worldofwar.net/articles/london2004/
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. Mnie sie grafika podoba ale może dlatego że nie widziałem jej w ruchu . Gry wyjdą zobaczę w którym będzie więkrze PL community i w to bedę grał , bo w dobrej ekipe nawet granie w mp w kierki daje fun 
Troche obiektywizmu