Was/is Burning Crusade too hardcore? Jeff Kaplan a.k.a. Tigole believes so. In a Wrath of the Lich King interview with eurogamer.net featuring Jeff Kaplan and his brothers in producing Allen Brack and Tom Chilton - Tigole has been quoted as stating that the lower-tier dungeons were simply too hard, a brick wall for most.
But I think Burning Crusade was way too hardcore out of the gate, at the lower raiding tiers. Even the entry-level 25-person raid, Magtheridon, was way too difficult. I'd like to have the 10 and 25 both start off very accessible and understandable, so that players of any skill level who had hit max level would be able to have success, and then progress from there.
"OK, welcome to level 70, here's a brick wall. Maybe you can climb it."
They're going to "make up" for that little "slip up" though. When Wrath of the Lich King hits the shelves it will feature 10 man versions of every 25 man dungeon, but unlike The Burning Crusade these entry level dungeons will be much easier for people to progress through.
Hardcore raiders and sponsored guilds should not despair though, Kaplan is also quoted saying that they want to preserve 'some' of that hardcore raiding that exists, embracing the community as he says in the interview. What that statement fully means we won't know until WotLK goes live later this year.
The interview also touches on player versus player where producer Allen Back explains that he believes PVP is going to be hugely improved, or advanced to use the same word he did. Talks about an overhaul of the game engine are also a hot topic and Brack states "Yup probably!" - and says that it's something they will certainly be talking about for the next expansion.
Here's a teaser:
Eurogamer: You've got a couple of fairly heavyweight competitors launching this year - Age of Conan and Warhammer Online. Those games both have a heavy focus on PVP in the endgame. Do you think you might lose quite a few PVP players to these games?
J. Allen Brack: We don't really think about it like that. We don't make games in a vacuum, we don't just play World of Warcraft, I love online games, I play a lot of online games, and I'm really excited about those games coming out because I want to play them. I think that's fairly common across the board.
I think there's room for all three of those games to be successful. I mean, the worst thing for our industry is for online games to come out and fail. They cost so much money to develop, and it's so difficult, and it's such a huge labour of love to launch an online game, for it to fail is sad for everybody.
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Why not spend some of the leveling time on actually learning how to play it properly!
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