Image: WowheadIGN interviewed Blizzard on WoW: Forever and discussed the patch cadence, locations for future patches, respeccing, and a lot more!.
IGN WoW: Forever Interview.
IGN interviewed the following team members on WoW: Forever:.
Kris Zierhut, Principal Game Designer.
Tim Jones, Lead Classic Designer.
Interview Summary.
Different Games.
WoW Classic is similar to a museum. It's been that way for years with very little change. They can preserve that for people who want to see what it was like.
WoW: Forever is their take on what they could do if they never went to Outland and kept developing the world, whether that's adding new quests or Professions.
Choosing What Changes.
When choosing what to change from WoW: Classic, they look at their four main pillars. The most important is likely "the world is the main character".
The Journey should be as important as the destination, and the world should feel full, no matter what zone you go to.
They loved how in Hardcore, it always felt like every zone was filled with other players; likely because players had to reroll whenever they died.
For "approachable and familiar", they feel that the base classic game is approachable, and they've taken careful consideration with familiar things like SD models.
Regarding the UI, while they're using a lot of modern UI conveniences, it still feels like a Classic game and not a copy of the retail UI.
They've also worked on "unsolving" the game so players don't have the perfect leveling path or profession choices.
Lightning and Shadow Improvements.
People remember WoW in 2004 a lot better than it actually was, so they wanted to give players Azeroth as they remember it, not as it actually was.
They want to drive new players into the game. They want to bring in the next generation of gamers who are used to a lot of high graphic fidelity.
The WoW engine is not spaghetti code. That's an unfair player characterization.
Kris Zierhut has heard many other devs comment that they want the WoW engine.
Developers have worked hard over the last 25 years to improve the engine, get a higher frame rate, and improve server response times.
Release Cadence.
They've experimented a lot with release cadence throughout Classic.
They know that going without new content for six to eight weeks feels bad.
For SoD, they went to an eight- to ten-week schedule, and it felt too fast.
They believe that the correct update cadence is about once every 4 months or 3 times a year.
This is one of the advantages of telling smaller, more localized stories. They don't need 6 months to tell the giant huge story.
They come up with enough stories to fill a 4-month development period.
They do plan on having content in between, so there might be content that unlocks between that.
Source: Wowhead ↗