Eurogamer's Big WoW Classic Interview

Classico Pubblicato 31/07/2019 alle 19:09 da Archimtiros

Eurogamer recently interviewedShacknewsGame Director Ion HazzikostasGerman website Computer BildRagnaros and Closing WoW Betafinal hour of WoW: Classic BetaThunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker<br /><br /><h2 class="heading-size-2">Rediscovering Old Game Mechanics</h2><br />The old raids may be well known to players by now, but part of the allure isn't only seeing who manages to defeat them first, but in seeing how they get there. As Brian Birmingham puts it, the challenge isn't only in defeating the raid bosses, but also in optimizing leveling routes, gear, and choosing which characters to invest in on the way there. The debates surrounding such things are often surprising, especially as WoW: Classic Beta testers realize they don't understand all the mechanics of the game quite as well as they thought they did.<br /><br />While in many cases players had the mechanics and numbers <i>almost</i> right, there's a lot of detailed minutiae that players weren't aware of in 2007 which has been recreated for Classic, such as the recent <a href="https://www.wowhead.com/news=292085/hit-cap-in-classic-wow-clarifications">Hit Chance controversy</a>, several <a href="https://classic.wowhead.com/news=293786/classic-hunter-bugs-fixes-and-not-bugs">Hunter</a> fixes and bugs, <a href="https://classic.wowhead.com/news=293749/berserker-stance-and-modifiers-to-critical-strike-clarifications">Critical Strike Clarifications</a>, as well as maintaining an extensive <a href="https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/wow-classic-not-a-bug-list/175887" rel="nofollow">Not A Bug</a> list. It's important for the designers to recreate WoW: Classic as it was in Vanilla Patch 1.12. Omar Gonzalez cites the community of dedicated fans who spent days on end creating combat logs in order to backwards engineer the math for numbers that weren't officially released, and how that kind of devotion fuels the developers own passion.<br /><br />The engineers were also impressed by how passionate and varied the players have been throughout the beta, especially with the communal drive to figure out all the combat math, and explore pieces the world that they wouldn't normally be high enough level to survive in. The expectation for Betas is generally that players will try the game out, test a few things, and then wait for the full release, but many players made a point to continue exploring, level up several times, and help other players level up, playing day and night despite the temporary nature of the Beta.<br /><br /><h2 class="heading-size-2">Gold Farming</h2><br />Vanilla WoW had a lot of issues with third party gold selling, many of which were curtailed by the Token system added in <i>Warlords of Draenor</i>. While tokens will not be available in Classic, because subscriptions are shared between Classic and the current Expansion, players will be able to buy tokens using gold in the current expansion in order to keep playing Classic. A brand new economy is a big draw of WoW: Classic, as players will be starting with nothing and working their way to unlocking mounts, skills, and professions, and as long as there is a human behind the keyboard actively playing the game, they're fine with most methods of farming; the issue is with automated bots which do it for them, though their detection algorithms and techniques are much better now than they used to be.<br /><br /><i>Note: Although the interview sidestepped the question, please remember that actually selling in-game gold for real money is also against the terms of service.</i><br /><br /><h2 class="heading-size-2">New Systems: Layering</h2><br />One of the biggest pieces of feedback, and most important distinctions from the original game, is the advent of layering - a system similar to phasing which allows the game server to separate players into several pools, in order to better handle inordinately large amounts of players all massed in one part of the game world. As Eurogamer staff writer Robert Purchese points out, there has been a lot of <a href="https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/examples-of-layering-exploits-and-problems/198240" rel="nofollow">mixed feedback</a> regarding the problematic and exploitative nature of the system, though the engineers are quick to point out that the numbers used for layering in the Beta are not reflective of those which will be seen on launch. The system is designed to scale up and down based on the total number of players, so that players are less likely to be alone or overpopulated in any particular area, but the thresholds were set much lower in the beta, in order to allow them to test the feature.<br /><br /><h2 class="heading-size-2">Preparing For Launch</h2><br />That said, there have been some legitimate bugs, and other changes that had to be reverted in order to restore the original Vanilla gameplay, particular for hunter combat mechanics, movement aesthetics, and animations. Between now and WoW: Classic launch on August 27th, the engineers will be in full "bug smash!" mode, fixing as many things as possible, particularly the most impactful and obvious bugs, such as those that affect visuals and combat, in order to make the remaster feel authentic.<br /><br />Not everything is meant to feel authentic, however, as they have no plans to force players through the same queue times that were present in the unexpectedly massive launch of World of Warcraft in 2004, as game servers struggled to keep up with the overwhelming number of players that turned out. Part of that problem is prediction; just as Blizzard severely underestimated the interest in the original game, it's hard to know an exact number of how many players will try to log on in August, but the teams are better prepared than they were 15 years ago, so if there is a similar surge of players, they're ready to handle it.<br /><br />Internally, it will be handled similar to a major expansion launch, but there are major differences to what would otherwise be just a large software upgrade as the Classic launch includes new infrastructure and hardware in every region of the world. Scaling up and down post-launch is one of the most complicated issues; while their systems are much more flexible than they were 15 years ago, it's hard to predict player surge and recess. They may need to expand capacity on launch as more players show up than anticipated, then dial back as players distribute throughout the game world and spend less time playing daily. Either way, they'll have a NASA-like Mission Control Room set up with all hands on deck and the entire World of Warcraft team lending a hand in order to coordinate a smooth launch.<br /><br /><h2 class="heading-size-2">Six Phases of Classic</h2><br />The original plan stated at BlizzCon 2018 was to break Classic up into four content phases, though that <a href="https://www.wowhead.com/news=290629/staggered-classic-content-update-six-phases-up-from-four-to-address-itemization-">has since changed to six</a>, more reminiscent of the Vanilla patch cycle.<br /><br /><table><br /><tr><td><b>Content</b></td> <td><b>BlizzCon 2018 Phases</b></td> <td><b>New Phase</b></td></tr><br /><tr><td>Molten Core</td> <td>Phase 1</td> <td>Phase 1</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Onyxia</td> <td>Phase 1</td> <td>Phase 1</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Maraudon</td> <td>Phase 1</td> <td>Phase 1</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Dire Maul</td> <td>Phase 1</td> <td>Phase 2</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Azuregos</td> <td>Phase 1</td> <td>Phase 2</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Kazzak</td> <td>Phase 1</td> <td>Phase 2</td></tr><br /><tr><td>PvP Honor System</td> <td>Phase 2</td> <td>Phase 2</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Blackwing Lair</td> <td>Phase 2</td> <td>Phase 3</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Alterac Valley</td> <td>Phase 2</td> <td>Phase 3</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Warsong Gulch</td> <td>Phase 2</td> <td>Phase 3</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Darkmoon Faire</td> <td>TBA</td> <td>Phase 3</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Darkmoon Faire Decks</td> <td>TBA</td> <td>Phase 3</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Zul'Gurub</td> <td>Phase 2</td> <td>Phase 4</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Green Dragons</td> <td>Phase 3</td> <td>Phase 4</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Arathi Basin</td> <td>Phase 2</td> <td>Phase 4</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Ahn'Qiraj War Effort</td> <td>Phase 3</td> <td>Phase 5</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Ahn'Qiraj Raids</td> <td>Phase 3</td> <td>Phase 5</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Tier .5</td> <td>Phase 3</td> <td>Phase 5</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Loot Revamp</td> <td>TBA</td> <td>Phase 5</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Naxxramas</td> <td>Phase 4</td> <td>Phase 6</td></tr><br /><tr><td>Scourge Invasion</td> <td>Phase 4</td> <td>Phase 6</td></tr><br /></table><br /><br />There was a lot of community feedback that four phases were too few and concern that having too much available at the same time would trivialize competing forms of content, such as the Honor system rewards supplanting those available from Onyxia and Molten Core. The engineers aren't sure what the current plans are once all six phases are done, right now they're focused entirely on making WoW: Classic as authentic and accurate as possible and excited to see the fan reaction; the project has been a love-letter to them, something they've been demanding and the developers are eager to deliver. Moving forward, they intend to continue listening to community feedback, and are interested in what people want to see next.<br /><br /><div class="quote-box" data-type="box"><div class="quote-header"></div><div class="quote-body"><b>If you're excited for Classic WoW, make sure to check the <a href="https://classic.wowhead.com/">Wowhead Classic Database</a>, with comments straight from Thottbot!</b></div></div><br /><br />Did you enjoy this news article? 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