Hey guys! This week, Forrseti and Toman were very privileged to be invited to visit the EU Blizzard HQ in Versailles for a day of gawking and geeking. While we were there, we took part in a Q&A with two of WoWs lead developers, Brian Holinka (Lead PVP Designer) and Ion Hazzikostas (Lead Encounter Designer). We were able to ask a few questions about Warlords of Draenor, and got some real insights from two guys at the forefront of development in the new expansion. It was such a treat, so thank you so much to everyone at Blizzard for the opportunity, and especially to Brian and Ion for taking time out of their busy days to talk to us.

Click through below to read the transcript in full from the interview. There are a LOT of great titbits in there.

Anyway, to the podcast! This week we talk about:

• The new raven mount – where’s it from?;


• We cover Blackhand in War-LORE-ds of Draenor;


• Some interesting points from our Q&A session;


• The recent WoW Infographic;


• …and much more!

As always, we’d really love your thoughts and feedback, so please get in touch. Until next week…Love, Hugs and Successful PUGS. Toman.

Q&A With Brian Holinka and Ion Hazzikostas:

There were a small handful of us asking questions, so I’ve tried to add their names where possible (apologies for any mistakes). Also, this session was performed over a video conference, so we recorded the audio and transcribed it later – any spelling or grammatical errors are mine and mine alone. I’ve tweaked the phrasing of one or two questions to help with clarity, but for the most part this is as it was recorded.

Gothiques:

There was a comment a while ago where someone said that arenas were a big mistake. Has opinion changed?

Brian Holinka:

Well, I think when he said that it was because it was the emphasis and the microscopic lens it puts on class balance in a PVP sense: there’s nothing else in arena except you and the other classes and so it makes people really focus on that.

I think we have gotten to a place now where arenas fit better into the game. When they were introduced into the game during Burning Crusade, original WoW classes were designed around the WarCraft 3 archetypes and were never really designed to have 1v1, 2v2, rock paper scissor balancing, and it took a while to get there. I’m sure those people that did arenas back in the Burning Crusade remember there were some wacky things whilst people were figuring things out and there were a lot of growing pains.

Gothiques:

In the Lich King we had an amazing service that allowed people to see arena history. Why was it removed and can we see it again in the next expansion?

Brian Holinka:

I looked into it and my understanding is that it consumed a lot of storage space and didn’t see a lot of usage on the website, and when we say that you have to think about that there are people who are really into the arena, and they probably used it and wont thank me saying that, but as a broad player base, you are consuming, you know, a lot of storage and not very many people are going to the website to see this information. I think maybe we could store this information through the new Trial of the Gladiator feature and it is something to look into. I certainly think it is interesting and I’ve been trying out this addon “Reflex” and it is cool to go back and see your history and look at the games. So I think it definitely has some value there, it’s something for us to talk about again. The other thing I have is that we will do some big tech revamp, something to improve data structure or the website as a whole and some features will get lost. But when I did investigate it, I was told that consumed a lot of space and provided not a lot of use, we didn’t see players using it a lot. For players really invested in arena it might come as a surprise but that is what we saw.

Gothiques:

You started fixing much more often recently, but are there any plans to do massive patches more often? Like maybe 3-4 weeks. There is this one thing where when nothing changes for several months people find overpowered setups/comps and arena starts to get too similar, people get bored and start to stop playing until the end of the season. So you might agree that patches force people to try something new and play arena again?

Brian Holinka:

So I think when you look at patches, the amount of effort for us that goes into a patch, there is an initial cost, like an overhead. A fixed cost (of time/effort) every time we do a patch. If we were to do a patch with only 1 or 2 minor changes in there, that cost is still there, so how regularly we release patches slows down how often we can create other content and bring it into the game. I think generally what players in arena were asking for were more changes, more balance changes, more regularly. It was interesting because we kind of had this period between, I want to say September and January, where we had a number of reasons why we didn’t do a huge amount of balance changes. We were coming up to BlizzCon, so players were preparing for that event and we didn’t think it was appropriate to make a number of balance changes like in the 3 weeks leading up to BlizzCon and sweep the rug out from everybody. Then we had Christmas and New Year where we were on vacation and so as soon as January came there has been some PVE tuning and we started doing some PVP changes as well. It’s quite interesting to watch when we don’t do a lot of changes and see the response, and it was like people wanted to see change for the sake of change, to try something new and not to feel bland. But we don’t do a lot of patches due to the cost of each one, we prefer to hotfix which are very easy for us to do server side, tuning spell values and things like that. I think that players maybe aren’t giving us enough credit for the amount of changes that we are doing that are pure hot fixes. I don’t conceive that patches will be really much faster just because of the cost of doing so.

Ion Hazzikostas:

I think it’s also that rapid change, there is a lot to keep track of and absorb and there is value in not changing things on a daily basis. We will only continue to make change if there is something completely overpowered and more importantly if something is not fun, if someone is getting 2-shot by some ability on a regular basis we will go ahead and change that, but we try to avoid making minor tweaks here and there just for the sake of change.

Brian Holinka:

Some players propose that we basically experiment on the player base, for example buff ice lance by 2% one week and watch what happens, then you know, nerf it by 4% the next week and I don’t really think that’s a good policy. We are not going to be constantly changing things like that on players, but we certainly feel like if we observe there is something we should change and it’s a change that will move the needle then we will do it but you know, buffing damage by 2/3% is not as significant in PVP as people would think it is. In PVE, it is a little different, if people are like behind by 3% we can maybe buff them.

Ion Hazzikostas:

Except at the very, very, very highest levels of play, in terms of skill, the things that determine victory or defeat are not going to be that 2% damage difference , its more the mistakes players make during the