ZAM Discusses Cataclysm with Cory Stockton
This article originally appeared on ZAM on Nov. 22, 2010.
Editor-in-Chief Darryl Gangloff talked with World of Warcraft's lead content designer about The Shattering patch, the upcoming Cataclysm launch, the game's sixth anniversary, and the possibility of more dynamic events!
With all signs indicating that the world-changing patch 4.0.3a will hit the live servers this week, we thought it was the perfect time to sit down with Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton to discuss The Shattering patch, the upcoming Cataclysm launch, the sixth anniversary of World of Warcraft, and more.
Stockton reflects on the design process behind the massive expansion and explains why he feels everything should run smoothly when Cataclysm is turned on at the stroke of midnight PST on Dec. 7. He also speaks at length about dynamic events like the Elemental Invasion and hints that similar world events could start appearing in WoW on a regular basis, including an expanded Darkmoon Faire. Keep reading after the jump for all of his answers!
ZAM: Cataclysm was first announced at BlizzCon 2009. What's the past year been like for you?
Cory Stockton: The past year has been busy! It's been really good though. BlizzCon this year was awesome, especially because we felt like we had just gotten to that point where we pretty much had everything wrapped up. It always feels great to go to a BlizzCon and be able to know that everyone's getting close to playing what we've been working on for so long.
It's also been a stressful year. There's been a ton of things to do and a massive amount of work for this expansion. We definitely took on more here than we felt like we've ever taken on before in an expansion cycle. The fact that we're not only delivering the 80-85 content, including new zones and dungeons, but also redoing the entire 1-60 experience has been a huge amount of work.
ZAM: With the Cataclysm launch coming up, are you more excited or stressed? Or is it a combination of the two?
Stockton: It's a little bit of everything. In my position, I touch a little bit of everything in WoW. I end up being here for hotfixes and anything that has to happen after launch that we're dealing with. I also think it's exciting because the world finally gets to see what we've been working on all this time. Granted, we've been on the beta and PTR for awhile now, but that's an extremely small number of the people that are going to get to play all this content when it finally launches. I'm definitely really excited. I think we do awesome launch events, so it's great to see everyone come out at midnight and get excited. It's great that you can download the game beforehand and have it ready to go right at midnight on Dec. 7. You can log in and play. That's something we've never been able to do before. It's really awesome to have that kind of stuff.
ZAM: Speaking of the test server, what kind of feedback have you gotten from players? What kind of changes have you made based on the feedback?
Stockton: In general, the feedback has been positive. We always have a mix of both good and bad. We've gotten a lot of feedback because we're changing so much more this time than we ever have before. I think our communication with the players has gotten better over time. It's much more active in finding out what's going on and trying to have an ear to the ground with what the players are feeling. We tried to do a lot more focus testing this time. We've had Tol Barad focus tests and rated battleground focus tests.
Raid testing just started a few weeks ago, and that really involves a lot of work from the encounter team. Not only are they reading feedback, they're watching all those raids live. We open the raid on the server and tell everyone this single boss is ready to go, and we have the entire encounter team logged in on clients on our side watching and fixing things as it's happening. That's typically the way we do things with our internal raid testing – they're fixing things in real time – but it's pretty amazing that we're able to do that nowadays off the beta server. I really just feel like we've gotten better to the point where we can get feedback quicker and turn that feedback around and get it into the game so players can experience it. The big thing with that is trying to get beta builds up quicker. We tried to have less of a distance between each individual beta build.
It's funny, because it's brand new to the players when it comes out on the beta server, but we've been looking at it for weeks. There's a lead time because when our content finishes it has to get through QA and get cleaned up, even for the beta server. We don't want something to go up that's going to give us negative feedback because of a bug. When a patch goes up we're excited to see it because we've been waiting to get feedback on something.
ZAM: The Shattering patch sets the stage for the expansion. For players who may still be confused, what are the differences between patch 4.0.3a and the launch of Cataclysm?
Stockton: There's a massive amount of content that players are getting in The Shattering patch. The main reason is because that content is available to everyone that's playing WoW. That means all the level changes from 1-60, all the new quests, the new race/class combos for everything except goblin and worgen, and all the general systems that have changed within the game. Players are going to see a lot of things that impact your normal everyday life in the patch. Clearly a lot of that systems stuff was introduced in patch 4.0.1, but with 4.0.3a you're going to see the actual world changes separate from what you saw with the systems stuff before.
The main things you'll see happening on Cataclysm launch day are the opening of the content from level 80 to 85, so players will be able to travel to Vashj'ir and Hyjal at that point. It opens up all five of the new zones and also opens up access to all of the new dungeons that become available with that. They will be available through the LFD tool so people can get right into that stuff. Players can start leveling and access stuff like Tol Barad, and our two new battlegrounds become available. Separate from that, the biggest thing would be the goblins and the worgen. At that point you can race change any existing race into a goblin or worgen, or you an actually create a new one and choose to level them up from there. The goblin and worgen come with their own completely new set of zones and experiences. Also, rated battlegrounds open up for level 85 players. People will have to level to 85 first, but they'll be available with Cataclysm.
ZAM: So 4.0.3a is the world changes, and everybody gets access to that. Players need to buy Cataclysm to create a goblin or worgen, level to 85, or enjoy the new zones and dungeons.
Stockton: That's exactly correct.
ZAM: You mentioned the race changes for goblin and worgen. Some players were a little surprised to hear they'll be able to switch on day one. What was the thought process behind that decision?
Stockton: Basically, our thought process was that after the first week or two, we really didn't think it mattered that people were going to be able to swap. Really, the only reason you wouldn't want people to swap is because it could mess with the idea of our achievements of the first player to get a worgen or goblin to level 85. We removed those achievements from the game because at that point, essentially, you're paying $35 for a race change and gaining five levels to earn that achievement. In our eyes, any achievement that's earned through paying for a race change is not worth having in the game.
Once we made the decision to remove the achievement, it made the decision to allow the race changes at day one that much simpler. At that point, there's really no good reason we could think of to stop a player who is really excited about the goblin or worgen from being able to switch. The closest thing we came to was saying that maybe we'd lock it out for 2-3 weeks, but that didn't make sense. We didn't think it was worth it for the amount of players who wanted to switch at day one. Our feeling was if there's no bad design reason behind it, let's just go ahead and let them do it.
I think lore-wise some people may wonder how they're seeing a level 80 worgen so quickly, but a player can do Refer-A-Friend on day one and get a character up to level 80 in literally a couple of days. Refer-A-Friend gives you 300% experience across the game. This has worked well, so we're not planning to take it away, and we knew it was an option players were going to have at their disposal. If they could already use Refer-A-Friend to level up a character that quickly, we felt like the same players would have the same complaints no matter what. We figured we may as well try to please a larger amount of people by just allowing those race transfers to happen. We talked a lot about it. It's one we went over quite a bit.
ZAM: Out of everything that's coming in the expansion, what's your favorite addition? What do you look at and think, “I'm so glad we got that in”?
Stockton: The guild system is huge. I think it's a feature that's hard for players to understand how awesome it is until they're in-game. Say they're out doing quests at level 82 or level 16 and all of a sudden they hear this new ding sound and see a whole new ding effect. We have new toasts that show up in the middle of the screen. They tell you what new abilities you've earned. We have that entire system in place for guilds. The first time you see your guild level, it's going to say “new perk unlocked,” like 5% more experience for everyone across the board. I think that excitement level is really going to sink in; not only am I in this chat channel, but everything I'm doing is contributing to the guild. Those are just basics. We've got so much stuff in that system for people to unlock. I think that's a huge piece.
As far as in-game content, I've been playing WoW since early alpha. For me, seeing the old world brought up-to-date and up to a level of quality exceeding what we did in Northrend is easily my favorite thing overall. I've had so many memorable experiences in individual zones: getting ganked for the first time, or completing the Tirion Fordring questline in Eastern Plaguelands. There's all these moments that people have, and we've tried to preserve a lot of those individual moments and those things players really liked in the zones. At the same time, we've made the zones flow better and play better from a gameplay perspective. In that respect, it's such a huge thing to be able to go back through and experience that stuff in a whole new way.
ZAM: Getting back to the actual launch of Cataclysm, you're offering a digital download for the first time. You're also launching at midnight PST for the first time. Can you talk a little about that process? What do you feel are the pros and cons, such as time zone difference?
Stockton: For us, I don't think we feel like there are any cons to that situation. Obviously, time changes affect everything we do around the world. That happens when we do patches and when everybody wanted to get to the Lich King and get that first kill. Depending on where you live in the world, you're going to get a patch at a different time. There's not a lot of things we can necessarily do about that. The fact that we're able to offer digital downloads to players is great. If people don't want to get to a store and wait in line, or if they're not into midnight events, I think what we're doing is offering more choice. In WoW, that's the biggest thing we're trying to do with Cataclysm. We want to make sure there's something for everybody. I think it's just great to see the technology come to the point where we're actually able to do that. We can pre-load all the data on your machine and have it ready to go. All you need to do is put your key in and you're good to go.
ZAM: Are you taking any extra steps to ensure that players will actually be able to get in-game at midnight PST without worrying too much about server issues?
Stockton: I think we've done the most amount of preparation we've ever done to prepare for a launch. Not only because of the digital download, but because of the concept of what Cataclysm is and the fact that it's changing the world has required a massive amount of new tech. Along with that tech comes a massive amount of testing. We've bulked up our QA teams here at Blizzard. So many groups have to be involved in that; it's not just a programmer on the WoW team that's figuring out how we're going to do this background downloading and how this is all going to work. It's all the groups within Blizzard that have to contribute to that stuff. I really think it's been a company-wide effort, not just WoW-wide, to get something like that to happen.
I think it helps also that StarCraft II recently just launched and we got to see their launch happen and how everything worked for them. All of that gives us experience in making our launch as smooth as possible. I think that's why you're seeing the patches spaced out like they are. Part of the reason behind that is so we give ourselves time to fix things before we get to launch day. We don't want to end up in a situation where we're launching 4.0.3a three days before Cataclysm ships and then there's some huge issue with 4.0.3a we weren't able to find before it went live. At that point we don't have much time to deal with the situation before launch. Really, for us it's about making sure the programmers feel comfortable with the content that we're putting up and that they'll have time to deal with any issues should they arise. The player experience and the servers being up is our highest priority.
ZAM: So let's switch topics a bit and talk about dynamic in-game events. The Elemental Invasion is going on right now, and Deathwing's going to start killing players soon. People are still talking about the Scourge event to this day. Can you reflect on those events and discuss your future plans?
Stockton: We have a team that's dedicated to that stuff called the World Events Team. They're the same group that did the Scourge Invasion. We looked at that event and said, “What worked? What didn't work? Was the timing working out right? Were too many people getting ganked?” We looked at all those things. We've been talking about this Elemental Invasion event for well over a year. The implementation on this event started so long ago that I can't even remember, as far as preparing the towns and cities for what's happening was concerned. You've got four completely unique boss fights that are part of these event, not to mention all of the background information that's been happening. It's just small text that you see in the game, but people pay attention to that kind of stuff.
As far as the elemental event in general, we knew we wanted to do something that would last about a month and would have phases so it would build up over time. We wanted it to grab the attention of players because there's no way to avoid it. We like that build-up. The other big thing is we really wanted to introduce the Twilight Hammer because that's the main antagonistic group for the expansion that's working in conjunction with Deathwing. We wanted people to know who they were.
When you do a world event like this, it affects everyone in the game. We're literally shutting down Stormwind and Orgrimmar for extended periods of time when the elementals are invading. It's somewhat difficult to use the Auction House at that time, so you need to pay attention to what's happening. It really helps people get a vibe for what's going on when we do launch Cataclysm on Dec. 7. Players are going to know who Deathwing is because he may have flown over the zone and taken them out. They're going to see Twilight Hammer in the cities chanting and talking about joining their cult.
We looked at the zombie invasion and felt it was a little invasive on players who didn't want to take a part of it because there was so much of a PvP element, so we pulled back on the PvP with the elemental event, but we also went a little more into the background story. We also have boss fights that drop item level 251 gear, which is pretty sweet, although they're not going to matter in a few weeks. From our perspective, who cares? Let's give players awesome loot because this is probably the last time they'll get loot before the expansion.
ZAM: So can we expect more of these events in the future?
Stockton: Definitely. That's the same group that does all of the holiday events, but we want them to do more actual world events. We're looking into things that are dynamic and happen more on a monthly basis. We have a lot of ideas with nothing set in stone. We could maybe have an invasion that happens across Azeroth in different locations and if you take part in it, you could earn rewards. And this could happen around every month. We have ideas where we want to take the Darkmoon Faire and really blow it out. Instead of having it happen at such far intervals like it does now, we could add a lot to it and make it a lot more integrated into the gameplay for most players instead of the ones who just want the cards, trinkets and reputation. The World Events Team also did the Argent Tournament.
ZAM: WoW's sixth anniversary is happening this week. Congratulations! Do you have any favorite memories of your time with the game?
Stockton: When I got hired here at Blizzard, it was just about three months after WoW had shipped, so this was like January 2005. My guild was in Molten Core. I was raiding extremely hardcore when I got hired. I got hired as the lead dungeon designer way back then. We were raiding Molten Core and were on Ragnaros for literally like a month. I was asking Alex Afrasiabi for tips on how to deal with the sons on Ragnaros day after day, and he was like, “You're still on Ragnaros? This is weak!” I was raiding at work from my desk. I would log into my raid after work, and we ended up beating Ragnaros while I was at work. I had only been at Blizzard for a month and a half, and the first time I beat the final raid boss was here at work, so I went completely nuts. I still have tons of screenshots from that fight, but I thought that was awesome because I got hired here to work on that content, but then I ended up beating that fight sitting at my desk here at Blizzard.
ZAM: A lot of fans were a little surprised there's not going to be an anniversary pet or gift this year. What's the philosophy behind that?
Stockton: There really isn't a philosophy behind it. I think it just comes down to if we have an idea that fits the situation and it feels like its something cool, we'll do it, but I think it's the same way that we didn't do anything for WoW's two-year anniversary. We don't feel that every year necessarily means that we have to release a pet. We added an achievement, but I think we felt like so much of our energy and time had gone into Cataclysm that we kind of put everything there. We wanted to make sure the achievement was in the game, but I don't think we feel it's a requirement that we have to release a pet for every anniversary.
ZAM: We could spend all day talking about balance issues, but at the end of the day, what are your goals for Cataclysm?
Stockton: My biggest goal is to have people feel like like any piece of content they want to do should be accessible to them. I want to see the super hardcore raider role a new character and level up through the 1-60 content. I want to see the person who has 15 alts take a single character and go raiding now because we've made it accessible via 10-man and it offers the same kind of loot that you can get in 25-man raids. I want the person who's never done Arenas because he may not be able to find a team to queue up in a rated battleground and earn conquest points to buy that awesome epic-looking PvP gear. That's our over-arching goal with the expansion. We want to give an avenue for people to play the way they want and feel they can do what they want to do without any consequences.
ZAM: Is there anything else you want to add about patch 4.0.3a or Cataclysm?
Stockton: I'm just super excited for people to finally get a chance to play it. I think it's real easy to look at the beta and the amount of information on the Internet and think it looks cool, but I don't think it compares to when you finally log into the game.
Editor-in-Chief Darryl Gangloff talked with World of Warcraft's lead content designer about The Shattering patch, the upcoming Cataclysm launch, the game's sixth anniversary, and the possibility of more dynamic events!
With all signs indicating that the world-changing patch 4.0.3a will hit the live servers this week, we thought it was the perfect time to sit down with Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton to discuss The Shattering patch, the upcoming Cataclysm launch, the sixth anniversary of World of Warcraft, and more.
Stockton reflects on the design process behind the massive expansion and explains why he feels everything should run smoothly when Cataclysm is turned on at the stroke of midnight PST on Dec. 7. He also speaks at length about dynamic events like the Elemental Invasion and hints that similar world events could start appearing in WoW on a regular basis, including an expanded Darkmoon Faire. Keep reading after the jump for all of his answers!
ZAM: Cataclysm was first announced at BlizzCon 2009. What's the past year been like for you?
Cory Stockton: The past year has been busy! It's been really good though. BlizzCon this year was awesome, especially because we felt like we had just gotten to that point where we pretty much had everything wrapped up. It always feels great to go to a BlizzCon and be able to know that everyone's getting close to playing what we've been working on for so long.
It's also been a stressful year. There's been a ton of things to do and a massive amount of work for this expansion. We definitely took on more here than we felt like we've ever taken on before in an expansion cycle. The fact that we're not only delivering the 80-85 content, including new zones and dungeons, but also redoing the entire 1-60 experience has been a huge amount of work.
ZAM: With the Cataclysm launch coming up, are you more excited or stressed? Or is it a combination of the two?
Stockton: It's a little bit of everything. In my position, I touch a little bit of everything in WoW. I end up being here for hotfixes and anything that has to happen after launch that we're dealing with. I also think it's exciting because the world finally gets to see what we've been working on all this time. Granted, we've been on the beta and PTR for awhile now, but that's an extremely small number of the people that are going to get to play all this content when it finally launches. I'm definitely really excited. I think we do awesome launch events, so it's great to see everyone come out at midnight and get excited. It's great that you can download the game beforehand and have it ready to go right at midnight on Dec. 7. You can log in and play. That's something we've never been able to do before. It's really awesome to have that kind of stuff.
ZAM: Speaking of the test server, what kind of feedback have you gotten from players? What kind of changes have you made based on the feedback?
Stockton: In general, the feedback has been positive. We always have a mix of both good and bad. We've gotten a lot of feedback because we're changing so much more this time than we ever have before. I think our communication with the players has gotten better over time. It's much more active in finding out what's going on and trying to have an ear to the ground with what the players are feeling. We tried to do a lot more focus testing this time. We've had Tol Barad focus tests and rated battleground focus tests.
Raid testing just started a few weeks ago, and that really involves a lot of work from the encounter team. Not only are they reading feedback, they're watching all those raids live. We open the raid on the server and tell everyone this single boss is ready to go, and we have the entire encounter team logged in on clients on our side watching and fixing things as it's happening. That's typically the way we do things with our internal raid testing – they're fixing things in real time – but it's pretty amazing that we're able to do that nowadays off the beta server. I really just feel like we've gotten better to the point where we can get feedback quicker and turn that feedback around and get it into the game so players can experience it. The big thing with that is trying to get beta builds up quicker. We tried to have less of a distance between each individual beta build.
It's funny, because it's brand new to the players when it comes out on the beta server, but we've been looking at it for weeks. There's a lead time because when our content finishes it has to get through QA and get cleaned up, even for the beta server. We don't want something to go up that's going to give us negative feedback because of a bug. When a patch goes up we're excited to see it because we've been waiting to get feedback on something.
ZAM: The Shattering patch sets the stage for the expansion. For players who may still be confused, what are the differences between patch 4.0.3a and the launch of Cataclysm?
Stockton: There's a massive amount of content that players are getting in The Shattering patch. The main reason is because that content is available to everyone that's playing WoW. That means all the level changes from 1-60, all the new quests, the new race/class combos for everything except goblin and worgen, and all the general systems that have changed within the game. Players are going to see a lot of things that impact your normal everyday life in the patch. Clearly a lot of that systems stuff was introduced in patch 4.0.1, but with 4.0.3a you're going to see the actual world changes separate from what you saw with the systems stuff before.
The main things you'll see happening on Cataclysm launch day are the opening of the content from level 80 to 85, so players will be able to travel to Vashj'ir and Hyjal at that point. It opens up all five of the new zones and also opens up access to all of the new dungeons that become available with that. They will be available through the LFD tool so people can get right into that stuff. Players can start leveling and access stuff like Tol Barad, and our two new battlegrounds become available. Separate from that, the biggest thing would be the goblins and the worgen. At that point you can race change any existing race into a goblin or worgen, or you an actually create a new one and choose to level them up from there. The goblin and worgen come with their own completely new set of zones and experiences. Also, rated battlegrounds open up for level 85 players. People will have to level to 85 first, but they'll be available with Cataclysm.
ZAM: So 4.0.3a is the world changes, and everybody gets access to that. Players need to buy Cataclysm to create a goblin or worgen, level to 85, or enjoy the new zones and dungeons.
Stockton: That's exactly correct.
ZAM: You mentioned the race changes for goblin and worgen. Some players were a little surprised to hear they'll be able to switch on day one. What was the thought process behind that decision?
Stockton: Basically, our thought process was that after the first week or two, we really didn't think it mattered that people were going to be able to swap. Really, the only reason you wouldn't want people to swap is because it could mess with the idea of our achievements of the first player to get a worgen or goblin to level 85. We removed those achievements from the game because at that point, essentially, you're paying $35 for a race change and gaining five levels to earn that achievement. In our eyes, any achievement that's earned through paying for a race change is not worth having in the game.
Once we made the decision to remove the achievement, it made the decision to allow the race changes at day one that much simpler. At that point, there's really no good reason we could think of to stop a player who is really excited about the goblin or worgen from being able to switch. The closest thing we came to was saying that maybe we'd lock it out for 2-3 weeks, but that didn't make sense. We didn't think it was worth it for the amount of players who wanted to switch at day one. Our feeling was if there's no bad design reason behind it, let's just go ahead and let them do it.
I think lore-wise some people may wonder how they're seeing a level 80 worgen so quickly, but a player can do Refer-A-Friend on day one and get a character up to level 80 in literally a couple of days. Refer-A-Friend gives you 300% experience across the game. This has worked well, so we're not planning to take it away, and we knew it was an option players were going to have at their disposal. If they could already use Refer-A-Friend to level up a character that quickly, we felt like the same players would have the same complaints no matter what. We figured we may as well try to please a larger amount of people by just allowing those race transfers to happen. We talked a lot about it. It's one we went over quite a bit.
ZAM: Out of everything that's coming in the expansion, what's your favorite addition? What do you look at and think, “I'm so glad we got that in”?
Stockton: The guild system is huge. I think it's a feature that's hard for players to understand how awesome it is until they're in-game. Say they're out doing quests at level 82 or level 16 and all of a sudden they hear this new ding sound and see a whole new ding effect. We have new toasts that show up in the middle of the screen. They tell you what new abilities you've earned. We have that entire system in place for guilds. The first time you see your guild level, it's going to say “new perk unlocked,” like 5% more experience for everyone across the board. I think that excitement level is really going to sink in; not only am I in this chat channel, but everything I'm doing is contributing to the guild. Those are just basics. We've got so much stuff in that system for people to unlock. I think that's a huge piece.
As far as in-game content, I've been playing WoW since early alpha. For me, seeing the old world brought up-to-date and up to a level of quality exceeding what we did in Northrend is easily my favorite thing overall. I've had so many memorable experiences in individual zones: getting ganked for the first time, or completing the Tirion Fordring questline in Eastern Plaguelands. There's all these moments that people have, and we've tried to preserve a lot of those individual moments and those things players really liked in the zones. At the same time, we've made the zones flow better and play better from a gameplay perspective. In that respect, it's such a huge thing to be able to go back through and experience that stuff in a whole new way.
ZAM: Getting back to the actual launch of Cataclysm, you're offering a digital download for the first time. You're also launching at midnight PST for the first time. Can you talk a little about that process? What do you feel are the pros and cons, such as time zone difference?
Stockton: For us, I don't think we feel like there are any cons to that situation. Obviously, time changes affect everything we do around the world. That happens when we do patches and when everybody wanted to get to the Lich King and get that first kill. Depending on where you live in the world, you're going to get a patch at a different time. There's not a lot of things we can necessarily do about that. The fact that we're able to offer digital downloads to players is great. If people don't want to get to a store and wait in line, or if they're not into midnight events, I think what we're doing is offering more choice. In WoW, that's the biggest thing we're trying to do with Cataclysm. We want to make sure there's something for everybody. I think it's just great to see the technology come to the point where we're actually able to do that. We can pre-load all the data on your machine and have it ready to go. All you need to do is put your key in and you're good to go.
ZAM: Are you taking any extra steps to ensure that players will actually be able to get in-game at midnight PST without worrying too much about server issues?
Stockton: I think we've done the most amount of preparation we've ever done to prepare for a launch. Not only because of the digital download, but because of the concept of what Cataclysm is and the fact that it's changing the world has required a massive amount of new tech. Along with that tech comes a massive amount of testing. We've bulked up our QA teams here at Blizzard. So many groups have to be involved in that; it's not just a programmer on the WoW team that's figuring out how we're going to do this background downloading and how this is all going to work. It's all the groups within Blizzard that have to contribute to that stuff. I really think it's been a company-wide effort, not just WoW-wide, to get something like that to happen.
I think it helps also that StarCraft II recently just launched and we got to see their launch happen and how everything worked for them. All of that gives us experience in making our launch as smooth as possible. I think that's why you're seeing the patches spaced out like they are. Part of the reason behind that is so we give ourselves time to fix things before we get to launch day. We don't want to end up in a situation where we're launching 4.0.3a three days before Cataclysm ships and then there's some huge issue with 4.0.3a we weren't able to find before it went live. At that point we don't have much time to deal with the situation before launch. Really, for us it's about making sure the programmers feel comfortable with the content that we're putting up and that they'll have time to deal with any issues should they arise. The player experience and the servers being up is our highest priority.
ZAM: So let's switch topics a bit and talk about dynamic in-game events. The Elemental Invasion is going on right now, and Deathwing's going to start killing players soon. People are still talking about the Scourge event to this day. Can you reflect on those events and discuss your future plans?
Stockton: We have a team that's dedicated to that stuff called the World Events Team. They're the same group that did the Scourge Invasion. We looked at that event and said, “What worked? What didn't work? Was the timing working out right? Were too many people getting ganked?” We looked at all those things. We've been talking about this Elemental Invasion event for well over a year. The implementation on this event started so long ago that I can't even remember, as far as preparing the towns and cities for what's happening was concerned. You've got four completely unique boss fights that are part of these event, not to mention all of the background information that's been happening. It's just small text that you see in the game, but people pay attention to that kind of stuff.
As far as the elemental event in general, we knew we wanted to do something that would last about a month and would have phases so it would build up over time. We wanted it to grab the attention of players because there's no way to avoid it. We like that build-up. The other big thing is we really wanted to introduce the Twilight Hammer because that's the main antagonistic group for the expansion that's working in conjunction with Deathwing. We wanted people to know who they were.
When you do a world event like this, it affects everyone in the game. We're literally shutting down Stormwind and Orgrimmar for extended periods of time when the elementals are invading. It's somewhat difficult to use the Auction House at that time, so you need to pay attention to what's happening. It really helps people get a vibe for what's going on when we do launch Cataclysm on Dec. 7. Players are going to know who Deathwing is because he may have flown over the zone and taken them out. They're going to see Twilight Hammer in the cities chanting and talking about joining their cult.
We looked at the zombie invasion and felt it was a little invasive on players who didn't want to take a part of it because there was so much of a PvP element, so we pulled back on the PvP with the elemental event, but we also went a little more into the background story. We also have boss fights that drop item level 251 gear, which is pretty sweet, although they're not going to matter in a few weeks. From our perspective, who cares? Let's give players awesome loot because this is probably the last time they'll get loot before the expansion.
ZAM: So can we expect more of these events in the future?
Stockton: Definitely. That's the same group that does all of the holiday events, but we want them to do more actual world events. We're looking into things that are dynamic and happen more on a monthly basis. We have a lot of ideas with nothing set in stone. We could maybe have an invasion that happens across Azeroth in different locations and if you take part in it, you could earn rewards. And this could happen around every month. We have ideas where we want to take the Darkmoon Faire and really blow it out. Instead of having it happen at such far intervals like it does now, we could add a lot to it and make it a lot more integrated into the gameplay for most players instead of the ones who just want the cards, trinkets and reputation. The World Events Team also did the Argent Tournament.
ZAM: WoW's sixth anniversary is happening this week. Congratulations! Do you have any favorite memories of your time with the game?
Stockton: When I got hired here at Blizzard, it was just about three months after WoW had shipped, so this was like January 2005. My guild was in Molten Core. I was raiding extremely hardcore when I got hired. I got hired as the lead dungeon designer way back then. We were raiding Molten Core and were on Ragnaros for literally like a month. I was asking Alex Afrasiabi for tips on how to deal with the sons on Ragnaros day after day, and he was like, “You're still on Ragnaros? This is weak!” I was raiding at work from my desk. I would log into my raid after work, and we ended up beating Ragnaros while I was at work. I had only been at Blizzard for a month and a half, and the first time I beat the final raid boss was here at work, so I went completely nuts. I still have tons of screenshots from that fight, but I thought that was awesome because I got hired here to work on that content, but then I ended up beating that fight sitting at my desk here at Blizzard.
ZAM: A lot of fans were a little surprised there's not going to be an anniversary pet or gift this year. What's the philosophy behind that?
Stockton: There really isn't a philosophy behind it. I think it just comes down to if we have an idea that fits the situation and it feels like its something cool, we'll do it, but I think it's the same way that we didn't do anything for WoW's two-year anniversary. We don't feel that every year necessarily means that we have to release a pet. We added an achievement, but I think we felt like so much of our energy and time had gone into Cataclysm that we kind of put everything there. We wanted to make sure the achievement was in the game, but I don't think we feel it's a requirement that we have to release a pet for every anniversary.
ZAM: We could spend all day talking about balance issues, but at the end of the day, what are your goals for Cataclysm?
Stockton: My biggest goal is to have people feel like like any piece of content they want to do should be accessible to them. I want to see the super hardcore raider role a new character and level up through the 1-60 content. I want to see the person who has 15 alts take a single character and go raiding now because we've made it accessible via 10-man and it offers the same kind of loot that you can get in 25-man raids. I want the person who's never done Arenas because he may not be able to find a team to queue up in a rated battleground and earn conquest points to buy that awesome epic-looking PvP gear. That's our over-arching goal with the expansion. We want to give an avenue for people to play the way they want and feel they can do what they want to do without any consequences.
ZAM: Is there anything else you want to add about patch 4.0.3a or Cataclysm?
Stockton: I'm just super excited for people to finally get a chance to play it. I think it's real easy to look at the beta and the amount of information on the Internet and think it looks cool, but I don't think it compares to when you finally log into the game.