World of Warcraft Interview

There’s a hefty interview with Blizzard’s Tom Chilton at Games On Net, during which the World of Warcraft lead designer answers questions about game balance, the new dungeon finder system, changes being introduced in Cataclysm, an upcoming overhaul to the in-game voice chat system, and much more.

Freeride: The new LFG dungeon system improved the game for a lot of players drastically, is the new LFG system going to be turned off when Cataclysm is first released so that rather than people just dungeon grinding to 85, they experience the new quests and environment?

Tom Chilton: No we’re definitely not going to turn it off when Cataclysm comes out. The way we’re going to encourage people to do quests is to make sure that the quest experience feels very rewarding. We still feel that solo questing should be the fastest way to level up, so we’re going to try to make sure that remains the case. And even though doing dungeons should be a viable way to level up – and we definitely want people to experience the dungeons while they’re levelling up at least once if we can – we don’t plan on just repeatedly doing dungeons to be the most effective way to level up.

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Talamur: With such a positive response to the introduction of the Death Knight do you now feel that the three main class functions (tanking, dps and healing) are well-proportioned enough not to warrant any new classes in the future?

Tom Chilton: No, not really. I still think there’s room for new classes in the future and it’s likely I would say that at some point in some expansion we’ll do that again. But it won’t be just because we have a need for more tanks, or healers, or dps. Even though that helps us make that decision, it isn’t the only thing that makes that decision. You can definitely make the argument from the standpoint that people are using the new dungeon finder system that there seems to still be a shortage of tanks and healers relative to dps. I could definitely hear the argument that we need more of those types of classes.