Blizzard has released the twelfth edition of its BlizzCast, which this time focusses on the Warcraft franchise, where it came from and where it’s going.
This BlizzCast comes in two parts featuring some of the people involved with Warcraft from the beginning; Chris Metzen, Rob Pardo, Samwise Didier, J Allen Brack, Tom Chilton, Jeffrey Kaplan and community reps Nethaera and Kaune. Here’s a snip:
“Chris Metzen: …Just all of these new ideas that popped the real nature of Outland, and what’s going on up there in Naaru, and crazy crystal space ships, blah blah blah. But in so much as we had this plan for a sequence of expansion sets, newer, bolder ideas popped to the surface too. I can tell you the Cataclysm expansion set we announced wasn’t necessarily part of the product plan four years ago. But as things moved and shifted in flight, we kind of got done with Northrend and felt how satisfying that was. It was just this idea that started to percolate, and you know what? We needed to do this now and I do not want to put it off because some of these other ideas can stand to come later right? But this one feels like the right chapter right now. There’s not an iron clad plan. I think that there’s room for flex, but I think that the stories and themes that we have yet to chase down just get increasingly epic. That’s something that’s just really fun and energizing about the franchise. Sky’s the limit. Like Sam said, we can finally substantiate any fiction that we want to chase at some level – still a long ways to go in terms of the ideas that are waiting around the corner.
Rob Pardo: Well, I think it’s fair to say that there’s still stuff out there that’s been in the lore that is going to make it into World of Warcraft one of these days, like the area of Nazjatar or the Emerald Dream. Those are not necessarily going to be in the expansion or the expansion after that, but we’re eventually going to visit them and really explore that more.
Chris Metzen: Will we see actual titans one day. Will we ever get to the truth and origin of the old gods? There’s all sorts of meta-themes that’s all rich fertile ground and we will get there. It’s just kind of fun gauging how and when.”
Check out the full and lengthy BlizzCast here.
Published: Dec 9, 2009 11:47 am