E3 Look Forward: World of Warcraft
Blizzard Entertainment (developer) / Vivendi (publisher)
Article by Dana Massey
Into Zul'Aman you go, Sonny!To say that World of Warcraft has a deathgrip on the MMO genre is an understatement. Quite honestly, they transcend it. This week they announced their 9 millionth subscriber worldwide. As a sign of their dominance, they were able to bring a content patch to E3 and get significant ink. The show afforded us the chance to see Zul'Aman, the new 10 man raid dungeon.
The new content, which is part of their regular 3-4 month patch cycle, is roughly equivalent to Karazhan in level (70+) and as mentioned, is intended for 10 players at a time. It marks the return of the Forest Trolls, sworn enemies of the Blood Elves and is located in the Ghostlands. The natural bent of the enemies allowed them to make another epic, outdoor dungeon, which means that the hardcore dungeon crawlers can use Zul'Aman to get some much needed Vitamin D.
In an effort to appeal to a broader subset of their players, Blizzard not only made it for a smaller party, but also designed the dungeon so that it could be completed in chunks. Upon entering, players can go in any one of four directions. Each one pits them against a series of monsters, themed after one of the four "Gods", who are in reality the transfigured lieutenants of Zul'jin. They are, in no particular order:
The Bear (Loas): This area contains, you guessed it, a bunch of bears. At the end, you meet Loas, who is, a big evil giant bear. Some of those creatures actually are trolls who ride bears into battle. Good news, that bear is a new mount the patch introduces.
The Eagle (Akil'Zon): The eagle area, not shockingly, includes an Eagle theme. It also has perhaps the best, most unintentionally hilarious boss monster ever created. I thought he looked like the fighting Chicken-man from Family Guy, personally, although the name Big Bird was also bandied about.
The Lynx (Halazzi): The ambiguous cat-dogs return in this area, as players fight through the followers of Halazzi.
The Dragonhawk (Jan'Alai): Of course, they had to leave nature a little bit. This area is the one we saw in most depth. More on it later.
Each area is intended to take 45 minutes to an hour for a good group. Once complete, a torch is lit at the main crossroads, which signifies an area complete by the group. Light all four torches and the group gains access to the first of two final bosses. These two encounters must be done in one swoop, unlike the first four. First, players fight the Witch Doctor who helped Zul'jin transfigure (and it turns out imprison) his lieutenants in their animal forms.
After the Witch Doctor comes Zul'jin himself. The art for Zul'jin was not complete, but the encounter is already scripted. Using a place holder evil bad guy, we watched as they fought. Each of the four lieutenant's ethereal shades was on hand to witness. As Zul'jin went down in power, he'd transform into each one in turn. Then, at a certain point, he'd skip to the next one, before finally going back to his own form just prior to his ultimate defeat. It will be fun to see how they model this famous Warcraft character.
Akil'Zon's Eagle AreaIn Loas's bear area, Blizzard showed off some light puzzles that should make the dungeon crawl a bit more fun. As the players engage the enemies outside the final area, one of the enemies breaks for it and tries to ring a gong. This brings reinforcements and will continue to do so until someone stops them. If the group is really clever, they can actually intercept and defeat the gong-ringer before any reinforcements come.
What about faction, you ask? Well, they made this a non-faction dungeon expressly to liberate their content designers for this kind of innovation. In a more traditional dungeon, people would practically buff the gong-ringer to get more faction. Obviously, that's an exploit. This approach gives them more variety in gameplay.
So if not for faction, what's the replay value of Zul'Aman? This time they're going with a timed dungeon. The faster a group can kill each boss and rescue his hostages, the better the loot. Blizzard fully expects this to become a competitive sport.
In the Dragonhawk area, we got to see an example of Blizzard's reputation for quirky gameplay. As our demo hero rounded a corner, he came upon four Forest Trolls playing keep away with a disgruntled Dragonhawk's egg. It was an absurd sight. Then, when they noticed they had company, not only did the five of them attack, but the troll with the egg actually threw it at the player. Best yet, whomever it hits will find an egg in their backpack. It's little touches like this that give Blizzard its solid reputation. It would be easy to make them just stand there and drool menacingly, but that's just not their style.
The final encounter with Jan'Alai is also a puzzle of sorts. The big creature stands on its pedestal ready to fight, but there's a catch: to the left and the right are banks of eggs. Decoration right? Wrong! Part way through the battle, a minion runs up on stage and starts hatching the little devils. Then, the group needs to contend with a steady stream of Dragonhawks along with the boss monster.
There are a couple strategies: The group can kill the hatcher or they can deal with the stream. Be careful though, once Jan'Alai gets low on health he heads to both sides and frees the unhatched in a single wave, a move that might turn sure victory into agonizing defeat.
Blizzard also did a good job on foreshadowing. In one fork of the dungeon, the boss monster actually comes down from the start. They've rigged it so the group can never reach him before the final battle, but he's always there, just out of reach. He's always there though to throw people into battle and run away once they get themselves killed. It's a nice touch that lends a sense of urgency to the adventure, and given that it's a race against time, that's not a bad thing.
The dungeon's modular nature means a group can take a break and reconvene between chunks. This is a large four to six hour gameplay experience, but for those with jobs and families to attend to, it's really four 45 minute to 1 hour chunks and then one, slightly more involved raid at the end. A theme from the MMO community this E3 was their desire to open up epic content to more players, since statistics show a vast majority of players never can experience it. Zul'Aman is a good step in that direction for World of Warcraft.
Aside from the dungeon, Blizzard also discussed their plans for integrated voice chat. This service is free of charge, unlike most other MMOs that charge a premium fee, and works just like traditional text chat (in terms of channels and such), but with voice. They hope the quality will be as good as Ventrillo and rave about its quality during internal testing, but it remains to be seen how it will hold up when exposed to their millions of subscribers. They also mentioned that they hope to look at things like voice fonts (distortion that makes the user's voice sound a bit like the creature they're playing), but for now, they're focused on the basics. If you're like me and prefer not to do voice in games, don't worry, it's very much optional. And parents needn't worry, there are controls for them to make sure little Johnny doesn't get any premature anatomy lessons.
The torches light when a section is complete.Guild banks are another feature on the way. They are just what one would assume, a communal home for guilds. Leaders can of course apply a full range of permissions onto players. Each "bag" within the bank can have a specific ruleset, so if for example the guild makes a "newbie armor bag", they can give everyone full deposit and withdrawal privileges, but if they only one their top generals to have access to the coin, just throw it in another bag.
We were also told about a philosophical change at Blizzard, namely logical loot. Previously, the loot tables were somewhat random. They're not going back and fixing years of content, but now, players can expect creatures to drop things that one would expect. If that bad guy is holding a big, shiny axe, then odds are his loot is a big shiny axe. This is a general goal and a monumental exercise in inter-departmental organization (they need to make sure the artists and loot guys play nice with each other), but one they seem rather committed to. It's a small touch, but it sure beats wolves coughing up fishing poles!
Blizzard believes they're about half way through the process on this particular update, which means it could be out in the next couple months. The content's all there and a vast majority of the art, which is not an insignificant challenge given the number of brand new creatures this dungeon demanded. However, as per usual, they're going to spend a lot of time testing the heck out of it to ensure they maintain their reputation for polished content.
http://wow.warcry.com/news/view/75268
