The reason why you're not having fantastical dogfights in World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King right now lies in the physics. As in, it wasn't polished enough. That's what WoW's Tom Chilton revealed in the latest Blizzard podcast.

If you look at a lot of games that have done flight simulation, there is a lot of care that goes into giving you that sensation of flying by having the world tilt and stuff like that so it feels a little less mechanical, feels a little bit more alive or more natural.

So one of the things that we have kind of tasked ourselves with doing is figuring out how to polish that, how to improve on our vehicle physics, there’s still a lot of vehicle physics tech that we want to get in that didn’t make it into the first pass of Lich King.

Even though it may have been cut, aerial combat may still find its way into WoW someday, as Chilton also said that it's currently on Blizzard's to do list.

The same podcast also featured senior Diablo III artist Mike Nicholson, who admitted that the new UI for Diablo 3 drew a lot of inspiration from WoW's UI. Oh really? I hadn't noticed and am now so overcome with surprise at this unexpected revelation!

 

Seriously though, the UI still retains popular elements from the Diablo series while throwing in some WoW staples into the mix. One thing that will definitely catch fans' eyes - for better or worse - is the inclusion of WoW's colorful icons. Here's Nicholson:

I love the WoW icons. And y’know what we’re trying to do is see, OK, what works about the WoW icons? They’re illustrative; is there a way to try to maybe bridge the gap? You know what worked about the more symbolic DII icons, and what works with the WoW icons, and trying to find a way to put the two together.

Another new thing is the addition of expandable bags. This reminds me more of the D&D staple Bags of Holding which appeared in Neverwinter Nights than anything in WoW really. Nicholson again:

You'll get bags and they will expand, you know kind of like in WoW, except you're not going to open up separate windows. You'll start off your inventory with say…you know, eight slots, right, and then you'll get a new bag and that has ten, so two more slots will open up within that tab, but you'll never have multiple tabs. Like you won't have two or three 'large' tabs.

It might sound like I've been taking a few jabs at Diablo III, but make no mistake - this is a day one purchase for me. Now if only I had some idea of when they'll release it. Keep checking back for more updates.

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