World of Warcraft''s Wrath of the Lich King expansion is sure to usher in an epic new era in the virtual world forged by Blizzard. One of the new things in this expansion is the implementation of Achievements that will give players bragging rights. Lead game designer Jeffrey Kaplan tells us a little something about it in the full article up ahead.

As if it just turned flavor of the month yesterday, World of Warcraft continues to expand its user base to millions of gamers worldwide. Blizzard's venture to the MMORPG space has proven to be extremely successful, and now it has built a community bigger than some real world countries. The question is, will Blizzard broaden its horizons? WoW lead designer Jeffrey Kaplan sat down with CVG to talk about the company's future.

Before the MMORPG craze, Blizzard was known for widely popular titles like Diablo 2 and StarCraft. The company, according to Kaplan, is "interested in further exploring the MMO space." Whether it'll be Diablo Online or WoW 2, we do not know. As of now, there's nothing official from Blizzard about any MMO game in development.

Blizzard is "definitely looking towards the future as well," said Kaplan. With the smashing success World of Warcraft is experiencing though, it's not likely to see some major migration from one world to another anytime soon.

CVG recently scored an interview with Blizzard's Jeffrey Kaplan and Sam Didier. Both gave out some pretty juicy bits of info about Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion for World of Warcraft.

While the spotlight is currently on the Death Knight Hero class, the base classes in WoW will also be getting another set of spells and abilities as well as talent points.

The new expansion will also bring its own share of new instances. Kaplan revealed that Blizzard will begin progression in the ten-person raid game for players.

Those looking for a bigger raid can also look forward to 25-person raids and the heroic dungeons. According to Kaplan, the raids will be bigger, "meaning more like Naxxramas with lots of bosses rather than the smaller ones like Tempest Keep."

WoW players who prefer to do quests by themselves will also get more daily quests and end-game content. To lessen the repetitiveness of the daily quests, Blizzard is also working on implementing randomization. PvP fans, on the other hand, will also get more incentive in the form of a new arena as well as new arena rewards.

Here's more news about Wrath of the Lich King, the next expansion for Blizzard's World of Warcraft MMORPG, straight from the Leipzig Games Convention. If you're a long-time Warcraft fanatic, you'll probably be happy to hear that Northrend will be "a little bit darker and a little bit more Hardcore", bringing the popular MMO's vibe closer to that in the original series that spawned it.

Speaking to video game news website CVG, lead game designer Jeffrey Kaplan promised a return to the more "hardcore" roots of World of Warcraft. "It's kind of a reaction to how high fantasy we got for the last expansion - going to space and some of the stuff that strayed from the feel of Warcraft and some of that hardcore fantasy vibe," said Kaplan.

Kaplan pointed to the new Death Knight class as an example of how the expansion will do just that. "The Death Knight armour is very dark with spikes and skulls, and then we have the 15-foot tall Vikings who are going to be very prevalent in this cold environment."

The MMO Gamer recently had a chat with Jeffrey Kaplan, lead designer for Blizzard's World of Warcraft, and he brought up a rather interesting idea about the future of one of the video game's least visited dungeons: Naxxramas.

When asked about raids, and about how it seems the game is catering to a small, vocal minority, rather than the majority of casual players, Kaplan cited Karazhan as one of the most popular instances in the game, and mentioned the possibility of seeing Naxxramas as the Karazhan of Northrend in the future. Said Kaplan,

So what I want to do in Northrend is to take Naxxramas in all of its glory, scale it down to the 25 man raid size, and then take the difficulty and retune it - obviously we’d tune for level 80, it would no longer be tuned for level 60, since that would be a little silly and it wouldn’t be a lot of fun for people at that point—but I want to put rewards in there that are very exciting to level 80 players, but make it the entry-level raid, very accessible, tune the encounters so that there’s something for everybody to do, and let the majority get a chance to see that content that they hadn’t seen before.

The idea of resurrecting Naxxramas for the expansion seems like a great idea. Lore-wise, it gives us the perfect excuse to pick up a new and improved Ashbringer as well as make some death knight-related quests. Other than that, it lets us experience some old-world content in a new-world setting, which is logically possible since Naxx is more or less a floating necropolis in the sky.

In any case, if you want to read or listen to the full interview with Jeffrey Kaplan, feel free to check the read link below.

Blizzard Lead Designer for World of Warcraft Jeffrey Kaplan was recently interviewed by online site WarCry. One of the many interesting points raised by the designer is the planned addition of more ground mounts as well as aerial mounts in the future. He added that Blizzard is still weighing its options on how to make these available.

Kaplan then went on and talk about in-game world events for WoW. According to him, they definitely have plans to do more world event content and they certainly have plenty more exciting ideas yet to be implemented. Speaking of ideas, it is imminent in the latest instance portals that Blizzard is giving a lot of attention to Trolls.

That doesn't mean that the designers are running out of ideas. Kaplan admitted that they are really focusing on the race, "Trolls are a core part of Warcraft lore and are one of the oldest races in Warcraft history. They have a lot of rich and exciting material to draw from, so naturally, this is reflected when we create dungeons and other content for the game".

Kaplan further explained that all are essentially the same regardless of the number of players needed to complete such. The designer shared,

We don't have a vastly different approach in our dungeon-creation process. The same basic elements that make a 5-person instance great - pacing, story, varied creatures, varied abilities, punctuating boss fights, good itemization, accessibility, and understandability - will also make for a great 25-person experience.

Lastly, when asked about the recent issues concerning getting keyed and attuned for many Heroic instances, Kaplan said that it's finding the balance between a sense of progression and keeping them not so complicated,

When you group with people in a Heroic instance, you know that they have a certain level of understanding when it comes to that particular dungeon because they needed to do it a few times. As time goes on, we'll continue to tweak and balance the attunement processes in response to player feedback and our own observations.

 

This comes as a big surprise to everyone who loves to raid, but according to a post from Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), Blizzard lead designer for world design, the attunement requirements for entering the Serpentshrine Caverns and Tempest Keep have been lifted.

Here's what Tigole had to say on the matter in a post on the forums:

After a lot of thought and deliberation, we’ve decided to remove the attunement requirements to enter Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep: The Eye. While many of our attunements in the Burning Crusade have been good progression checks, a few of the attunements have turned out to cause unnecessary stress on guilds either doing the content or attempting to do the content. With Black Temple and Battle for Mount Hyjal thriving, we want to encourage (rather than prevent) new guilds and raid groups to attempt Serpentshrine and TK. We are going to leave the current attunement quests in the game so that players can still engage in the challenge and the lore of those quests should they choose to. At a later point, we are considering adding a final reward step to those quests as well (that way those who have already completed them would not miss out on a *new* reward).

We’re listening to feedback from you guys constantly and your opinions are important to us. We want this game to be the best possible MMO experience for our players.

Enjoy Serpentshrine and Tempest Keep =)

Enjoy it indeed. The removal of SSC and TK attunements as a needed process also removes one of those stressful barriers keeping guilds from progressing in the game. More importantly, it opens up the two instances to more casual players, and so long as they have the needed gear to survive, they can also experience the same joys raiders have been finding in their time there as well.

We're sure a lot of World of Warcraft players are brimming with questions to ask the Blizzard developers. Now instead of shooting the messengers - A.K.A. the Forum CMs, they can chat with the developers directly through WoW Stratics' IRC.

Lead designers Jeffrey Kaplan and Tom Chilton will be in attendance on the said event which will be held at the House of Commons channel (#StraticsHoC) on Tuesday, May 15, at 3 P.M. PDT. The Stratics team will compile the questions 48 hours ahead of time and will filter out spam (or not valid) and abusive questions. Hopefully this will be carefully organized so as many questions as possible may be answered.

And Stratics will be posting the log of the chat on the site for the benefit of those who can't attend the event. So, you got a question for the devs? Submit away.