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. 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.

Blizzard's J. Allen Brack and Tom Chilton are reiterating that World of Warcraft will not be heading for consoles. As if echoing Hideo Kojima's words yesterday about a 360 port of MGS4 being impossible, Brack and Chilton say that WoW was just basically not intended for the PS3 nor 360 to begin with. In Chilton's words, "it's a square peg round hole thing."

In a recent interview with Blizzard's J. Allen Brack and Tom Chilton, they squashed every console gamers' hopes of seeing the highly acclaimed MMO,World of Warcraft, boxed neatly inside a console. Also discussed were several other topics regarding the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King, as well as other new content for the game.

The video clips below were taken during the recent BlizzCon 07 event showing a PvP panel consisting of Blizzard's lead designers for World of Warcraft. As much as it is informative, some players took offense with what the designers said about the Warlocks class especially the comments that came from Tom Chilton.

To make the long and twisted story short, players believe that Chilton said that no tweaks will be given to the Warlocks even though they are OP in 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3, and as long as they aren't over represented in 5v5. Tom Chilton (logged on as Kalgan at the official WoW Forums) said that words are being put into his mouth.

So who's telling the truth? We decided to embed the videos below and let you decide four yourselves.

See the rest of the videos after the jump!

The announcement of the newest expansion for World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King, sent many a gamer into spasms of joy. One of the biggest things that was announced was the introduction of the first hero class: Death Knight.

Designed to be both a tank and a damage-dealer, this class can be attained at level 80 by going through a chain quest. Abilities will be based on three schools of runes which are selected by the Death Knight beforehand.

WoW lead designer Tom Chilton was recently interviewed by the Shack News regarding the new class and he had a lot of little tidbits regarding the class and its implementation.

Transitioning into the Death Knight class was one major topic that he discussed. One of the plans was to simply allow each class to just expand in the same method talent trees were handled. This idea did not push through, Chilton pointed out, because a doubling or tripling of character classes could have thrown the entire game out of balance.

Another idea the developers explored was to have the players convert their existing character into the Death Knight class. Chilton stated that this would have been a very awkward process since players would have to choose between keeping their original character class and being a Death Knight.

It really looks like Blizzard put in a lot of time in designing their characters and gameplay balance. When this goes live, there will be more than a few players ascending into the Death Knight class. However, before you do that, Chilton gave word that there might be more hero classes in the pipeline. If you want to see the full interview, feel free to click on our read link. More updates as they happen.

  

A lot of people have been busy twiddling their thumbs as they wait for Patch 2.1 for Blizzard's World of Warcraft. The Stratics chat with developers Tom Chilton (handle: Kalgan) and Jeffery Kaplan (handle: Tigol) went really well and they answered a few of the pressing questions that were posed.

We can't cover the entire chat, but we can bring you some highlights of the whole thing. Here are a few questions that the were answered by the two developers that really caught our attention. Oh, for those who don't want to bother going through the entire interview, it was mentioned that the 2.1 patch will be going live this May 23.

Q: What do you think of the current state of melee DPS in end-game raids? Since the expansion, bosses and mobs alike have gained more mitigation then before, causing melee DPS to be considerably lower then caster DPS on average.
Kalgan: I think that pre 2.1 melee raid dps needs some help. However, after 2.1 it's quite possible that melee dps will be where it needs to be after the glancing blow changes. From the testing we've seen the glancing blow change makes a very meaningful difference. However, I don't really think the current state of melee vs spell raid dps has much to do with the mitigation values on the raid targets, I think it has more to do with mages
Tigole: We're also a whole lot less punishing on melee dps in 2.1

Q: What is the design status of Arena speculating, and will there ever be a chance to earn gold from arena games?
Kalgan: I do like the idea of gambling on arena battles personally, but it isn't something we have in the works right now.

Q: With the current status of raid progression and the corresponding attunements, it is becoming more and more clear to many people that their chances of beating (or even seeing) Black Temple or Hyjal before the next expansion is out are quite low. Only the most hardcore of the hardcore, even among raiders, seem to be making significant progress. Are there any plans to making BC raiding somewhat less unforgivable?
Tigole: Yes, tomorrow, first thing in the morning 2.1.0 will go live and I think there are *many* significant changes to help with raid progression issues. If raid progression is still a problem after 2.1.0, we'll make further changes. We WANT people doing the content, we want the encounters to get beat, i'd rather have fun, beaten encounters then a raid game full of mysteries that no one is going to see, plus all your epics are getting a big buff tomorrow. if all that fails, there is always STARCRAFT 2 omg?

 

For those who have questions for the developers of Blizzard's World of Warcraft, this is the perfect opportunity to be heard. Nethaera has recently given word that Lead designers Tom Chilton and Jeffery Kaplan will be available via Stratics to answer some questions on May 21 (moved from May 15) from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. PDT. The details are pretty much the same though, but in case you missed our previous article on this, here's a recap.

This won't be an open forum sort of thing as Stratics question takers will be collecting queries from players 48 hours before the scheduled chat. During the chat no questions will be accepted so don't expect to just be able to pop in and ask some. Attendees will be given the chance to chat with one another via a separate channel: #worldofwarcraft IRC room.

This is pretty big news since we're sure that a lot of people from the WoW community have a loads of questions that they feel need to be addressed by the developers. If you're interested, be sure to click on our read link which will take you to the Stratics WoW site for more details

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.

The World of Warcraft has since moved from the world of set raiding roles and builds to hybrids. Kyle Phillips from Amped eSports raised some interesting points regarding this.

Is it possible for one to do raiding and PvP with the same character? Raiding requires sustained DPS (for melee characters) while PvP requires burst DPS (for the short and sweet quick draw type of PvP). Players basically can't spec for both since what makes you stronger in raiding doesn't make you as strong in PvP. Sometimes, a wrong spec can cripple you in one aspect or another. What do you do when you want to do both? Re-spec every other day? Or roll a new character with a build specifically for PvE/Raiding or PvP?

According to Phillips, Blizzard devs are not addressing the issue as anything serious. He cited a recent interview with Blizzard Lead Designer Tom Chilton who said, "We don't see this as being a divisive factor between those who prefer PvE and those who prefer PvP. It's just another way for players to be able to engage in PvP in a new way".

Phillips offers a solution. Add a function that would allow players to toggle between two specs, possibly one for PvE/raiding and the other for PvP. That suggestion would actually be great for priests and shamans so they could spec as healbots for raiding and stack up DPS for PvP. Same is true for all the other classes (except the rogues who have embraced DPS completely). The question is: would it be feasible to be implemented?

We'll hopefully see that in the long run, as more and more players are struggling to the endgame of the World of Warcraft. Should Blizzard change the talent mechanics? What do you think?

Whitney Butts of WarCry was able to interview World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade lead designer, Tom Chilton, to ask about Blizzard's review of the game's progress since launch. Oh yes, and all of the other unsolved issues that still plague players.

Blizzard designed the Outlands with flying mounts in mind. The advantages of flying was obvious: you could avoid having to go through winding paths that take time to traverse. But it also introduced a chance to put different types of encounters in-flight, which could only be triggered once a player had a mount and was using it.

Raiding requirements were reduced, so that players didn't have to bear the atrocities that came with recruiting members for raids. The maximum count now stands at 25, but you can always show off with tougher members and fewer numbers.

The reduction of members meant that each member would have to do a little bit more to succeed in the raid, and it also means lesser tracking drags on healers and Enhancement shammies.

The farming of raid dungeons isn't an issue right now with Blizzard; they are pretty sure the challenges they placed for each one makes every raid an effort - not a breeze. But each should be satisfying enough that players who just learned the raid course could be proud of what they have accomplished.

The extended downtime for the full transition from World of Warcraft to Burning Crusade was necessary for Blizzard to set up the launch of BC. Of course, there were issues that did sneak up, but Blizzard believes that the whole move was better than they had hope. Because of the big launch stunt they pulled to bring the expansion out, people half-expected them to trip head-over-heels. They say they haven't and even managed a smooth launch.

Unlike before, classes will no longer be reviewed. Well, more specifically, they will not be reviewed collectively. Balance changes or improvements will be made once they see the changes are needed. Otherwise, they won't touch a thing. They are eyeing player feedback and monitoring class gameplay to see what areas can be improved.

Blizzard's thoughts on the best of The Burning Crusade? Flying mounts, Arena PvP and a whole new ladder season this time around, are what makes them proud of BC. The ladder helps competitive players measure themselves against others, but at the same time allows lower ranked players know who to gun for to rise up. The Arena wasn't made to become a choice between PvE and PvP, just another way to enjoy PvP.

Players don't have to purchase BC to have fun with BC players, even with the Draenei and Blood Elves milling around. Azeroth denizens can still purchase certain things usually available in Outland. Everyone shares the benefits of the talent point increase. And BC players can still go back to Azeroth.