MMOGamer has a 3-pages interview with Jeffrey “Tigole” Kaplan to discuss Wrath of the Lich King. Tigole answered questions concerning inflation, itemization, dual raiding system (10 and 25-players raid), Deathknight in PvP, and resilience.
Ten Ton Hammer and Curse were there along with MMOGamer to pitch questions at Tigole at the Blizzard Headquarters in Irvine. This interview is available as a transcript and as a streaming audio you can listen to.
Ten Ton Hammer: How are you guys handling Death Knight PvP? It seems like a pretty—I wouldn’t say overpowered class—but, you’re introducing a whole new system in there with the runes and that sort of thing. How are you guys blending Death Knight into the current classes, as far as PvP goes?
Jeffrey Kaplan: I was thinking of that when we were watching Tom and Lee do the demo, “Man, this is going to freak everybody out when he shows them the pull towards ability, or the Chains of Ice, or Death and Decay with the fear going off…” If you can’t see the arena implications behind some of that…
But, even if we hadn’t introduced the Death Knight in Wrath of the Lich King—we have the talent panes disabled on the machines in there, but, if we were to show you the talent panes right now for the remaining classes, and the new abilities that they’re getting, the class balance, as you know it today, is going to change pretty drastically without the introduction of the new class.
We’re adding ten new talent points, new tiers across all three of the trees across every class, adding new core abilities, and retuning old abilities. Take a look at Warrior rend, or Thunder Clap, there are ones in there that are old abilities for classes where they didn’t use them, or they felt ineffective…
We’re going to have to rebalance PvP in this expansion, anyway. So it’s kind of, if anything, the perfect time to introduce the Death Knight, and make sure it works within that balance.
