Ahead of Blizzcon, I asked Ion Hazzikostas and Paul Kubit how World of Warcraft Midnight patch 12.1 is going, and what’s next for the MMO.
World of Warcraft Midnight has taken a different direction in patch 12.1, Curse of Ula'tek. It's given us somewhat of a breather from the ongoing antics of Xal'atath, while still leaving some room to carry us towards the next steps of the Worldsoul Saga in WoW's upcoming expansion, The Last Titan. With the Race to World First in the books, all eyes are on Blizzcon to find out what's next for the MMORPG. Before that, I caught up with Game Director Ion Hazzikostas and Associate Game Director Paul Kubit to discuss how patch 12.1 is going.
"I've been really happy with the way folks have been enjoying Curse of Ula'tek," Kubit tells me. Hazzikostas says he's been pleased with the change in tone: "Midnight so far has been very focused on the cosmic forces of the void and our battle against our arch-nemesis Xal'atath." By comparison, he notes that patch 12.1 hearkens back to a more "old school" World of Warcraft vibe with its tales of Troll society, ancestry, and the Loa, and he's enjoyed seeing how players reacted to that more traditional breakaway.
"We're still going to pivot back to fully focusing on Xal'atath soon - there's an imminent, huge threat looming just next door, effectively," Hazzikostas continues. With the Worldsoul Saga branching across three separate expansions for the first time in WoW's history, it's important that things don't get too one-note. "Variety is the name of the game," Kubit comments. Whether it's locations, cultures, or even the colors of the zones, variety is "super important in making sure that the game feels fresh and evolving."
The Midnight patch rollout hasn't been smooth. 12.0.5 in particular was a particular low point, but Hazzikostas says the team has "learned a lot" from what went wrong. "We changed and hardened a few of our processes, and frankly, this time around we made different mistakes - and that's to some extent inevitable, and almost a little bit our goal. Of course we aim for perfection, of course we aim for a flawless release, but as we're rolling out a massive amount of data and content there are going to be some obscure bugs."
Hazzikostas adds that Blizzard is "rearchitecting or rebuilding systems that are a bit too fragile in how they were constructed. If something is set up in a way that someone has to manually enter 1,000 pieces of data, and if one of those is missed or mistaken the whole thing is going to collapse - well, we should probably find a better way to build that system, or to have better checks in our tools." He's thankful to the community for being engaged in the test process and PTR; "We're always looking for needles in the haystack, but sometimes a couple will slip through."
Kubit notes that we're "close to the halfway point of Midnight in terms of the story." If you extend that out, that puts us roughly halfway through the Worldsoul saga writ large. "There's one way of thinking about that," he muses, "which is, 'Oh, we've crested the hill, and it's all downhill from there.' The way I think about it is that we've done so much already, and we have that much more to still do." He admits it's "daunting for me and Ion as developers," but that there are "exciting, unpredictable things coming in Midnight's future as we lead into The Last Titan."
Midnight's future is more than just stories, of course; Kubit says the feature rollout is also about at the halfway mark, with the likes of the Delves-inspired Labyrinths, and another standalone game mode in a similar vein to Plunderstorm, currently marked on the calendar. "We're always looking, when it comes to every new season in particular, for how we can improve," Hazzikostas says. "What problems we're hearing about from our players, and what new systems or changes to existing systems might help address them."
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.pcgamesn.com/world-of-warcraft/curse-of-ulatek-interview-road-to-blizzcon
