specific duties are pretty much placing, uh, monsters into the zones that you’re gonna be fighting, giving them paths, giving them unique, you know, abilities… stuff like that.

Alright. What class right now do you think right now are the most boring or need the most work on right now in World of WarCraft?

they’re really cool. I’m enjoying them, but all of them are pretty solid so far.

Alright, now Tarek [DrLego] back here who was playing this yesterday really enjoyed the Night Elves. He felt that that was, like, the coolest race. Are you worried about a lot of people really getting into the Night Elves too much?

Not particularly. Each race will have special abilities that’ll make them cool. Um, a lot of people will go for… a lot of people will go for what they’re comfortable with; what they’re excited about. I know a lot of people who’re excited about Taurens, so I’m not really concerned too much about, about something, you know, being an overpopulation of one race over the other. And I expect, like, with a lot of the races, they’ll make multiple characters like, “Oh, I wanna try this! Oh I wanna try that!” So…

Alright, so do you know if they plan on having any contest where people could put in, like a user submission, like types of armor that fans say, “Hey, we should have this type of armor” and Blizzard would react to that? Do you know anything about, if there’s going to be anything like that?

There isn’t any plans so far that I know of, but we’re certainly open to that. Obviously our community is strong—we’re gonna take as many suggestions that we can that’s obviously a great one. Like the whole idea of, “Yeah let’s get… you know I like this armor design that I’ve seen here. Like, here’s an example of it” We’d be like, “Yeah you’re right that’s cool!” So—

—give them what they want.

Cool! That’s exciting stuff, so, yeah, minigames is on the radar. It’s something we’re planning on implementing.

Alright. Now I also noticed that the icons are… a lot of them are really similar to WarCraft III. Is that gonna stay in there, or… cause, you know, it’s just showing off, or is it something that’s gonna be changed?

No, those are actually gonna be the icons. Basically we’re gonna be combining little bits of the series, like the idea of: one of them’s building off the other, so we’ll use those icons [and] they’ll use icons that we’ve created to really sort of, you know, we want to tie it in, brand it, give you the whole idea of: this is WarCraft. That’s what we’re trying to do is put you in the same environment of what you’ve been playing in the RTS so far… now you’re in it.

That’s awesome. Great, so, in WoW is it gonna be able to, like, you could go solo just like you can in Diablo or is it best to go in a team?

Um, it will really be up to the player. You’re always gonna be able to do something solo. Uh, it’ll probably be a little slower than… obviously if you’re in a full group of guys you’re gonna be able to roll through a dungeon or whatever. A solo guy may not be able to get through, like to the bottom of a dungeon, but you’ll always be able to find creatures of the appropriate level to go fight and—

—and do your thing…

and take care of…

characters, your… what quests you’re on—all that kind of stuff will be server-side. So… obviously we’re gonna have protection in place.

Alright. Now if, it being server-side… what’s the possible danger of actually accidentally losing all the character information? Like, is it being stored on multiple servers everywhere?

It’ll be, yeah, it’ll all be backed up. There will be full backups and redundancies will all be built up in there, so, yeah, there’s not a whole lot of chance of that. I mean, we’re totally planning to have as much protection in place as possible.

Alright. Um, how long are you expecting the product life of a product like this to be?

What’s that?

The product life… like, how long do you think this will actually remain popular without having to go ahead and do an update or anything like that?

Um, it hasn’t really been talked about specifically, but obviously we’re gonna have live updates all the time, you know, events and we’re planning for expansions, so… we’re planning on building the product. Just keep it goin’, keep it goin’, and obviously, you know, I don’t know how long that’s gonna be so…

Alright. Now, one main concern is: a lot of people thought that the Orc and Tauren females… they look kinda hideous… any things to make them look a little bit better? …easier on the eyes?

You’re on the right track.

We’re constantly giving feedback to the art guys like, “Nah we’re not too happy about that…” so they’ll make another revision, another revision. Nothing is final at this point.

Um, I guess now it’s gonna be a bunch of, uh, this-or-that questions. So, Carrie-Anne Moss or Monica Bellucci?

I’m sorry?

Carrie-Anne Moss, the chick from Matrix; or Monica Bellucci?

Uh… I’m kinda key on the Matrix, so…

Okay. Beer or hard liquor?

Uh, I’m actually a neither on that one.

Ohhh! Okay. T or A?

That’s a good question. Damn, that one’s hard. Um… I’m gonna have to go with A!

Ohhh! Alright. Night on the town or night on the computer?

For me, night on the computer. I’m a homeboy. I’m a geek. What can I say?

Uh, LA or New York?

LA

Alright. Well, this has been toNt with Steven Pierce. Thank you very much; it’s been excellent.

You’re welcome! Happy to help… nice to meet you guys.


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