The team behind World of Warcraft is doing their best to live up to their promise to deliver a "steady stream of content" for the Legion expansion. In addition to the upcoming release of Legion Patch 7.1.5, fans learned at BlizzCon 2016 that patch 7.2 will be the Tomb of Sargeras, and were teased that Patch 7.3 is going to send them to Argus, the long-awaited Draenei homeworld.
Speaking to game director Ion Hazzikostas at BlizzCon, he explained that the reason the WoW team is already talking about Patch 7.3 is so the eventual release of Patch 7.2 is put in better context.
"It's hard to say much without spoiling the story of 7.2, which we don't want to do. We definitely wanted to make sure people knew, since otherwise 7.2 might sound like a finale, that there's a whole lot more story waiting for them after that," he told IGN.
As for why they decided to explore Argus in the upcoming patch, it's because the game developers want Legion to dive even deeper into the expansion's lore. Patch 7.3 will explore "the origin of the Legion's power in a lot of ways."
Hazzikostas shot down speculation that Argus could support its own expansion, saying, "I think that would probably be overreaching in that regard." "It is very closely tied to Legion, and that's what it's about; it's Legion and Draenei, and it felt like that is the culmination that we're building towards, and so let's just do it," he said. "Let's make it happen, and it will feel like a very natural continuation of the story when players get there."
Much of this information about the upcoming patches was shared not during BlizzCon's opening ceremony, but during the World of Warcraft: Legion-specific panel. WoW didn't have as big an announcement as Overwatch's Sombra or Diablo 3's Necromancer class, and Hazzikostas said that's because Legion's big news isn't as succinct as those other reveals.
"We're really laying out months and months and months of content that's going to unfold for players. There really wasn't one piece of content we could pick out that would accurately represent that. And then just saying, 'There's going to be a lot of content, but stay tuned!' doesn't really make for a punchy info," he said. "We're always thinking about BlizzCon coming up, what we're going to talk about. Something like Patch 7.2, if BlizzCon didn't exist, we probably wouldn't be focused on that; we'd be focused on 7.1.5, which is the next thing around the corner."
"It's definitely important to give a lot of information for fans who have come out around the world to come here in person and hear what's coming up in the game," Hazzikostas added. "I think it also serves to underscore that we are really going to support the Legion expansion with an incredible amount of content, both in breadth and in depth."
There's no specific release date for any of the new patches, with the closest time frame being that Patch 7.1.5. will be released "soon" and launch on the Public Test Realm right after BlizzCon. Expect longer waits for Patches 7.2 and 7.3 -- and no, we couldn't get any more specific answer than that. Hazzikostas said the release windows will be determined based on how fans are playing the game, because the WoW team doesn't want to overwhelm people with content so that they fall behind, and then leave nothing new for them to play at the end of the expansion's lifespan.
"That's actually something that's changing a little bit from how we've done our patches in the past," he said. "This time, in order to be certain that we're going to deliver that steady stream of content, we're kind of front-loading a lot of the development of the Legion content as we roll people off onto what will of course be our next expansion -- there is going to be one."
For more on World of Warcraft: Legion, check out the latest details on Patch 7.2 straight out of BlizzCon, and make sure to check out our glowing review of the Legion expansion.
Terri Schwartz is Entertainment Editor at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire