World of Warcraft World Design Interview - Alex Afrasiabi

Questing has evolved from Burning Crusade. In Northrend there is more involvement from the big bad (Arthas) so even if you never get to raid you should still be very aware of his presence. They have learnt from their mistakes in the Classic and Burning Crusade games. The use of phasing is also making a difference to the world and to quests. This is most visible in the Death Knight starting zone. Some things to do with changing the environment are now possible thanks to this revolutionary technology and we should start to see these in Northrend. However they have had to be very careful with this as bad use of phasing could really confuse players. For example if players on different steps of a group quest chain can't see each other they would be very annoyed.

An interesting note which arose from viewer question was that there are no world bosses in Northrend because of some of the player collision (PvP and Griefing) issues that have arisen with them in Azeroth and the Outlands.

Alex also revealed that there will be a world event attached the patch next Tuesday. In Alex's own words “All kinds of craziness is going to happen... your going to have a reason to go to Northrend”.