Blizzard Lead Designer for World of Warcraft Jeffrey Kaplan was recently interviewed by online site WarCry. One of the many interesting points raised by the designer is the planned addition of more ground mounts as well as aerial mounts in the future. He added that Blizzard is still weighing its options on how to make these available.

Kaplan then went on and talk about in-game world events for WoW. According to him, they definitely have plans to do more world event content and they certainly have plenty more exciting ideas yet to be implemented. Speaking of ideas, it is imminent in the latest instance portals that Blizzard is giving a lot of attention to Trolls.

That doesn't mean that the designers are running out of ideas. Kaplan admitted that they are really focusing on the race, "Trolls are a core part of Warcraft lore and are one of the oldest races in Warcraft history. They have a lot of rich and exciting material to draw from, so naturally, this is reflected when we create dungeons and other content for the game".

Kaplan further explained that all are essentially the same regardless of the number of players needed to complete such. The designer shared,

We don't have a vastly different approach in our dungeon-creation process. The same basic elements that make a 5-person instance great - pacing, story, varied creatures, varied abilities, punctuating boss fights, good itemization, accessibility, and understandability - will also make for a great 25-person experience.

Lastly, when asked about the recent issues concerning getting keyed and attuned for many Heroic instances, Kaplan said that it's finding the balance between a sense of progression and keeping them not so complicated,

When you group with people in a Heroic instance, you know that they have a certain level of understanding when it comes to that particular dungeon because they needed to do it a few times. As time goes on, we'll continue to tweak and balance the attunement processes in response to player feedback and our own observations.

 

This comes as a big surprise to everyone who loves to raid, but according to a post from Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), Blizzard lead designer for world design, the attunement requirements for entering the Serpentshrine Caverns and Tempest Keep have been lifted.

Here's what Tigole had to say on the matter in a post on the forums:

After a lot of thought and deliberation, we’ve decided to remove the attunement requirements to enter Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep: The Eye. While many of our attunements in the Burning Crusade have been good progression checks, a few of the attunements have turned out to cause unnecessary stress on guilds either doing the content or attempting to do the content. With Black Temple and Battle for Mount Hyjal thriving, we want to encourage (rather than prevent) new guilds and raid groups to attempt Serpentshrine and TK. We are going to leave the current attunement quests in the game so that players can still engage in the challenge and the lore of those quests should they choose to. At a later point, we are considering adding a final reward step to those quests as well (that way those who have already completed them would not miss out on a *new* reward).

We’re listening to feedback from you guys constantly and your opinions are important to us. We want this game to be the best possible MMO experience for our players.

Enjoy Serpentshrine and Tempest Keep =)

Enjoy it indeed. The removal of SSC and TK attunements as a needed process also removes one of those stressful barriers keeping guilds from progressing in the game. More importantly, it opens up the two instances to more casual players, and so long as they have the needed gear to survive, they can also experience the same joys raiders have been finding in their time there as well.

We're sure a lot of World of Warcraft players are brimming with questions to ask the Blizzard developers. Now instead of shooting the messengers - A.K.A. the Forum CMs, they can chat with the developers directly through WoW Stratics' IRC.

Lead designers Jeffrey Kaplan and Tom Chilton will be in attendance on the said event which will be held at the House of Commons channel (#StraticsHoC) on Tuesday, May 15, at 3 P.M. PDT. The Stratics team will compile the questions 48 hours ahead of time and will filter out spam (or not valid) and abusive questions. Hopefully this will be carefully organized so as many questions as possible may be answered.

And Stratics will be posting the log of the chat on the site for the benefit of those who can't attend the event. So, you got a question for the devs? Submit away.