Panda-ing to the hardcore: Blizzard’s Greg Street on Mists of Pandaria’s difficulty levels

Mists of Pandaria -- Pandaren Monk Striking Target Dummy

In World of Warcraft, balance is king. With such a huge userbase, it's essential to ensure noobs are able to play the game without feeling frustrated. At the same time hardcore players need a tooth-grindingly tough experience.

We caught up with World of Warcraft's lead systems designer, Greg Street at Blizzcon. He admits that most recent expansion Cataclysm got it a bit wrong. “In Wrath of the Lich King we heard from our players that the PvE content was too easy,” says Street. “So we were like okay, clearly what we need to do is make the PvE content harder, which we did for Cataclysm and then players told us 'it's too hard, I can't handle it!'”

Blizzard's solution in Mists of Pandaria is to introduce varying difficulty levels for different players. “Halo had like five difficulty levels, Civilisation had eight or something,” says Street. But Pandaria won't introduce set difficulty levels per se, instead delivering a range of experiences within Pandaria's world. “On the hard end we want it to be at the hard end of Cataclysm, but then on the easier end we want it to be on the level of Lich King.”

How do you apply difficulty levels to such a varied game? By setting fire to players. “On a harder boss we might say 'if you stand in the fire you will die, you cannot stand in the fire'” says Street. “On easier difficulty levels we might make it so you can stand in there for a while and with enough healing you can maybe just ignore it completely and stand in there, or you have enough time for someone to say, 'Hey dude, you really should get out of that.'”

In addition, Pandaria will feature a new “challenge mode”, where dungeons become competitive arenas. According to Street, the wider audience of players aren't interested in multiple attempts at taking a boss down. "They just want to kill the boss, and for them that's kind of the end of the story for their character and they're totally happy for that. It was really a very different experience from the traditional raiding model and so we're trying to offer something for both groups of players."

Latest in MMO
Blue Protocol players dancing minutes before the game closes forever
What will we do at the end of the world? If MMOs are any indication: mostly what we already do, plus a lot of dancing
Several tight-wearing superheroes surge towards the camera in a heroic fashion in City of Heroes.
One year later, City of Heroes' officially recognized fan server has me praying it's the future of dead MMOs
Several adventurers in World of Warcraft Classic's hardcore server crying over the death of a fallen comrade.
Blizzard plans to revive WoW Classic Hardcore characters 'at our sole discretion', after DDOS attack puts major streamer guild OnlyFangs in the ground
A forester from Old School Runescape, contemplating life next to his pheasant friend on a green field.
You can finally try out Old School RuneScape’s first new skill in nearly two decades right now
Ghoul in sunglasses
After years of playing as stupid, boring humans in Fallout, you can finally channel your inner Walton Goggins and become a ghoul in Fallout 76
WoW Classic: Season of Discovery
World of Warcraft Classic’s Season of Discovery may be teasing a legendary weapon that players have speculated is in the game for two decades
Latest in News
Two brightly colored stormtroopers dressed like Run-DMC stand in front of PAX Australia's WELCOME HOME banner.
Tickets for PAX Australia 2025 are on sale now
An Enshrouded player in a recreation of Erebor from The Lord of the Rings
Kings under the Mountain! 33 Enshrouded players spent 10,000 hours to recreate this iconic location from The Lord of the Rings
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again