With World of Warcraft's Patch 4.3 set for release with tomorrow's update, we're more excited to jump back into Azeroth than we've been since Cataclysm's released. Today, we conclude our interview with WoW's lead designer Tom Chilton, who gave us the 411 on the battle against Deathwing and the new Transmogrification system . He's got more info to share on the new-and-improved Darkmoon Faire, the Void Storage system (that's overflowing with slots), and what needs to happen for WoW's design in order to keep players happy.
PC Gamer: A big part of Patch 4.3 is Void Storage. Is this designed to be—from a utilitarian perspective—the new money-sink?
Tom Chilton: I would say the money-sink, in some ways, is a convenient side effect—well, convenient for us, not convenient for the player—of the fact that, we want to make sure that there's a distinction between Void Storage and the bank. Otherwise, Void Storage would just feel like a slightly-nerfed bank, because it doesn't retain things like Gems and Enchants and stuff like that. If we could have, we would've just increased everyone's bank spaces significantly, but for data storage reasons that isn't really viable for us. So we want to make sure that it somehow makes sense to players that the Void Storage functions differently than a bank. And part of that deposit cost helps do that, and it also happens to be a gold-sink, which are always nice, design-wise, to have when an opportunity for them comes along.
PCG: What's the limit to how many items you can have in the Void Storage?
TC: It's currently 80 slots. If you had about 8 pieces in a set of the usual stuff, that would be like 10 sets of stuff.
PCG: Another big feature in 4.3 is the Darkmoon Faire. It seems, with all the changes being made, that you're trying to make it a place where people will actually hang out, rather than just visiting because they need something then taking off. Is the idea to make it more of an event, like Brewfest, where everybody's hanging out?
TC: It may lead to that; we aren't designing it with the deliberate intent that it becomes that, because it's always very difficult to predict when those things will actually happen the way you imagine they might happen. I think part of what leads to Brewfest working out like that is the physical location, if you consider that it's right outside of Orgrimmar or wherever—it's very convenient, and a lot of players are around there anyways. It's hard to know whether or not, with Darkmoon Faire Island, whether that will play out the same way. It might, but it might not, and we're not hedging our bets on it. If it does, that's cool; I definitely think that a large percentage of players will, at the very least, get a lot of entertainment out of going there and doing the different activities.
PCG: Day one of Patch 4.3: what are you going to do first?
TC: I think that I'm probably going to still be farming for some of the gear that I want for transmogrification [laughs]. The first I'm going to do is run out there and trans some of the stuff that I have for some of my characters, stuff that I've had for years now. That's probably going to be my main focus right away.
PCG: I'll be there right alongside you farming that gear. Thanks for your time!
