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"World of Warcraft is a force to be reckoned with. With subscriber figures topping 11 million, the MMO is one of the most talked about games of all time. Blizzard Entertainment is about to dish out the 4.3 patch to improve the user experience and pit players against the formidable Deathwing, so we caught up with lead designer Tom Chilton to get the latest news from Azeroth. It&amp;#039;s been a while since you revamped Azeroth with Cataclysm. How do you feel that the fanbase responded to these changes? &amp;quot;I think our long-time fans reacted very positively to the old-world changes we introduced with Cataclysm. I heard almost nothing but good feedback on the quality of the new zones, the quests and all that kind of stuff, the 1-60 area. It was definitely a risky proposition for us, but it seems to have gone well. &amp;quot;There are plenty of things I probably would have done differently with the expansion in hindsight, but I&amp;#039;m very happy with the way the level 1-60 part turned out. I could make a case for maybe not doing as much as we did to save time on how long it took to make the expansion. But from a pure quality standpoint, we&amp;#039;re very happy with the final result.&amp;quot;  What kind of impact did the release of Cataclysm have on new subscriber figures? &amp;quot;We definitely got a significant bump since the expansion came out. Generally speaking, what we see when we release an expansion is for it to go up, and then it starts trailing down until we get to the next expansion. That&amp;#039;s been the case also with Cataclysm.&amp;quot; Do new users now have a smoother integration period since you brought in these changes? &amp;quot;I think the people that get past about level five or so, they&amp;#039;re having a better and smoother experience. I would say we struggle with getting players through the first 30 minutes because the audience that we get for new players becomes increasingly more casual over time.  &amp;quot;They struggle with the very basics of controlling the camera in a 3D space, moving their character, and often, they are unfamiliar with RPG concepts such as looting a monster after you kill it. We still have a long way to go to improve that part of the experience, but level five and on is a lot better. &amp;quot;I think with users from level one to five, we just need to hold their hands a little bit more effectively in terms of teaching them how to actually move and fight, and do a quest, turn in a quest, and loot creatures, that kind of stuff.&amp;quot;   The Real ID Party system recently went live. Why did you choose to offer this service for free? &amp;quot;Ultimately we knew that the service was going to be really cool for our players. What we didn&amp;#039;t form a great gasp of was whether it would be important to charge for it. We already had the pay character transfer service, and that was very popular with our players. The real ID party offers similar kinds of benefits about being able to play with friends on another server, which is the primary reason why you&amp;#039;d do a transfer. &amp;quot;So, it seemed like it would make sense to bring in a pay service, even though deep down we don&amp;#039;t want to charge for things unless we feel we have to. We kind of wanted to leave ourselves the option to do that if it felt like the right thing to do for the players in the long run, but once we put it in the beta without charging for it, it felt really good to say &amp;#039;this is for everybody&amp;#039;.&amp;quot; What kind of features do you foresee a premium version including? &amp;quot;I would definitely see guild service coming up. We&amp;#039;re already planning on rolling them out over the next few months. What we have found is that every since we introduced the guild levelling system, it creates a barrier for players to be able to move the guild if they want to.  &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re already invested in the server you&amp;#039;re on because you build up your guild level, and you don&amp;#039;t want to lose those perks if you decide to switch. In some ways we&amp;#039;ve made it harder for guilds to move around if they want to, so we really want to be able to overcome that.&amp;quot;  The 4.3 patch is on its way. Which of its additions will have the most significant impact on how people play World of Warcraft? &amp;quot;I would say that the Raid Finder is probably a game-changer in the same way that the Dungeon Finder was. It really opened up a lot of grouping content as a regular activity.  `&amp;#039;I imagine that the raid finder will do the same, and I think that for more hardcore players the transmogrification will be a game-changer because it will give them a reason to go back and do older content and collect things they otherwise might not have collected.&amp;quot; Was the introduction of transmogrification a response to fan demand? &amp;quot;Absolutely. Increasingly we&amp;#039;ve been hearing that demand of &amp;#039;I want to be a little different from the next guy&amp;#039;&amp;quot;. Players will be battling Deathwing after the patch arrives. What can you tell us about this encounter? &amp;quot;There is very little I can talk about as far as the fight with Deathwing goes, except that it&amp;#039;s a most certainly going to be the most epic encounter we&amp;#039;ve ever made in terms of the sheer number of phases, and how much goes into each of those phases. The one example I call out is that in one of those phases you&amp;#039;re actually flying over the maelstrom, fighting on his back to try and bring him down to the ground so you can fight him there.&amp;quot;  Why wasn&amp;#039;t the Deathwing battle included as part of Cataclysm? &amp;quot;It was definitely planned to be like this from the get-go. We learned that lesson back in Burning Crusade. In Burning Crusade, you plan for Illidan, who was essentially the end boss, or at least conceptually he was. We had planned to have him in the shipping version of the game, but didn&amp;#039;t have time to include that content in it.  &amp;quot;He was introduced in the patch that followed, but it felt kind of anticlimactic that players had beaten the end boss in the very first patch after the expansion had come out, and it&amp;#039;s like &amp;#039;now what are you fighting until the next expansion?&amp;#039; We managed to salvage that in some ways by introducing Kil&amp;#039;jaeden, because Kil&amp;#039;jaeden was a very epic figure in Wild War. So we kind of learned our lesson that the giant antagonist of the expansion, Lich King, and in this case Death Wing, should be the finale. How will you be improving Battle.net in the near future? &amp;quot;The Real ID Party is probably the most significant improvement. And of course, we&amp;#039;re going to also extend out support with the Battle.Net friends and chat to support Diablo III. So when Diablo III comes online and people are playing that, you&amp;#039;ll be able to interact with them just like you can with StarCraft II players.  &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s out first step with the expansion. We have a whole bunch of other things planned for Battle.Net that we&amp;#039;re not really talking about yet, but there are going to be a lot of developments that integrate all the games.&amp;quot;  Several major gaming studios have fallen victim to hackers of late. What measure are Blizzard taking to ensure that WoW is not hit? &amp;quot;We have always tried to be as diligent as we possibly can when it comes to security. Certainly when hacking was going on with other companies recently there were numerous attempts against ourselves also. Fortunately, our security was good enough, so we didn&amp;#039;t lose data or anything like that. &amp;quot;We always put a high priority on security, but that&amp;#039;s not to say you can ever be impregnable. We&amp;#039;re not resting on our laurels saying &amp;#039;they can&amp;#039;t get us&amp;#039;. It&amp;#039;s always a possibility, and we take it very serious, but so far, so good.&amp;quot; To wrap things up, is there anything else you&amp;#039;d like to tell our readers about World of Warcraft? &amp;quot;More than anything else, I would just like to thank all of UK players for their enthusiasms for it, and I hope they continue to enjoy World of Warcraft for years to come.&amp;quot; &amp;gt; Read the full live blog from Blizzard&amp;#039;s gamescom press conference &amp;gt; More gamescom 2011 coverage "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/gamescom/interviews/a336307/world-of-warcraft-interview-blizzard-on-post-cataclysm-patch-43-and-more/>