Originally Posted by Emily
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Eurogamer: Burning Crusade felt like quite a sweeping change to the game. Do you think you can achieve that again with this expansion?
J. Allen Brack: Woah. I think in terms of the content, we'll meet or exceed Burning Crusade in every case, particularly the quests. If you look at the quests in the original game and Burning Crusade, no comparison, night and day, Burning Crusade is significantly better. We'll see a similar jump with Lich King.
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That's somewhat interesting to hear. I won't lie, the new leveling content is always my favorite part of the game.. if they're really going to make it more interesting, power to them.
Eurogamer: I've recently been enjoying the Dustwallow Marsh revamp with a lower-level character. Have you got any more plans for reviving the mid-level experience?
Jeff Kaplan: That's a topic that comes up I would say daily around the team - which zones we want to redo, how we would redo them, which ones are more important than others. I think the Dustwallow example was a resounding success. I think that just worked out great, the zone is super fun, we got nothing but positive feedback, and it makes levelling up a pleasure when you hit that level range. The only bummer is when you do the final quest and have to move on! We definitely want to do more of those, though.
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To me, though, this is the most interesting part. It's always disappointed me that so much of the old world is left unfinished, and I can understand why it's low on Blizzard's priority list to revamp.. so I was somewhat surprised by the Dustwallow changes, and I'll be surprised (but happy!) if they revisit other zones. Obviously there are undeveloped instances such as Grim Batol, Uldum, and Timbermaw Hold which are probably too much work to sneak in as mid-level content, but there are also a lot of zones that could stand to be fleshed out right now:
- Azshara (maybe to tie it into the Maelstrom expansion)
- Blasted Lands (probably not going to happen.. they should've redone it for TBC, but they didn't.)
- Deadwind Pass (same as Blasted Lands)
- Burning Steppes (the entire west side of the zone only has a a couple quests. There should've been a lot more stuff against the Dark Horde leading into BRS.)
- Winterspring (Darkwhisper Gorge needs some love, although I imagine that maybe they'll do so when/if they add present-day Hyjal?)
Maybe a couple other places that slip my mind too. The most likely candidates imo for a revamp would be Azshara and Burning Steppes, but I wouldn't expect it until one of the post-release content patches.
One thing that also comes to mind that makes me sad is that WotLK almost surely will not have a creepy graveyard~y forest~y zone like Duskwood in it. I love Duskwood's feel, and the Scourge content has tended to lack its subtlety.