It's been a busy week in WoW and here's Blizzard's recap of the awesome events that happened this last week.
17.04.2024 - 19:41 / gamesradar.com / Ion Hazzikostas / Iain Harris
World of Warcraft's The War Within expansion spotlights one of the MMO's most ancient yet unexplored races: a group of antagonistic arachnoids known as the Nerubians. While that's exciting for lore heads everywhere, it also requires Blizzard to solve an age-old design dilemma – what about the players who don't like spiders?
Speaking at a press event for World of Warcraft's upcoming The War Within expansion, game director Ion Hazzikostas reveals that the team is solving that dilemma by adding an arachnophobia filter that'll turn the ancient race of spider people into crab people.
"When we announced the Nerubian-centric themes of War Within at Blizzcon, we heard trepidation from portions of our community who love WoW but were worried they wouldn't be able to experience it," Hazzikostas says.
"Honestly, prior to that, we heard concerns about it from within our own team. Some people genuinely felt uncomfortable with these elements of the game that we were building together. And so we set out to try to find a solution that would still preserve the fidelity of the game but really make it more approachable, more accessible."
If you've been out of the loop, the Nerubians are an ancient race of spider-folk native to Northrend who once ruled over the kingdom of Azjol-Nerub. They were a big deal once upon a time until the Lich King sent them packing to the arctic wastelands. That all works just fine for most of us as, while there are a few warriors left, there aren't enough to make you feel consistently uncomfortable if you don't vibe with spiders.
Expanding on the arachnophobia filter's implementation to GamesRadar+, Hazzikostas says the team was able to start before fans raised worries at Blizzcon because staff had already voiced similar fears.
"There were a lot of concerns about what about the arachnid race," he says. "They were a little creepy back in 2008, but in 2024 levels of fidelity that's much more of a concern. Some folks on the team expressed 'This is uncomfortable for me as a player,' let alone in some cases even work on so what do we do about that?'"
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
As such, Blizzard kicked off a lot of internal studies, leaning on arachnophobic players from the development team and community. While the team initially tried tweaking the design of the Nerubians what ultimately landed for them was giving them the heave-ho in favor of crab folk, and you know what? I'm for it.
World of Warcraft's The War Within expansion is due to release this year, but you can read our World of Warcraft: The War Within hands-on preview now to find out what it's all about.
It's been a busy week in WoW and here's Blizzard's recap of the awesome events that happened this last week.
World of Warcraft recently confirmed that Dracthyr will be able to choose other classes in The War Within. While it likely won’t be right at launch, World of Warcraft fans can expect the race from Dragonflight to open up somewhere near the start of the expansion.
The Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail benchmark is here, giving MMO fans a glimpse into what their characters will look like after the graphical update in patch 7.0. While plenty are rather pleased about their Warrior of Lights glow-ups, some have been left looking worse for wear.
The 2018 medieval action RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance is getting a follow-up this year that promises to be twice the size of the original game, hinting at a bigger map, more features, and a greater number of quests. While the original courted controversy over depicting a recreation of 15th Century Bohemia devoid of people of color due to 'historical accuracy,' Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's grander scope means "a wide range of ethnicities."
It turns out the Diablo 4 team didn't quite bring everything to bear in Season 4's Public Test Realm, as there are "a few small" extra items to come at launch.
Todd Howard says Bethesda is doing "a lot" of work on Starfield, and you'll see the result "soon."
In a group interview with content creators in London, Game Director Ion Hazzikostas confirmed that Blizzard plans to allow Dracthyr to roll other classes besides Evoker in The War Within. During the Interview, Ion confirmed that while that's the plan for the expansion, it won't be a launch feature, but he's hoping they'll be ready early on in the expansion. A glimpse of this future happened on the BlizzCon Warbands preview, when Blizzard has a Dracthyr character wearing leather gear by accident.
World of Warcraft's executive producer says "the dream remains" regarding the long-running MMO coming to Xbox one day, even if you're likely facing a wait to see that happen.
At the very beginning of The War Within, players are dropped into a familiar location. While we don't know exactly what's going on yet, the area is easy to recognize...
Blizzard has just given the wider public its first proper look at The War Within, the next expansion to World of Warcraft coming later this year and the start of its three-part, MCU-like Worldsoul Saga.
World of Warcraft: The War Within is out later this year, and at launch will be trying something new for a WoW expansion: a three-day, paid early access period. When this was announced, a lot of people were pretty upset! But in an interview with IGN ahead of the game's alpha launch, game director Ion Hazzikostas defended the decision, calling it an "experiment."
Join Game Director Ion Hazzikostas and Associate Art Director Tina Wang as they sit down with Community Manager and host Bethany Stout to take you into The War Within™.