STACK #142 Aug 2016

GAMES FEATURE

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World ofWarcraft has been a video game icon since its launch way back in 2004. Now 12 years old, Blizzard Entertainment’s MMORPG shows no sign of slowing down. Five expansions have been released with the sixth due this month.We went hands-on over in Irvine, California, and spoke with Cory Stockton and Julian Morris on our travels. Words: Alesha Kolbe A LEGION of its OWN

( ven if you don't play video games, chances are you’ve heard of Blizzard’s behemoth, World of Warcraft . Present in everything from South Park episodes to viral YouTube videos, your nan probably knows what WoW is; she might even play it. A massively- multiplayer open-world title, its elements of PvP, PvE, crafting, magic, lore and mateship have

the new content that’s to come through the beta, but we won’t know exactly how many more players will be pulled back into Azeroth until the expansion launches in its entirety. On a press trip to the States in June, we went hands-on with Blizzard’s latest WoW content drop. We also had the opportunity to chat with lead game designers Cory Stockton and Julian Morris about exactly how

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A lot of thought goes into the story development on the expansions

“When we started Pandaria , we really tried to look at WoW expansions as more of a long- term situation. Burning Crusade was definitely going to happen after a while, but then doing Lich King was the next great thing to come along,” he laughs. “We did that and then we did Cataclysm , and there wasn’t a lot of connective tissue between them, and I think that’s something we saw in the team that needed fixing. “So, as Pandaria was progressing, and we had characters like Garrosh [Son of Hellscream,

much work goes into creating content for a game with such a dedicated player-base. “ Legion is an expansion that we had been talking about ever since [Mists of] Pandaria ,” says Cory. At Blizzard, the team puts a lot of thought into the story development around expansions, especially how they tie-in and connect with not only the main game, but also each other.

come together to create the most popular paid MMO on the planet, with over 10 million active players. Legion is WoW’s sixth expansion. Set for release at the end of this month, players all over the world have already had a glimpse of

The Corrupted Blood Incident

C orrupted Blood was a debuff cast by Hakkar the Soulflayer on players during the Zul’Gurub raid that was supposed to only last for a few seconds and remain solely in the raid. What actually happened? The debuff glitched, got carried out of the raid and into the rest of Azeroth, and wrought absolute havoc. In September 2005, the new raid was released, and the new boss had a damage-

AUGUST 2016

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