Why should you have something like Empower spells in World of Warcraft? That’s one of the questions that lead combat designer Brian Holinka and senior game designer Graham Berger sought to answer in a recent interview with Shacknews, in which they discuss their goal: to ensure that players didn’t simply automatically want to charge to maximum every single time. The interview also covers elements of developing the new talent trees; the devs note players had really embraced the idea of spec identity, so Blizzard thought it was important to give a variety of choices in a spec and splitting trees between spec and class.
On a less design-focused and more industry-focused note, it appears that Blizzard is rolling out new payment options for Battle.net, with both WeChat and AliPay being added in certain regions. Notably, these two payment options are very popular in China, and this follows directly on the heels of the announcement that Blizzard will no longer be partnering with Netease to publish the game in China. What this means for the longer-term situation has yet to be seen, but it certainly is worth noting.
