Among the last of our intrepid AusGamers Leipzig pieces, comes an interview with J. Allen Brack and Tom Chilton from Blizzard for the hotly anticipated release of the second World of WarCraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Both guys were more than happy to put up with our probing questions, and while we do have the interview available on video for you here, the sound is just bad enough we decided to transcribe them for you here also...

AusGamers: You guys want to start with what major new features are coming with the expansion for our readers and potential WoW: WotLK players alike?

Tom Chilton: With Wrath of Lich King we're seeing the second expansion of the World of Warcraft. Some of the major features we're emphasising are the increase of level cap to 80 and the introduction of new areas and a lot of new quests to support that. In fact it's nine new zones, lots of new dungeons, raids and instances. We've got a new battleground and multiple new arenas, too. That's all alongside our major new gameplay features - the introduction of the new character class, Death Knight, and then also the introduction of vehicles and destructible buildings. A culmination of all of that kind of kicks things up a notch for Wrath of Lich King, so things in that respect are all a little bit better than The Burning Crusade. Hopefully our players will enjoy it.

AG: What kind of conversion rate did you see from people who bought the original version World of WarCraft to those who brought the expansion. I assume it was pretty high based on the number of people buying to play. Do you have any figures on that?

Tom: We don't have any numbers but it was a high conversion rate.

AG: Are you expecting the same amount with the new expansion?

Tom: Well we hope.

AG: One of the questions we see a lot in Australia is "are there ever going to be any plans for an Oceanic server?" As in a server actually hosted in our region as opposed to an 'Oceanic server' hosted in another country?

J. Allen Brack: We are actually talking about what the implications would be of doing that. That is a question that does come up a lot from the Australian community. It's a question of cost, bandwidth and how could we make it happen? So yeah that's something we're investigating.

AG: So much of our community is built around a lot of hardcore MMO players who have been playing for years, and one of the things they are into in a really heavy way is the PVP aspect. And I've noticed a lot of them, while they love to still play WoW for the PVE stuff, they find the PVP stuff a bit lacking in some ways. Is that something that is being factored into WotLK and what changes are being made for that?

Tom: We're always trying to expand on the quality of the game's content as a whole. We're trying new things like with Wintergrass the outdoor world PVP zone, the introduction of vehicles to escalate the utility. Just like with Burning Crusade, we introduced the Arena system - we want to make sure the players have a lot of different things to do. We want to add enough variety so the game doesn't feel too repetitive.

So Wrath of Lich King really introduces a couple new spins on that including the introduction of a new character class which raises the potential of another spin on the story. So overall, I'd say Wrath of Lith King is that much stronger. Also we're continuously evolving our reward mechanics; we're getting better and better at figuring out that all-important balance.

AG: While you probably don't need any new players, is there any hope that the expansion will appeal to a different audience that really hasn't looked at World of WarCraft yet?

Allen: I think a lot of the features in Wrath of Lich King are aimed at the kind of experienced player. The Death Knight is a class that you need to have a level 55 before you are allowed to even start. There's a lot of content focused on the high-end stuff but we do have a good mixture of new stuff for the less-experienced player.

One of them is the achievement system. This is just a system that keeps a record of all your accomplishments so for the newer player it rewards them for whatever they do; they go into a dungeon for the first time, they explore a certain area, they get a haircut - these kinds of things give the player a sort of 'To Do List' to keep track of their achievements and what other things they can do. We also have a new profession, Inscription, which lets players customise their spells and abilities. This is a feature we believe will be successful as well.

AG: What would be one really special stand-out thing about this?

Tom: I would say the cohesiveness of the expansion, its delivery of content for a wide variety of different players: Casual players, hardcore players, different styles. I think it's blended all together in the overall storyline. The storyline for Wrath of Lich King is very digestible. It's straight forward that we have this Lich King, Arthus, controlling an army of undead. He's the bad guy, so yeah.

AG: The CG stuff is just awesome.

Allen: In the case of the cinematic we've just released for Wrath if Lich King? You know that's the CG film department, they have over a 100 people there now and their job is to make the best cinematics in the business and they've been doing that for a long time, and they're going to continue to do so.

AG: Now a lot of videogame developers tend to model their characters on people in their office. Is Arthus modelled off anybody at Blizzard?

Allen: To be honest, if you do look at that box [Lich King retail box], it does kind of look like someone at Blizzard. It looks like Chris, who is the lead producer for StarCraft 2 now but was also Lead producer for WarCraft III. So there's some similarity between Arthus and Chris (laughs).

AG: Are there any plans for a demo version? Or is this something you expect people to be stoked to see?

Tom: Well we do have a trial version of the game available from our website as a streaming download at the moment.

AG: Can you maintain the level of polish throughout the WarCraft brand from here on out? Is it difficult because of the ever-expanding nature of the series?

Tom: It's something that is very important to the culture of Blizzard Entertainment. We try to maintain the polish throughout the entire process. We don't develop a game that is a mess and then try to fix it at the very end. As long as that culture is in place we will continue to see that.

AG: Any plans for a console version?

Allen: That question comes up a lot, but the game was never designed with a console in mind. So there are no plans for WoW to be developed for a console at this time.

AG: Any plans for mobile software to check stats?

Allen: We've talked about that, but we haven't planned anything.

AG: So what's next for you guys?

Allen: Going to Disneyland WOOOOOO!

Tom: We'll be adding some content patches to the game after it ships so you can expect that regular content to start flowing and then probably another expansion after that.