[Interview] Blizzard's Vice President: v1.30 won't be the last patch

During this season of ChinaJoy, we have the opportunity to have an interview with Blizzard Entertainment's Vice President, Rob Bridenbecker, we talked about v1.30, the community and questions regarding the World Editor. Rob says that v1.30 patch won't be the last, War3 is still active, he emphasized that they will keep provide support to the War3 community.



                                       Rob Bridenbecker

Q: Why Blizzard made such huge changes to Heroes, Maps, Races in v1.30?
A: We created War3 15 years ago, we created a basic setting for the game, until now we still see a lot of improvement could be made in the game's core balancing. We discussed a lot with the community, which make it possible to keep improving the game, the community is what driving us to make such changes.

Q: What support will Blizzard provide to China's War3 Map creators? What changes will be made to the official World Editor?
A: We are receiving a lot of request from the community to give more support to the World Editor, we are collaborating with 網易 and made a platform for players to play, we also recruited some MOD created by community creators.
As for future changes on World Editor,  we know that the community has created a better content, we hope to include the pros and add some content we consider as an improvement to the game. We promise there will be more update in the future, but we can't be sure about the content yet.
We absorbed some energy from the community, ex: One of the MOD creators have been recruited to our Blizzard team to make more contribution to the World Editor.

Q: In v1.30, every race except Orcs have been nerfed which means that Orcs are buffed, are Blizzard satisfied with the changes?
A: We still need to confirm this with the designing team, the only thing I can say is we are paying close attention to the game's balancing. We are hoping it to get better, in the mean time we are getting feedback from the community. I saw that there are still many players with great passion in the game's core mechanic, with many feedback still coming from the community, I'm happy with that.

Q: The new patch supports up to 24 players playing the same match, regarding the connection and disconnection problem, what will Blizzard do as a protection?
A: 24 players online play is a new content we added recently, this is demanded by the community, we are still improving it. War3 has been released 17 years ago, we had the same problem that time, we need to consider the compatibility and considering new content to add. So every time when we faced this kind of problem, we need to make sure we don't destroy the classic elements by adding new content.



Q: After v1.30, will there be any single player campaign update?
A: We are very excited that in the community, there are many modders trying to add more content to War3, we will continue our support but there won't be any single player campaign for now.

Q: What has Blizzard do for the localization of World Editor in China?
A: We will update the info with the local team.

Q: Will v1.30 be the last big patch? If not, is there any news about Warcraft 4?
A: The patch won't be the last, we will observe the whole environment, make tweaks according to the players. As for the Warcraft series and the future of RTS games, there are still things to see.

Q: What are your opinion on "RTS is dead"? How should War3 survive in the future?
A: There are RTS games like Warcraft 3 that continued for 17 years and Starcraft for 20 years, this means RTS are still full of vitality. We have accumulated millions of fans over 20 years, they loved RTS, so I think that RTS is still healthy.
As for Warcraft 3, I think that it isn't the game itself that is maintaining, the community and patches played a huge role too. Over the pass 10 years, we see many derivatives, including Dota, tower defenses and kinds of RPG maps, all these are contributed by the community, their love for the game won't be less than us developers. The exciting part is the fans keep adding new content and bring life to the game.

Q: Does it mean Blizzard are using Warcraft's latest patch to bring War3 back to the esports?
A: Our focus are to cultivate and grow the community, we cooperate with 網易 to organize Gold League, the audience and players are not bad, so I think the game is full of vitality and our focus will be more on the community for now.

Q:Will War3 get a remake like Starcraft?
A: Back to our statement just now, we are focusing on the community, we will provide tools for the community to deliver new content.




Source:
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Yf3av3nhssx5nr_9vbMUyg