In this World of Warcraft: Legion Announcement Transcript you will find the video of Gul’dan finding Illidan, “the Story so far” video, and the panel roundup.
The panel host was Soe Gschwind-Penski, and the panelists: Tom Chilton (game director), Alex Afrasiabi (creative director) and Ion Hazzikostas (lead game designer).
Transcript
Soe: The development team is coming here on the stage revealing the expansion, and sharing everything they can today; but before all that is going to happen, I just want to make sure that we are all up to speed, we want to know where we stand right now in World of Warcraft and that is why we prepared a video for you on the story so far; and I will tell you something … apparently I have been told that there is a little surprise at the end. So let’s try to watch out for that, and let’s look at the video.
Soe: Alright, so that’s the story so far. Interesting. So now, of course, the big question is: “Where do we go next? What is happening next;” and I’m pretty sure I am not the only one curious to that question, and that means we really want to know more. Don’t we? We do. We do indeed, and who better to answer those questions than the game director and vice-president himself: Tom Chilton, ladies and gentlemen.
Soe: Tom, it’s always nice to see you back. It’s not your first GamesCom. You are looking at so many excited faces. How excited are you about this announcement?
Chilton: No joke. This is really really exciting. It’s amazing. I love coming to GamesCom, and frankly, this is why.
Soe: Yea. It’s an amazing crowd. That’s pretty darn obvious. Yeah, it really is. Now, we can tell really the atmosphere here is pretty good. I’d say darn good. How is it in the office? You guys have been working on this secret for such a long time now.
Chilton: Yea, we really have. We have been in production of this expansion for quite some time now, and it is always really hard to keep things underwraps, and talk about what’s really happening right now and not really spoil things for the future too much.
So it’s really exciting for us, gratifying for us, to finally be able to share it with you all.
Soe: Well, the good thing is I have read a lot of suspicions and leaks but yea, I don’t know, I don’t think anyone has really nailed it so far. No. No one did, and that makes it all the more exciting. Now, you brought us a little something to ease into the topic. What are we going to see now?
Chilton: What we are going to do is that we are going to show you a video that is really an important connecting point between the end of the storyline in Warlords of Draenor and the next expansion; and so hopefully, you guys will really get excited for what that connecting point is.
Soe: Alright. So let’s go take a look at it.
Soe: Oh my gosh! I’m actually getting goosebumps right now. I can’t even — alright, let’s talk about what we just saw. This is part of the CGI, if I understood correctly.
Chilton: This is completely an independent piece that was just made to be the connecting tissue between the expansions.
Clearly, Khadgar was right not to trust what just happened with Gul’dan (that we wouldn’t see the last of him). So in much the same way that Garrosh Hellscream set in motion the events of Warlords of Draenor, Gul’dan is setting you up for the events of the next expansion.
Soe: Oh my gosh, guys are you excited for this expansion or what?
(cheers)
Soe: Of course, there is a lot more before we going to reveal yet. There is more to come. We have more to share. You have a team of development guys here onstage in just a bit to talk about it, and see how much you can share; but you got us another video right?
Chilton: Yea we do. So next up we are going to see the actual announcement trailer with the new content. Let’s roll it.
Soe: Yes, let’s take a look at this announcement trailer. Right now.
Chilton: Alright. World of Warcraft: Legion. That’s the next chapter in the saga of World of Warcraft. What we have for you next is actually going to be a presentation by myself and a couple of my other colleagues to go into more depth on the content and the features. So hopefully you guys have learned little more about the expansion.
But first, let me introduce my colleagues. First off, we have Alex Afrasiabi (our creative director). Alex is one of our very first quest designers and he was our very first lead quest designer ever that existed in the World of Warcraft team. He is driven a huge part of our story development for the last dozen years.
Next up, we have Ion Hazzikostas (lead game designer). As a lead game designer, he is responsible for a lot of things. Most recently, you guys maybe aware that he’s been responsible for our boss encounters for both, dungeons and raids, for many many years now. Several expansions.
In addition, he’s been responsible for class design and other sort of systems. So really a huge huge factor in the last seven or eight years of World of Warcraft.
So to get to the point: we are first going to be talking about Story. Give you a little bit of an insight into the events of World of Warcraft: Legion.
You can see on the screen right here there is a teaser still-shot from the introductory cinematic that will be revealed at a later date, coming relatively soon. Right there, clearly, pretty significant characters involved.
We are also going to be talking about settings. As mentioned in the video, the Broken Isles. It’s this new continent that players haven’t experienced before, but it has been referenced back in Warcraft III. We will be giving you more insight into the zones, and the inhabitants of those zones and what happens.
We will be also talking about Dungeons and Raids. We have got to have Dungeons and Raids.
We are going to be talking about those Artifact Weapons you saw. Concept pieces there from our art team. Neat stuff.
We will be talking about Demon Hunters, of course. New class.
And finally, our new Honor PvP System. We are going into detail on exactly what that is and how it works.
So I’m going to hand it off to Alex to talk about our Story and Setting.
GamesCom 2015 World of Warcraft: Legion panel Transcript Navigation:
Announcement | Dungeons |
Story & Setting | Raids |
Artifacts | Demon Hunters |
Class Orders | PvP Honor System |
