WoW: Pair of Interviews

As part of today's media blitz regarding Wrath of the Lich King, IGN has posted up a pair of developer interviews. The first is with lead producer J. Allen Brack who spends some time speculating about WoW's future:

IGN: Is that something we'll ever see in future expansion packs, a full graphical overhaul?

J. Allen Brack: We talk about that for every expansion. We talked about it for Burning Crusade, we talked about it for this expansion and we've got new engine technologies that we do to make things better in terms of going back and redoing things. That's a pretty significant undertaking. And then other games have tried to do that and it's often with mixed results. Some people really like that idea, a lot of people continue to play with the old graphics. Invariably there's this huge jump technologically in terms of how you're going to go forward supporting new technology, new art assets, and still maintain the support for the old stuff, so it's a tricky challenge.

The second interview is with lead designer Jeffrey Kaplan. The article zeroes in on the Death Knight and contains spoilers:

IGN: What about the rune resource system the Death Knight uses?

Jeffrey Kaplan: So you have six runes total and you'll always have six runes. You'll get to pick, and there's actually a forging process where you put those in your blade, you'll get to pick how many of those you have within six. So if you wanted four blood runes, one unholy, and one frost and that's the six you're going to run with, you can totally do that. We want there to be some customization in how a Death Knight manages his resources and let him choose. The runes have their own separate, independent cooldown as you consume them. Right now it's feeling good at about 10 seconds per [rune]. And then there are also abilities and talents that can trigger an instant refresh or conversion that consumes your blood but puts it into frost. You get a lot of run resource gameplay that way.