News: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - Interview Part #2 @ The MMO Gamer

The MMO Gamer: I remember that [hero] classes are something that were first mentioned back in beta, and have been on the upcoming features page since it was launched.



So, to be blunt: What took so long? And is it going to take four more years to see the next one?



Tom Chilton: It could, I don’t know. We’ll have to see how the Death Knight goes in terms of how well it slots in with the overall scheme of classes.



Really, what’s taken so long is that one of our core values is that we have very distinct character classes. I think on some level the original idea of hero classes and having forking hero stuff that would go on, with each class able to become one of multiple different possible hero classes, that was kind of what our imagination was before we even shipped the game.



But, the realities of, “Ok, we’re not looking to ship, we have to maintain the integrity of the game, and make sure we don’t screw it all over overnight by tripling the number of character classes in the game all of a sudden… or even adding two or three of them at a time.”