Lich King boss: Hardcore-casual "power gap" is reset with level cap increases

Speaking to VG247 at Games Convention, WoW: Wrath of the Lich King lead designer Tom Chilton said that increasing the level cap to 80 with the impending expansion will allow Blizzard to better align the game's hardcore and casual players.

"It... gives us a chance to narrow the gap between the casual and the hardcore, in that, after players have been at the level cap for a long time, the hardcore keeping going through all the different tiers of raid content, and they create a bigger and bigger power gap between the casual and the hardcore," he said.

"The level-up process gives us an opportunity to reset that for a while and then continue on from there."

Chilton also told us that increasing the level cap with expansions "has to be part of the formula" in terms of providing content across WoW's entire user-base.

The last level cap increase in the game was from 60 to 70, executed with the launch of The Burning Crusade.

Wrath of the Lich King has no date as yet.