World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

WoWCast - The War Within Alpha
A new WoWCast is here, giving us more information about The War Within and Alpha/Beta testing.


Story

• This is a conflict that threatens the entire world
• Xal'atath is a key villain of the worldsoul saga. Based on the priest artifact weapon that she was trapped in for so long. Her design takes a lot of inspiration from the weapon and the story behind it.
• Alleria and Anduin are key heroes of the story, will find hope and redemption
• The War Within has a few layers to it. We are going below the surface of Azeroth, but we also will see lots of inner turmoil and conflict.
• The team didn't want the entire underground space to feel oppressive. Hallowfall feels like you could almost be outdoors.
• Magni, Moira, Dagran and more characters will be appearing. Dwarves will be taking center stage.
• The Rookery is the place that storm gryphons were raised and trained over the centuries. It was overrun by corrupted Earthen.
• The Rookery is a part of the main campaign in the zone, so you can do it solo with follower dungeon NPCs on your side.
• The follower dungeon tech will let the story flow through dungeons even for solo players.
• The Nerubians are one of the great races of Azeroth, rivals to High Elves and Nightborne. We'll see some of their history in the War Within.

Gameplay

• There will be an arachnophobia filter that turns spiders into crabs for players that have a fear of spiders.
• New Tier Sets will be added and you can get them from a wide variety of activities.
• Brann will be the Delve companion for the first season.
• Players should feel like they adventured, stumbled across a place, and walked through a seamless misty door to their own experience.
• Brann can be a healer or damage dealer.
• Delves have two tiers of difficulty during leveling, for players that want more of a challenge. More difficulty tiers will be unlocked at max level and throughout the expansion.
• As you hit max level, you'll get an epic customizable mechanical mount, where you can earn customization and attachments in Delves. This mount will have Dynamic Flying.
• Almost all mounts will have Dynamic Flying.
• Warbands are cross factions, realms, everything. Login screens show your 4 favorite.
• Warbands are a foundation, the team wants to keep building on it. In 2024, WoW is going to shift from character based to account based.
• Deephaul Ravine is a new battleground, mix of Silvershard Mines and Arathi Basin. Hold some points, push a cart.
• Battleground Blitz was testing out the 8v8 solo queue and this will be the default for rated battlegrounds in the future.
• Hero Talents have been updated based on feedback.
• Professions in Dragonflight was a shift on how professions will work going forward, so The War Within will be similar.
• The Work Order system frustrated people, so The War Within will have NPC crafting orders so that there is always something for you to grab. Player crafting orders will be more lucrative.
• The new quest icons will show what type of quest it is, regular, daily, important, campaign, etc.

Alpha

• The expansion intro experience isn't being tested right now, so alpha players spawn in on the Isle of Dorn.
• You'll see the scars from an initial battle that didn't end so well. You arrive in a strange land with a new threat to face.
• Each week, a new build will focus on a new piece of The War Within. Alpha will start off zone by zone, level band by level band.
• With later Alpha builds, the team will move on to other zones, other parts of the game.
• More players will be added as alpha progresses.
• Beta will be a test of the entire expansion, 70-80 and the endgame.

Developer Q&A
Michael Bybee (Production Director) and Sean McCann (Senior Game Designer - Delves) answered questions after the press event.

Delves - Difficulty

• There will be 11 Delve difficulty levels so that you can turn the difficulty up to 11!
• There will be 3 Delve difficulty tiers in pre-season, with Tier 4-11 unlocking with the season start.
• Around Delve Difficulty Tier 8 it just becomes bragging rights as a reward.
• There will be a top difficulty Delve, maybe a one room boss fight.
• Players won't be scaled down for Delves. If you outgear it, so be it.
• Delves won't have Affixes, but the team is looking at how they will make it harder. Sometimes a treasure chest will be a mimic. Map mechanics may be harsher at higher levels, with more or stronger monsters spawning from webs. There has to be a balance between just making things harder vs adding more and more mechanics.
• You should die in a Delve, but probably not in the first difficulty tier.

Delves - Companion

• In pre-season, Delve companions will go Level 1 to 10 and earn all of the talents.
• Once the season starts, your companion can level to 50, gaining stat boosts and things like that.
• Delve companion progression will be account wide, so if he is Level 40 on your main, he will be Level 40 on your alt.
• If you go AFK, Brann will lean against the wall while waiting for you to come back. The team wants him to feel a little bit more alive and give him a personality.
• A new Delve companion will be added in Season 2. Each season will rotate in a new one, with new mechanics. Brann will always be in the hub.

Delves - Rewards

• Delves might grant gear up to Mythic 5, but that would be at the Tier 8 or Tier 9 difficulty of Delves.
• No limits on number of Delves you can run per week.
• Rewards may be limited based on the Rare and Epic keys you can get.
• The team doesn't want players to ignore everything and endlessly grind Delves.

Delves - Randomness

• Most Delve maps are static, except for one that the team can't talk about yet.
• There will be some randomness in Delves to make it a little different each time. Creature types, abilities, and spawn locations may change, as well as some other small things.
• Delves scenarios will be randomized at max level. Level up scenarios might be rescuing some NPCs, but max level could be "here is a torch, burn it all down".
• Delve scenarios may rotate every day, but the team is still experimenting.
• Delves may have some positive Affixes from chests.

Delves - Misc

• There will be cross-faction Delves.
• Delve combat logs will have some extra information but no plans for leaderboards.
• Delves will help to build the world story, Arathi and Earthen cultures.
• Delves open the door to other spin-offs that use the base tech added.
• Creatures in Delves are using the tech developed for Garrison NPCs to have them do things on their own without being told what to do.
• The team will add more Delves later, for now they will just be in the War Within zones. The team has talked about other places in the older zones that would be cool to have Delves.

Warbands

• For launch there will be just the one Warband background. They had to break (and fix) the entire character select screen to make it work.
• Double click on a character to login from the Warband screen is hopefully coming soon.
• Pose selection on the Warband screen is on the list of things the team wants to do, TBD if/when.
• In the past, player data was stored per character, making it difficult to roll out account wide achievements or any account wide sharing things. Those features required a lot of extra work.
• In The War Within, a lot of things will be stored as account wide data, with even more things being changed to account wide in the future. It's a big change under the hood.
• Warbound and Warbound until Equipped items will exist and be fairly common outside of the highest level gear.
• Being able to gear up alts with Warbound equipment is important.
• If you have an existing item, it's very likely that the transmog appearance will be added for your entire Warband when you log in to The War Within.
• No plans to let you do profession actions from your Warband alts without changing characters. You can use the shared bank to move materials between them though!
• You can deposit and withdraw gold from your Warband bank (WarBank™)

Hallowfall

• Hallowfall was designed to avoid cave fatigue. An underground expansion can't all feel like a cave or players would be tired of it after a few weeks.
• The culture in Hallowfall was inspired by the Arathi.
• What would happen if some of the Arathi people found themselves trapped in this space and their culture evolved to react to the Nerubians and elements in their new environment.
• Airships underground are awesome.
• Hallowfall has a unique event tied to the environment of the zone.

Story

• The story behind what happens to Dalaran is being saved for launch.
• Returning players should get the basic story from playing the game. There is a lot of history and external content that shouldn't be required. The team is talking about things they can do to make it easier to keep up with the story, especially for returning players.
• The Earthen had a ton of work done to build a background and culture for their race.

Classes and Hero Talents

• Hero Talents were designed to avoid talent bloat. New talents in the past just added another row of talents and buttons. Hero Talents will expand on the fantasy of your class. The intent is to take things you already have and add to existing abilities.
• The team is eager to get more player feedback so they can keep iterating on Hero Talents.
• The team is working on additional class changes beyond Hero Talents, but Hero Talents will be the biggest changes for classes in this expansion.
• The team isn't sure that players want more support classes or specs. The team heard the Priest Hero Talents feedback loud and clear.
• Voidweaver gives you a Void Pool button. Put it under enemies to damage and slow them.

Professions

• The team is experimenting a bit with Archaeology, nothing confirmed for launch.
• Herbalism has a mini-game farm in Hallowfall, but it is just one off addition that happened to fit the zone. Not every profession will have something like that.
• NPC owned crafting orders should make that part of professions better.
• No specific plans to make it easier to swap professions and specializations.
• The team is keeping an eye on how crafting orders are being used and will make adjustments if adding the NPC crafting orders is not enough.

Raids

• The team is talking about making Battle for Azeroth raids more accessible for players, especially those who want to go back and collect transmogs. No details yet, but stay tuned!
• Players shouldn't always need a specific class or support spec to do content, so striking a good balance there is important.
• Difficulty scaling is always a topic of discussion. There has to be a balance between accessibility and providing challenges to overcome. There were some big difficulty spikes in Amirdrassil that are now smoothed out.
• You may be able to ascend webbing to do part of a raid boss encounter. WoW raid encounters are often just a large flat area where you can see everything, but some movement up and down might be nice.
• The team is never fully happy with how gearing is working. They make a change to improve it, hear feedback, make changes to fix that, and repeat endlessly.
• The team has always thought about doing smaller raids with a few bosses. In the past, smaller raids were usually used to tide players over while a bigger experience was on the way.

Tier Sets

• One of the goals that will continue is making tier sets available from a broader set of content
• The team is still iterating on Delve rewards and endgame content. TBD if Tier Set pieces will be available from them, but it wouldn't be surprising.

Dungeons

• The team will get feedback from the current iteration of Followers in dungeons and then iterate on it.
• In The War Within, Followers should be in level up dungeons right out of the gate. Any changes after this depend on player feedback.
• Doing dungeons with your Warband alts as followers is a cool idea. Nothing to announce now.
• Dawn of the Infinite was a progression experience. It felt good and the team would like to do more of that.

Mythic+

• High end Mythic+ players feel like the progression in difficulty in Mythic 2-9 isn't meaningful. The changes being made in the next season are an experiment.
• There are lots of players that haven't engaged in Mythic+, some because of the timer system. They are interested in playing more like a raid, where you can try difficulty without being rushed.
• The team is talking about ways they can experiment more with Mythic+ changes, no details yet. Plunderstorm and Mists of Pandaria Remix are the start of a big change in how the team works and thinks about the game.
• No new Mythic+ Affix to announce today, but the team is talking about how they can make Affixes more interesting.
• The team has talked about things like doing positive Affixes and a harder base difficulty.
• The team is still looking at how they can add new Affixes to change things up.

Addons

• Addons are important to a huge portion of the player base. New players don't have those, so it makes it parts of the game less accessible to them.
• New players entering a dungeon and being told their DPS isn't very good doesn't feel good. The game should be a place people want to go and play.
• The team could make certain addons more a part of the core experience. No action planned yet, but the team wants to hear from the community.
• The changes made to private auras were intended. Content shouldn't always be completely solved by an addon.

Alpha / Beta

• The team will do a character wipe and open up beta once things feel ready.
• Early Access will start near the end of the week, giving players the weekend to play, with launch for everyone starting early in the week, likely Tuesday. Nothing here is set in stone.
• Music is one of the last things added to the expansion testing. The team will use every last minute to work on the music, so it'll be closer to the end of beta.

No Plans For...

• No new race and class combinations to announce at this time.
• No big changes to the raid loot systems are planned. Have to balance content between casual and high end players.
• No big changes to Mythic+ or Mythic raids are planned.
• There are no additional Allied Races to announce for The War Within at this time.
• No specific plans for cross-region play today.
• No plans to expand Void Storage right now.
• No new visage forms for Evokers.
• No guild housing is planned at this time.
• No plans to add more saved spots for transmog sets.

Misc

• Leaderboards for the flying races would be cool.
• The ocean graphics have been updated. If you look at the waves while standing on the beach, they should look more realistic.
• The team is working on an update to group management in the UI. It's annoying to manage groups in a raid, so the team is going to make it a little easier to manage, easier to see roles people are in, and have a cleaner UI.
• The team wants to keep adding ways for players to express themselves through character customizations.
• Adding Dragonriding to the game required physics tech that will let the team do lots of cool things. The team is talking about ways they can use the system for cool new things.
• The team hears the feedback around rare mounts, especially older ones people really care about. They took some action around holiday mounts, with increased drop rate on your first attempt of the day.
• Earning old raid mounts was a big accomplishment when the raid was current, so making them easy to get in the future diminishes their accomplishment.
• The team isn't ready to talk about legendary items yet, but thanks for asking!
• The boundaries between factions are important, but they aren't the main thing for most players.
• Guilds are cross-faction and that has worked pretty well.
• There are some changes coming to World Quests, but plans aren't finalized enough to talk about yet.
• The Live Team works on live content for the game. They aren't working on raids, dungeons, or anything for future expansions. This is the team that does holiday updates, Secrets of Azeroth, Hearthstone Anniversary. There will be more holiday updates and fun content in the game going forward.
• There used to be guild perks in the game a long time ago, but they just became a must have. You wanted to be in a guild that had the perks. The team doesn't want to create guild perks that aren't a barrier for new players.
• If players keep enjoying Fated seasons, the team will keep making them.
• The team doesn't want you to feel forever behind if you miss a few days. Dragonflight did a good job of not having grinds and there are no plans to bring them back.

The War Within Alpha Datamining - Build 54210
The first War Within Alpha build is here!


New Loading Screens



New Items and Icons



The War Within Alpha Development Notes
Blizzard has posted the Development Notes for Build 54210.



Achievement Changes



New Creature Models



New Encounter Journals



New Mounts and Companions



Spell Changes



Artifact Powers



Garrison Talents



Strings Changes



Garrison Follower Changes



Garrison Ability Changes



Misc Changes

The War Within Alpha - Dornogal Hub Preview
Today we are taking an early look at the hub city of Dornogal in The War Within. Keep in mind this is a very early alpha look and is likely to change. SPOILERS AHEAD!

• Dornogal has an entire section devoted to professions.
• Dornogal has several sections of empty buildings with fireplaces inside. These will likely be filled later, but some have joked that it would make a great spot for player housing.
• Dornogal has a Trading Post.
• Dornogal has an auction house.

The War Within Alpha - The Isle of Dorn Zone Preview
Today we are taking an early look at the Isle of Dorn zone in The War Within. Keep in mind this is a very early alpha look and is likely to change. MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!