WoWCast - The War Within Alpha and Developer Q&A

[chaud]

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.

[Big Thanks]

Ctrl + F: "PvP"

No results

[FelPlague]

Ctrl + F: "PvP"

No results

You should actually watch the video then, cause there is PVP stuff, including a new BG and RBG rework.

[Big Thanks]

You should actually watch the video then, cause there is PVP stuff, including a new BG and RBG rework.

WGHAT THE F***?!
Thanks, ill watch.

[FelPlague]

WGHAT THE F***?!
Thanks, ill watch.

No prob mate.

[Luthorite]

"Deephaul Ravine is a new battleground, mix of Silvershard Mines and Arathi Basin. Hold some points, push a cart..."

That's literally what Deepwind Gorge used to be. Lmao are they seriously trying to say this is a new game mode?!

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.

Given they're just glorified scenarios with scaling they shouldn't be. Keep it to raids.

Hero Talents have been updated based on feedback.

Then explain why my Holy Priest still has that shitty RNG Premonition talent that replaces a spell that is actually fun to use aka Power Infusion?

[McNeil]

This is a conflict that threatens the entire world

So like... what has always been the case?

[Luthorite]

This is a conflict that threatens the entire world

So like... what has always been the case?

Yeah the more I read about this expansion the more they still have no idea where they want to take the story.

This and the gameplay stuff it ain't worth £40 imo.

[FelPlague]

"Deephaul Ravine is a new battleground, mix of Silvershard Mines and Arathi Basin. Hold some points, push a cart..."

That's literally what Deepwind Gorge used to be. Lmao are they seriously trying to say this is a new game mode?!

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.

Given they're just glorified scenarios with scaling they shouldn't be. Keep it to raids.

Hero Talents have been updated based on feedback.

Then explain why my Holy Priest still has that shitty RNG Premonition talent that replaces a spell that is actually fun to use aka Power Infusion?

??? That is NOT what deepwind gorge used to be... Deepwind gorge was a capture point map with carts you could capture to steal points from your enemy.

Deephaul ravine is a mix of silvershard and arathi, close to deepwind, but not "literally deepwind"



Premonition is not RNG, what the fuck you on about?

[Big Thanks]

"We cant forget about PvP" (lol that intro says it all)

New Battleground <3
Solo queue will be implemented <3

also:
"We are excited to create a new framework where Battlegrounds are included in the ENDGAME reward structure"

Omg...yes! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[VMSmith]

Thank you for the transcription. I feel bad about this but I couldn't listen to the video because the lady's voice was like nails on a chalkboard to me. I'm sure she's lovely, I just couldn't tolerate it.

That said, delves look fantastic from a gameplay perspective. I hope they are also inherently fun.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

https://youtu.be/q2tU3c-V_Pc

Wish they hadn't spoiled that Dalaran is destroyed/damaged. Would have been pleasantly surprised to see that happen ingame.

Dagran looks inappropriate for this franchise. A future Dark Iron dwarven king should look like a molten badass, not a wimp who gets bullied in school.

@11:39 Arachnophobia filter lmao.

This is fucking World of WARCRAFT, where we behead people and put their heads on pikes and hang their scalps from the saddles of our horses, where undead are shambling around with their entrails falling out of their stomachs, where death knights snap their fingers and worms burst out of people's veins. How the fuck can anybody still be playing this game and handle that but can't handle looking at pixels of an imaginary spider? Goodness gracious.

Delves having a hard difficulty sounds nice. Challenging solo or small group content that isn't speedrunning the same half dozen old dungeons over and over again.

I hope that the dragonflying for all old mounts doesn't mean that they skimped on the animations.




New battleground visually looks nice.

8v8 solo queue RBGs are going to be the default going forward? What? No! Battlegrounds are designed around much larger teams, and you want to be in voice chat with the bros, not queuing with randoms who don't talk to each other and don't coordinate. If you want small scale PvP you go play 3v3 arenas or GW2's 5v5 SPvP.

Ion: "I think we're really excited to make that battleground experience that personally I've always felt is the best part of WoW PvP. That larger scale, more cooperative, objective based, you know, collaborative, competitive setting, as opposed to the deatmatch style in arena."

Small 8v8 fights is not large scale WoW PvP.




THIS is large scale WoW PvP, and this is what retail WoW should be facilitating! It once did...




Whoa. The Pitlord summon for the Warlock Diabloist hero spec did not disappoint. Fingers crossed that the other specs look just as cool.

Darn. Professions are staying the same. The Dragonflight profession revamp punishes people who haven't been playing since the start of the expansion, as those who do can craft stuff with the most efficiency and lock down the market, preventing latecomers from breaking in. NPC work orders that player crafters can fulfill... IDK how to feel about that.

The team isn't sure that players want more support classes or specs. The team heard the Priest Hero Talents feedback loud and clear.

I like having more playstyles. More support classes/specs would be welcome, provided that they are cool. Augmentation Evoker wielding Black Dragonflight and Earth magics felt sufficiently awesome, shame that it's tied to shameful tumblr scalies.

Herbalism has a mini-game farm in Hallowfall

Neat. I liked the little touches they did the herb/mining nodes in Dragonflight, with the wind herbs that blow your back or the frost herbs that freeze you. Immersed me more in the fantasy world when interacting with these fantasy materials.

Players shouldn't always need a specific class or support spec to do content, so striking a good balance there is important.

I have never felt that one class or spec was mandatory when pugging normal and heroic raids or mythic 20s or when doing RBGs. I guess having a demon hunter tank or a druid is nice if you're doing capture the flag RBGs, but they're not essential and the other tank options for flag carrier like prot paladin are pretty good too. The PvE content isn't that hard and you can overgear it, and for RBGs you win based off of how well your team strategized and coordinated, not on the microlevel technical execution of your rotation or whether a class is 5% better than others.

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.

Nice. One thing I really like about WoW's fights (as opposed to FF14's fights) is how dynamic and more unique and engaging they are. I like stuff like leaping across to the other gunship in ICC, or clinging on to Deathwing's back as he barrel rolls in Dragon Soul, or hopping onto the conveyor belt in Siegecrafter, or dodging trains on Operator Thogar in Blackrock Foundry, or running/flying around everywhere on Eonar in Antorus, or chasing Sylvanas across the chains in Sanctum of Domination, or ascending that spiral staircase when fighting the ice spider in Vault of the Incarnates, etc.

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.

To me, I want to feel like I am exploring a wide variety of locales. Having smaller raids like Terrace of the Endless Spring also helps, but the best raids like Ulduar or Throne of Thunder have you progress through lots of different environments and by the end you have felt like you finished a long journey to the final boss, whereas the issue with Shadowlands or Dragonflight raids is that they are pretty samey throughout.

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.

Over the course of Dragonflight, I think I have only ever once or twice seen claim that someone else was doing "bad DPS". More often then not, I'm seeing this happen in normal difficulty raid PUGs, where low DPS is never the reason why we're not killing a boss. People not doing mechanics is why.

Leaderboards for the flying races would be cool.

It would be nice if the game would actually match people up who want to race with each other. It isn't fun to sign up for a race and waiting half an hour only for no one else to show up.

The ocean graphics have been updated. If you look at the waves while standing on the beach, they should look more realistic.

Are we finally getting more of those Isle of Thunder beach waves or Exile's Reach ocean waves?

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.

I don't think I have ever felt a sense of awe seeing someone have a "rare mount" unless it was one of those armored gladiator mounts. You knew that guy was a top 0.5% PvPer.

If players keep enjoying Fated seasons, the team will keep making them.

The issue here is that people just don't want to run the current raid over and over again. Players should be able to have a challenge doing all of the raids in the game, and a reason to do them with other players. FFXIV's alliance raid roullete keeps people playing all of the 24 man raids in that game all of the time. No idea why WoW hasn't implemented that so people can queue up and get Dragon Soul or Heart of Fear or whatever.

- - - Updated - - -

"Deephaul Ravine is a new battleground, mix of Silvershard Mines and Arathi Basin. Hold some points, push a cart..."

That's literally what Deepwind Gorge used to be. Lmao are they seriously trying to say this is a new game mode?!

Yeah, I initially thought "this is just Deepwind Gorge but with a new coat of paint", but then I remembered that Deepwind Gorge didn't have carts moving on tracks that had to be held. The carts were instead flags one person had to go into the enemy base and capture and haul back. That being said, it's a shame they're not making world PvP zones like Wintergrasp or Ashran or big BGs like Alterac Valley or Strand of the Ancients anymore.

[rrayy]

https://youtu.be/q2tU3c-V_Pc

Wish they hadn't spoiled that Dalaran is destroyed/damaged. Would have been pleasantly surprised to see that happen ingame.

To be fair, it is MMO who spoiled it with their transcription. In the video, Ion only referred to it as "something you will find very familiar". I wouldn't have known if you hadn't said a word becuase I don't read the OP when there is a video to watch.

[saixilein]

"Battleground Blitz was testing out the 8v8 solo queue and this will be the default for rated battlegrounds in the future."

Do I missunderstand something or do they telling me 10vs10 rbg is gone and there is only Blitz RBG left?!

This must be an error. No way they remove RBG as we know it.

Or do they wanna say 10vs10 RBG will have the mechanics of Blitz, just its 10vs10 with premategroups?

[SniperCT]

The issue here is that people just don't want to run the current raid over and over again. Players should be able to have a challenge doing all of the raids in the game, and a reason to do them with other players. FFXIV's alliance raid roullete keeps people playing all of the 24 man raids in that game all of the time. No idea why WoW hasn't implemented that so people can queue up and get Dragon Soul or Heart of Fear or whatever.

Truefacts, I took a break from DF about a month or so in, mostly because the renown grind sucked and I felt like I was blocked from continuing the story. When I came back I wanted to go through all the old raids in order as I did the story.

Even with a tank and healer some of the LFR wings were .... hours. Two hours waiting at one point for one of the second tier wings.

If they offered an LFR that randomly chose from all the wings in an expansion(or hell the whole game would be nice excepting that I think people would riot if they got the last deathwing wing lmao), offering some endgame currency reward for queuing up once a day, then someone like me could catch up earlier tier raids a lot easier.

I would also like LFR bosses to not be out of order for the raids though. Was super annoying in amirdrassil.

[En Sabah Nur]

Wish they hadn't spoiled that Dalaran is destroyed/damaged. Would have been pleasantly surprised to see that happen ingame.

You're looking through alpha stuff for an upcoming release and complaining about being spoilt...

@11:39 Arachnophobia filter lmao.

This is fucking World of WARCRAFT, where we behead people and put their heads on pikes and hang their scalps from the saddles of our horses, where undead are shambling around with their entrails falling out of their stomachs, where death knights snap their fingers and worms burst out of people's veins. How the fuck can anybody still be playing this game and handle that but can't handle looking at pixels of an imaginary spider? Goodness gracious.

I never realised how many people simply do not understand what a phobia actually is. Its actually quite surprising. The mockery isn't surprising, though, unfortunately.