World of Warcraft – Gameplay and Systems Deep Dive

[Stoy]

BlizzCon 2017 - World of Warcraft - What's Next

Blizzcon 2017 Opening Ceremony Announcements

World of Warcraft – Gameplay and Systems Deep Dive

Azerite

• Gnomes and Goblins will give you maps that lead you to islands with Azerite
• Will take ships from faction hubs to find Azerite
• Denizens of the islands will fight hard to protect Azerite
• Gain Azerite from:
  
  • Nodes and chests
  • Creatures and Questgivers
  • Powerful bosses and more

Island Expeditions

• 3-player Scenarios
• 4 different difficulties: Normal, Heroic, Mythic and PVP
• Role agnostic (No need for specific role set ups)
• 15-20 minutes to complete
• Low que times
• Goal: Obtain Azerite for faction and for yourself

Dynamic Replayability

• Interactable environment
• Shrines that give unique buffs and debuffs
• Puzzles and optimal ways to play through scenarios
• Same island will look different and have different challenges every time you que up
• Locations of enemies, shrines and intractable items is random as is time of day and look of island
• Island Content that is randomly generated:
  
  • Creatures
  • Capture points
  • Chests and Azerite Nodes
  • Questgivers
  • Consumables and Shrines
  • Start Locations
  • Caves, Ships...and more!

Faction Champions

• The AI you face all have classes based on race
  
  • Example: Troll AI - Shadow Hunter, Witch Doctor, Beserker
  • Example: Worgen AI - Wolf pack that are really good at "sniffing you out"

AI Creatures

• Tactical ability usage: will polymorph you and your team while also stealing azerite nodes among other things
• Will go after map objectives that you are focusing on
• AI makes strategic decisions
• AI have personalities
  
  • Example: "Sneaky Pete" Rogue could come and sap your healer while you are fighting a boss
• Unpredictable

Different Island Locations

• Randomized islands mean random locations
• Take you to a wide variety of different visual locations
• Examples include:
  
  • Abandoned Gilnean islands
  • Un'gol Ruins
  • Havenswood

Heart of Azeroth

• The faction that wins will inherit a dying world
• Magni will grant players the Heart of Azeroth artifact, a neck piece gifted from our planet's titan.
• Heart is a new take on the artifact system without the linear path
• When the Heart gains Azerite it levels up and gains new abilities for three pieces of specified armor and itself.
• Gaining azerite will level up your Heart over time and unlock ranks that give the player an assortment of abilities to choose from on ever expanding tiers of rings.
• Every time you loot a new item, your Heart's power remains the same. You keep moving forward. It doesn't lose the azerite from the item being upgraded but may present you with different abilities from your previous choices.
• The strength of individual azerite abilities is determined by the item level of the piece of armor.
• Example: Character Shaman has a Heart of Azeroth power of 20, which unlocks 2 rings on the neck. The 3rd requires level 21. Said shaman can choose 1 ability from the first 2 ring tiers to empower, such as increased ghost wolf speed or more damage reduction on astral shift. When she unlocks the 3rd ring by gaining azerite, she gets to choose between several different abilities in that tier to empower. This tailors your character individually from everyone else. In this example, the shaman gets to chose between survivability or mobility.
• Choices will always be individual and new choices are made throughout the entire expansion.

Warfronts

• 20 player
• Alliance vs Horde
• All out war
• Warcraft RTS fantasy

State of Eastern Kingdoms

• Undercity lies in ruins
• Eastern Kingdoms is controlled by Alliance
• Arathi Highlands is a key holding point.
• For the Alliance!
  
  • Undercity isn't defensible
  • Threat of Horde remains
  • Cut off the north, especially Silvermoon City
• For the Horde!
  
  • Make a stand
  • Prevent the alliance from building up
  • Launching point for Gilneas

First Warfront: Stromgarde

• Stromgarde is being visually updated
• Establish base of operations by working together with 19 others in your faction
• Gather resources: Lumber and iron
• Territory gain allows research and to start building bases
• Gather resources and work together to focus on constructing one building as fast as possible or spend your resources on buildings you think are more important
• Just like RTS game, troops will be recruited from buildings constructed and sent to front lines. You can send some of the raid to help them out there.
• Other faction will be trying to take your territory
• Fight different enemy commanders
• Research new war technology
• Battlefield events: random events happen such as a mercenary showing up that can be paid to give special troops.

Social Features

• Enhance existing social structures
• Make it easier to manage connections and keep communicating
• Integrate Battle.net voice into WoW

WoW Communities

• Helps players of similar in game interests play together
• Character specific groups
• Cross-server
• Can be in multiple communities
• Roster of members
• Simple role management
• Quick Join
• Voice Integration
• Auto-maintained calendar invites
• Text chat history

[Fiercelord]

I hope that they announce new customization options for ALL races.

[McOden]

I hope that they announce new customization options for ALL races.

Nope, just Draenei =P

[McOden]

Nope, just Draenei

[Deleted]

Ehmm. Blizzard? If you make us grind currency and designate one specific way to get that currency, people will grow to despise it by the time you reach the second content patch. Do not do that.

[Deleted]

All that instanced stuff is worrying me.
Please make the teleporting stop. The world is going to feel so small...

[Thrackerzod]

"Shrines that give buffs but also debuffs" We've had those since Mists of Pandaria.

[Deleted]

I hope that they announce new customization options for ALL races.

they said that more subraces are planned

[teidden]

Still nothing eye popping like the systems in the legion expansion. this all been blah

[Valyro]

This Island Expeditions seem to be the MoP scenarios 2.0 with random generated content.

[Fiercelord]

they said that more subraces are planned

I'm not talking about subraces, but our current playable races.

[Fuzzybacon1512]

Oh my gosh this island crap is so boring. Hey look you have to farm Azerite(artifact power) so we put a nice look on it this time....

[Eazy]

Islands - random generated content with random generated NPCs and random generated reward. Fuck this.

[Thrackerzod]

I hope that they announce new customization options for ALL races.

Me too, seems like we had more options before the character revamp. For some races all the faces look the same now. Would be great to see more options like height, weight (which probably won't happen because armor), more hairstyles and colors and better face customization sort of like Skyrim instead of only being able to choose from a handful of faces.

Oh my gosh this island crap is so boring. Hey look you have to farm Azerite(artifact power) so we put a nice look on it this time....

Wait are we keeping our artifact weapons in the new expansion? Please tell me we aren't keeping those, I hated that whole system. I don't want to be an overpowered god-king anymore, leader of my faction. Just let us go back to being adventurers and finding our own weapons.

[Deleted]

Still nothing eye popping like the systems in the legion expansion. this all been blah

Pretty much. People are still hyped up, but after a day or two when all the excitement wears off, they'll realise just how weak the 'stuff' on offer really is. On /r/wow, the classic announcement video has 28k upvotes, with the BFA gameplay video at less than 5k.

Very telling.

[teidden]

I think Blizzard has real issue where they don't have anything left in the tank after legion for creativity.

[Fuzzybacon1512]

Wait are we keeping our artifact weapons in the new expansion? Please tell me we aren't keeping those, I hated that whole system. I don't want to be an overpowered god-king anymore, leader of my faction. Just let us go back to being adventurers and finding our own weapons.

No you are getting a neck piece that you have to farm blood of azeroth (Azerite) to get powers.......Artifact 2.0

[Deleted]

Any word on new talents/skills?

[Peacemoon]

I'm a bit worried random instanced content will get quite boring fast. It feels like the Legion invasions we invade which weren't quite as interesting as it first sounded. We already have dungeons - what is the purpose of this other than a grind?

[Fuzzybacon1512]

Any word on new talents/skills?

nothing at all about classes, so freaking lame.