Update: Tier tokens will drop from Group Loot / Master loot, Personal loot awards the armor piece itself.

Azeroth Armory: Forging Warglaive

Gamescom Developer Q&A
Our friends at FatBossTV had the chance to sit down with WatcherDev and talk about Patch 7.1 and Legion!


Patch 7.1
  • Patch 7.1 has three major pieces: Karazhan, a small raid, and additional quests in Suramar.
  • We will get a lot more detail on Patch 7.1 after Legion launches.
  • Patch 7.1 was announced now to underscore the team's commitment to patch content as part of Legion.
  • Karazhan is a Mythic dungeon (not Mythic+) with a weekly lockout.
  • Karazhan is a long enough dungeon that some people might do part of it one night and then come back to finish it another night.
  • Patch 6.2.3 was a pretty successful patch for what it was, mostly a systems patch that revitalized existing content and gave players a reason to revisit stuff.


New Dungeons
  • The old dungeon structure didn't give the team a good way to add dungeons that fit into the existing ecosystem of dungeons without stepping on the old ones.
  • When ZA and ZG were introduced, they gave better loot than the older dungeons, so people went from running a diverse set of dungeons to running just the troll dungeons.
  • With Mythic+ dungeons and Warforged/Titanforged gear in dungeons the team can add new dungeons that have a higher baseline difficulty and rewards that coexist the existing dungeons.

Raid Release Schedule
  • There will be a blog post coming out in the next few days that has the full raid release schedule.
  • The schedule will be similar to previous expansions, where everything is closed for the first three weeks, then Normal and Heroic Nightmare open, the PvP season begins, and Mythic keystones become available
  • Nighthold is an early 2017 raid, towards the very beginning of 2017.
  • In Warlords, it felt like Foundry came out too soon in relation to Highmaul for a lot of guilds and raid groups. The top end raiders were ready for it, but tons of other players were still working on it. Foundry came out and they felt rushed into that.

Mythic+ Dungeons
  • The world first type raiders will be playing a lot the first few weeks of raiding. Instead of doing five split clears they may end up doing lots of Mythic+ dungeons, which isn't the end of the world.
  • The average group will probably play through all of the Mythic keystones in the group and that is it. That might take 12 - 15 dungeon runs, which is longer than most guilds raid in a week.
  • It would be easy to add a hard weekly lockout on Mythic keystones to prevent people from farming them for loot, but that would lead to people logging in on Tuesday, doing their Mythic run for the week, and being done.
  • With keystones, if you log in later in the week and have a fresh keystone ready to go, people will be lining up to run the dungeon with you.
  • Currently rewards cap out at Mythic+ 10, which rewards gear that is roughly on par with Heroic Nightmare gear. The real reward comes from the weekly chest, rewarding the mythic raid gear.

Legendary Items
  • There is a little bit of tuning still to be done on the legendary items that are outliers.
  • There will still be some items that are the best and some that are the worst.
  • The legendary items are a chance to try out interesting effects that aren't just a damage throughput increase.
  • If you are someone that never sets foot in a raid zone, getting a legendary item should still be exciting for you.
  • There are some legendary items that are amazing in a raid over a long fight that aren't as useful for a player that is just soloing in the world. A more utility related legendary might be a huge deal for that player.
  • There are plans to add more legendary items as the expansion progresses.
  • The team decided not to start out with a system that allowed you to target a specific legendary item.
  • As more are added, there will be some threshold at which there are so many out there that it feels like you can't reasonably expect to get any of the specific ones you want. At that point being able to target certain legendary items will make sense.

Artifact Weapons
  • The team will avoid nerfing a spec from being a little too good to the worst so that you don't feel that all of your Artifact progression was a waste.
  • Artifacts are something that will continue to grow and evolve so that Artifact Power matters for the entirety of Legion.
  • Classes are balanced against each other without Artifacts or Legendary items. The Artifacts and Legendary items are then balanced against each other separately.

Melee vs Ranged
  • In Mythic+ dungeons melee do really well thanks to their cleave and mobility compared to casters that have to stand still.
  • Melee may be a little stronger in Mythic+ dungeons while ranged are a little stronger in raids, which is fine as long as the gap isn't too large.
  • The team doesn't want to solve the melee vs ranged problem by making life boring for melee and making raid mechanics that don't target them at all.
  • The community doesn't do a great job when something is 1% better and they claim it is the only viable option and everything else is garbage.

Ability Pruning
  • You prune a plant to guide its growth in new directions that are hopefully more aesthetically pleasing. It is removing stuff to make room to add new stuff.
  • One of the themes of Legion class design is to emphasize strengths and weaknesses of classes.
  • A lot of the things that were removed were removed after looking back at classes over the years where the class designers had taken the easy route. The team was coming up with a new set of abilities for an expansion or needed new talents and asked themselves what that class needed. If a class wasn't very mobile, they gave them a talent row with mobility options. Players thought this was amazing and what they always wanted, but that led to a lot of homogenization.
  • In a world where no one has weaknesses there are also no strengths.
  • In Legion there is now room to add interesting utility, especially for specs that feel like they don't bring much beyond their throughput.
  • Bring the player, not the class was a reaction to the hyper regimented raid structure of Burning Crusade where buffs were party based and synergy was more important than anything else.
  • The team would like to get back to a place where if you are a PuG leader, you are looking at your raid comp and saying, "We could really use a Hunter, let's look for a good hunter", rather than "Let's look for any ranged DPS, especially the flavor of the month that is 2% better and thus is the only viable one". Obviously this isn't the case literally right now, but it is what the team is thinking about and would like to move towards over the course of patches and future content.

Expansion Launches
  • There is a lot that has been done by the server team and how the world is designed that will make the Legion launch smoother than the Warlords launch.
  • Zones scale in level so the population will be distributed across the different zones.
  • Under heavy load there will also be multiple versions of the same zone on the same server to make sure that server performance is okay and gameplay feels good.
  • One of the things that caused problems for servers at Warlords launch, especially on the Horde side, was the Spyglass that was needed to start the Horde Garrison. It was only usable by one player at a time, which caused a bit of a bottleneck.
  • The team hotfixed the Spyglass to be usable by multiple players at a time, but something went wrong with the hofix and then no one could use the Spyglass!
  • Horde players in North America were all stuck there for a few hours until the team could fix it, resulting in a big clump of players all hitting the garrison at the same time, making server problems much worse.
  • Everyone on the server was doing Frostfire at the same time, resulting in a laggy zone and even more players building up there, making things even worse.

Raid Structure and Rewards
  • The current raid structure didn't change this expansion because there isn't a huge problem to fix. All of the raid structure changes in previous expansions were targeted at solving a particular problem.
  • Classic to Burning Crusade changed because the logistics of 40 man raiding were overwhelming for a lot of guilds, players were a cog in the giant raid machine. "Your job is to dispel this one person and that is your only job in this giant 40 player group". It was fun for the raid leader to plan all of that out but less fun for the players.
  • The introduction of 10 player raiding allowed the team to let more types of players and groups experience the content.
  • Flexible raiding is probably the best raid structure the team has done and is working well.
  • Three difficulties plus Raid Finder means that there is a raid difficulty for all of the different groups. Normal for friends, family, and PuGs. Heroic for guilds that are formed for the purpose of raiding, Mythic for the extremely hardcore players.
  • Mythic needed a fixed size so that tuning could be done in a way that is satisfying.
  • Being able to split the raid into groups that could go off and do a mechanic and assuming that the raid had one of every class was part of the encounters that the team wanted to design for Mythic, so the 20 player size felt like the right number. A smaller group size such as 15 players might have also worked, but that would have been tougher for the groups that were already at 25.
  • The team was worried that LFR was growing too much in prominence in some ways, so they wanted to make sure that players were doing regular group raiding didn't also feel obligated to do lots of Raid Finder to complement that. The team probably overdid this in Warlords by removing Tier sets from Raid Finder, so they are coming back to Raid Finder in Legion.
  • Most of the players that are raiding competitively will already have set pieces before that Raid Finder wing opens, so they won't feel obligated to go and do it when it opens.
  • If you have been really unlucky and want your set bonus, this gives you another chance to go and get that last piece.


Warcraft Movie - Additional Scene
An additional scene that wasn't in the theater release of the Warcraft Movie was posted today! Duncan Jones confirmed that this is one of the extra scenes on the DVD that releases on September 27th.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Gamescom Developer Q&A, Warcraft Movie Additional Scene started by chaud View original post
Comments 127 Comments
  1. Freedom's Avatar
    So why was that not in the movie?
  1. Drusin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by chaud View Post
    A lot of the things that were removed were removed after looking back at classes over the years where the class designers had taken the easy route. The team was coming up with a new set of abilities for an expansion or needed new talents and asked themselves what that class needed. If a class wasn't very mobile, they gave them a talent row with mobility options. Players thought this was amazing and what they always wanted, but that led to a lot of homogenization.
    One day Blizz will stop saying that. I still think it's amazing, it is what I want.
  1. Shudder's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ahunter8056 View Post
    And wait! Is the 7.1 Karazhan dungeon Mythic-only?! What the hell?!?! I don't do Mythic dungeons, so does that mean I'm barred from doing this content?! Why the hell would Blizzard only allow one difficulty for this first part of major content, and shut non-hardcore (in the highest difficulty sense of the term, rather than time spent) players out? Absolutely awful move by Blizzard. I got my hopes up for being able to loosely trust them again, and this is taking that away.
    My favorite part was when you say you choose not to do content then say you're forced not to in the same exact sentence.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Eleccybubb View Post
    Well since you won't actually give a reason that is what we will do . I mean god forbid you have to make a group, are too bad at mythics or your gear is too crap to enter them.
    Judging by the way he talks to people, and how he's banned I'm guessing he's extremely anti social and the idea of having to talk to someone in game to get into the dungeon is his problem here.
  1. Armourboy's Avatar
    Kara is mythic only simply because of its size. I think the issue is that it so long. Basically they don't want to get into a situation where you have people jumping ship like mad all the time, similar to what happened with Occulus.

    This will give you a chance to form a group that is willing to either do it all, or do it in chunks.

    Just from his comments on gear, I have a feeling Kara will have gear slightly better than those at launch, but not so high as to negate mythic/mythic+. This gives them the room to adjust gear levels as the expansion goes on without making the old ones completely obsolete.

    Forming groups these days is not that hard since they released the group finder tool. I've found it to be much quicker than waiting on a queue most of the time.

    - - - Updated - - -
  1. Fritters154's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ahunter8056 View Post
    And wait! Is the 7.1 Karazhan dungeon Mythic-only?! What the hell?!?! I don't do Mythic dungeons, so does that mean I'm barred from doing this content?! Why the hell would Blizzard only allow one difficulty for this first part of major content, and shut non-hardcore (in the highest difficulty sense of the term, rather than time spent) players out? Absolutely awful move by Blizzard. I got my hopes up for being able to loosely trust them again, and this is taking that away.
    If the general mythic is around the same difficulty as the WoD ones, they are far from being exclusively for the hard core (hence why most of the dungeons excluding Kara have keystone Mythic+ for actual difficulty). They are entirely doable if you choose to do them, but Blizz can't hold your hand through making that choice.
  1. randomnamegenerator16's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ahunter8056 View Post
    And wait! Is the 7.1 Karazhan dungeon Mythic-only?! What the hell?!?! I don't do Mythic dungeons, so does that mean I'm barred from doing this content?! Why the hell would Blizzard only allow one difficulty for this first part of major content, and shut non-hardcore (in the highest difficulty sense of the term, rather than time spent) players out? Absolutely awful move by Blizzard. I got my hopes up for being able to loosely trust them again, and this is taking that away.
    Lol, as if mythic dungeons were intended for hardcore audience in the first place. Pro tip: they are not and they were not in Warlords of Draenor. What is designed to appeal to hardcore audience is high level mythic+ dungeons and Karazhan is not part of that system. So what is your problem? Entitlement, perhaps?
  1. arcaneshot's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Freedom View Post
    So why was that not in the movie?
    Probably cut for timing reasons, since it seems all the effect work was done for it.
  1. Shaede's Avatar
    I think some more casual people are getting the wrong idea of mythic dungeons. They really aren't as challenging as some of you believe they are. I think this false sense of challenge comes from it not having an automatic group finder. If you can muster up the will to create a group for a mythic dungeon you'll see they really aren't as hard as you think they are, even in their present iteration in WoD. The challenge will come from higher levels.
  1. Elennoko's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ahunter8056 View Post
    And wait! Is the 7.1 Karazhan dungeon Mythic-only?! What the hell?!?! I don't do Mythic dungeons, so does that mean I'm barred from doing this content?! Why the hell would Blizzard only allow one difficulty for this first part of major content, and shut non-hardcore (in the highest difficulty sense of the term, rather than time spent) players out? Absolutely awful move by Blizzard. I got my hopes up for being able to loosely trust them again, and this is taking that away.
    Man are you gonna be unhapyp then to find out The Arcway and Court of Stars(Launch dungeons) are both Mythic-only, too.
  1. Freedom's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Elennoko View Post
    Man are you gonna be unhapyp then to find out The Arcway and Court of Stars(Launch dungeons) are both Mythic-only, too.
    I don't get the "WAAAAH ITS MYTHIC" crowd. Just because it has a scary name doesn't make it hard. The only reason you could have had any problem whatsoever in WoD Mythic dungeons was bad gear( go to Ashran etc) or an aversion to the LFG groups (get a tougher skin). Group finder or guild is all you need.
  1. mmocebf84ed69a's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Twilight Cultist View Post
    The reason why it is Mythic only is mainly because it has 9 bosses. Remember, Heroic dungeons reset every day. Mythic dungeons reset weekly. In the interview, Ion said he expects people to clear some of the dungeon on one day, and the rest later. If they made Kara a Heroic dungeon, it would mean people would have to commit a large amount of time to clear it in one sitting. This would mean a lot of people would not be able to clear it.
    Wings. Like with every other big dungeon in WoW. Blackrocks, Stratholme, Scarlet cloister or whatever it's name was, I believe even Scholo. Some were completely revamped, but others still have the wings afaik.

    I am an extreme opponent of locking content behind an arbitrary progression gate. Dungeon Finder and LFR are a blessing for people who just want to experience the content without having to put in a lot of time trying to actively find groups or farming gear to be good enough. Yes, I was 16 once too and had all the time in the world. That is no longer the case. LFR is already a large time commitment, finding a premade group if you are not part of any guild nor have any friends still playing the game, because of said time commitments or other reasons simply means that some people will not experience content that took a lot of time and resources to make. Why? Nobody knows, because you can STILL make a Mythic +(+++++++++) mode for ANY dungeon. There is literally no reason to make a dungeon mythic only. It just doesn't make any sense.

    Some people just wanna see the stuff and experience the lore. I stopped bothering about loot long ago...
  1. Flaks's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rafalga View Post
    there is no way for it not to be mythic+ though. Considering how long it is gonna take to clear , they will have to up the ilvl of the drops for ppl to even consider doing it rather then doing 2 mythic+es which would take the same time more or less.
    This is what I don't get. The difficulty is equivalent to WoD heroics so why the hell can we not queue for it? I think an attunement like there is for suramar dungeons is more than enough. I don't want to spam every channel or apply for on group find we for groups that can be just as bad as if I queued for through lfg.
  1. guardian_titan's Avatar
    Blizzard poorly named mythic+ if they wanted players to understand it starts at roughly heroic mode. Why not have just named it heroic+ and had only the base heroic queuable with LFD? Or they could have just disabled stones being used in LFD. Instead, they kept the "mythic" name which many associate with hard, especially when it comes to mythic raiding. It's hard to change first impressions and players already have their first impression of mythic mode with WoD. Just slapping a "+" on it won't change people's impressions.

    It's no surprise people are pissed by this. Karazhan is supposed to tie heavily into Legion lore which also has many understandably upset. How is Kara being mythic only different than having Cho'gall be in mythic only Highmaul? Blizzard's finishing a story in content that many likely won't see.

    Every time I see something from Legion, it seems to be one step forward and two steps back. Many wanted to see Karazhan again (I wasn't among them but whatever). Now Blizzard's putting a gate on it by saying you have to either make your own group (which many won't do for one reason or another), hope you can get into someone else's group, or just not do it. That's not right. Putting something highly desired behind something that's effectively impossible for many isn't fair. The Grove Warden was just downright insulting after people begged during the 2008 Olympics for a moose. Adding the regular moose mounts in Legion doesn't change the bitter taste left by the Grove Warden (which was originally a store mount).

    Also can't say I'm happy Blizzard's effectively going back to "bring the class, not the player". So much for playing the class you want to play. If you want to do something, better hope you're on a desired class. DHs were already screwed due to how many want to play them. Once Legion's out, DHs won't be wanted at all. Then the theoretical worst DPS classes and specs will get kicked to the curb while the best spec for the worst class might only be brought for their utility. The worst healers will likely be ditched in favor of the best DPS spec they have. Same for tanks. Blizzard's making a BIG mistake. I have to wonder how fast they go back on it, but considering WoD ... we're going to be in for a few long and frustrating expansion unless Legion gets cut short like WoD did.
  1. Krille's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by guardian_titan View Post
    Blizzard poorly named mythic+ if they wanted players to understand it starts at roughly heroic mode. Why not have just named it heroic+ and had only the base heroic queuable with LFD? Or they could have just disabled stones being used in LFD. Instead, they kept the "mythic" name which many associate with hard, especially when it comes to mythic raiding. It's hard to change first impressions and players already have their first impression of mythic mode with WoD. Just slapping a "+" on it won't change people's impressions.

    It's no surprise people are pissed by this. Karazhan is supposed to tie heavily into Legion lore which also has many understandably upset. How is Kara being mythic only different than having Cho'gall be in mythic only Highmaul? Blizzard's finishing a story in content that many likely won't see.

    Every time I see something from Legion, it seems to be one step forward and two steps back. Many wanted to see Karazhan again (I wasn't among them but whatever). Now Blizzard's putting a gate on it by saying you have to either make your own group (which many won't do for one reason or another), hope you can get into someone else's group, or just not do it. That's not right. Putting something highly desired behind something that's effectively impossible for many isn't fair. The Grove Warden was just downright insulting after people begged during the 2008 Olympics for a moose. Adding the regular moose mounts in Legion doesn't change the bitter taste left by the Grove Warden (which was originally a store mount).

    Also can't say I'm happy Blizzard's effectively going back to "bring the class, not the player". So much for playing the class you want to play. If you want to do something, better hope you're on a desired class. DHs were already screwed due to how many want to play them. Once Legion's out, DHs won't be wanted at all. Then the theoretical worst DPS classes and specs will get kicked to the curb while the best spec for the worst class might only be brought for their utility. The worst healers will likely be ditched in favor of the best DPS spec they have. Same for tanks. Blizzard's making a BIG mistake. I have to wonder how fast they go back on it, but considering WoD ... we're going to be in for a few long and frustrating expansion unless Legion gets cut short like WoD did.
    Ugh the Hazzikostas fella really thought it was a mistake to say "bring the player not the class" as it made classes extremely boring and too much alike. He almost sighed when he mentioned that sentence, because the community has been saying that ever since like it's some holy word.
  1. Super Kami Dende's Avatar
    That scene would've been great in the Movie.

    Stupid fucking companies and their butchering of films. Feel sorry for Duncan Jones since whilst I enjoyed the movie it felt like he was disappointed at some things they removed which seems like it could've made the movie stronger.
  1. grexly75's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by kamuimac View Post
    keep telling this to yourself - all the time till this point in 2018 when you will finally realise that after nighthold there will be only 1 raid left
    Well at least I have something that you seem to have lost long ago and that is having a benefit of a doubt, so we will just wait and see when we do get more info on what comes after Nighthold.. And if indeed their are two more tiers after Nighthold as they are saying then I can then laugh at you for being so quick to judge..
  1. IntellectuallyChallenged's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Saafe View Post
    Really? Mythic only Karazhan? Why not make a heroic mode and mythic mode? So dumb. Stop trying to force people into Mythic dungeons
    As someone pointed out earlier, mythic really isn't as hard as it sounds. It's more like heroic and a half degree more difficulty. It's the mythic+ stuff that is intended for those that wish to actually test their skill. In return, they earn better rewards.
  1. mmocd2ab285f58's Avatar
    In Mythic+ dungeons melee do really well thanks to their cleave and mobility compared to casters that have to stand still.
    Melee may be a little stronger in Mythic+ dungeons while ranged are a little stronger in raids, which is fine as long as the gap isn't too large.
    So on other words roll BM and get the best of both worlds? Okay then, I'll get my NES controller.
  1. Bethrezen's Avatar
    You don't need a guild to do Mythic dungeons. Get thicker skin and play the game.
  1. Gadzooks's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Saafe View Post
    It's not the difficulty really, it's more that pugs are awful and to do these mythics i'm expected to what? Join a guild? I'm sure a lot of people will be over having to find groups for them and just won't do them altogether due to the fact that pugs are awful and you won't get anywhere unless you're in an actual good guild lol

    It's just dumb to gate future content behind a difficulty not many do. I know they really want mythic dungeons to be a thing, but I'm hoping they'll atleast put in another difficulty. (Would be nice for alts too)
    >i'm expected to what? Join a guild?

    Why is this a bad thing? Blizzard might actually be trying to foster the growth of guilds, which is not a bad thing. I get wanting to just play solo, but guilds are what made vanilla and TBC awesome for me. I couldn't run The Black Temple solo in TBC, I needed a guild. Same here - except that it's puggable as well.

    Put some effort into a guild, maybe it will pay off for you, and then you'll have access to all of the content. If Blizzard is going to encourage guilds again, that's a HUGE item on the "Good Things" list.

Site Navigation