Gamescom Developer Interview, Legion World Quests Preview, Blue Posts, DLC #548

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Gamescom Developer Interview
Sloot did one final interview with Watcher at Gamescom.


Release Times
  • Mythic dungeons will be closed until the first raid reset of each region, so EU won't be able to powerlevel and get in some clears.
  • The expansion launches at 12:01 AM PT in North America.

Artifacts
  • The Artifact will be relevant throughout Legion. There will be good reasons to get Artifact Power and things to spend Artifact Power on.
  • An easy change to make later in the expansion would be to increase the cap on Artifact Traits so that you can put more points in and keep spending Artifact Power.
  • Artifact Power is a nice consistent reward with no RNG, so you end the night stronger than you started, even if you didn't get any great item drops.
  • The Artifact Knowledge cap will likely be increased down the road, but that is still to be determined.

Currency
  • Ancient Mana remaining relevant will be touched on when the team shares more Patch 7.1 details in a couple weeks.
  • The patch has additional outdoor world content in Suramar, continuing the story and quest line.

Mythic+ Dungeons
  • For the average player, there is an effective cap on Mythic+ loot, which is in the form of keystones. Those aren't infinite and everyone only gets one per week per character, so the typical experience will be that people aren't infinity running Mythic+ dungeons.
  • Being able to loot an additional keystone from the chest at the end of the Mythic+ dungeon is a bug. You should only be able to get one per week.
  • There are three ways to get a keystone: Killing a regular Mythic dungeon end boss, looting your weekly jackpot chest in your order hall, or looting the chest at the end of a Mythic+ dungeon run. You should only be able to get one per week total.

Trinkets
  • Trinkets are one of the coolest and potentially most interesting items that the team has to work with, so they would feel bad going with boring and more passive trinkets. In Legion effort was put in to make trinkets more interesting.
  • The delta between a raid's DPS during the first 30 seconds of a fight and their damage for the rest of it is bigger than it should be.
  • A cooldown was added so that you can't use two of the on-use trinkets at once. Allowing the use of both at once makes them harder to balance as well.

Addon Changes and Raid Mechanics
  • The design for bosses in Hellfire Citadel probably wouldn't have been different if the addon change was made earlier in Warlords.
  • One of the concerns raised by players is boss mechanics that are designed around addons and otherwise impossible.
  • Internal testing for raids is done without custom boss mods for each boss and the mechanics. The bosses can be beat with the stock UI.
  • There are three levels to a mechanic:
    • Tactical complexity - How easy is it to figure out the right answer to this mechanic? This mostly only matters to the top guilds in the world, as by the time most guilds get to a boss this problem has been solved. Four Horseman in Vanilla was all about the tactical complexity.
    • Execution - How hard is this mechanic to execute correctly or perfectly? How hard is it to dodge all of the things, spread, not get hit by things.
    • Failure - How punishing is it when you make a mistake? This is one of the biggest things that can be tuned. Kromog in Blackrock Foundry was mostly done by players with an addon that assisted them. This leads to players thinking that the fight would be impossible without an addon. If it ended up being too hard, the team would have seen that people were having a hard time and changed the tuning. They could have added more time for you to run to the hands, reduced their health a little bit (especially on Mythic), or other tuning so that the actual difficulty in terms of how many wipes it takes to beat the boss doesn't change. Actually playing the dynamic game of musical chairs is more interesting and fun from a cooperative raid perspective than running to a specific point on the ground, assuming equal difficulty. Removing the capability from the addons should lead to a better experience for players.
  • The addon changes won't affect things outside instances, buff/debuff tracking, and things like TomTom.
  • The reason this change wasn't in at launch was the team putting in the extra effort to make sure the other addons wouldn't be broken.

Professions
  • You can start on your profession at skill level 1 in Broken Isles.
  • Leveling your profession gives you more efficiency.
  • You also need a certain skill level in a profession to get the profession world quests.
  • It is easier than before to change professions, as you can relearn the Broken Isle recipes that you had before.
  • The team doesn't want people constantly changing professions to do all of the world quests.
  • Professions will be kept up to date throughout the expansion.


Legion Preview - World Quests
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
In World of Warcraft: Legion, questing at level 110 comes in new variations called World Quests.

The new World Quest system represents a major change from how player characters used to make regular progression daily or weekly. In Legion, you’ll find the war taking place on multiple fronts—all over the Broken Isles, with a wide variety of ways you can participate in pushing back the invaders, as well as growing your character and being a big part of the story of Warcraft.

Getting Started
First and foremost, World Quests are available to players starting at level 110. When you reach 110, you’ll be called upon to prove that you’ve reached Friendly reputation with the five primary factions of the Broken Isles, you’ll receive your Flight Master’s Whistle, and World Quests will begin to appear all over your map.


The Flight Master’s Whistle is one of the most-useful items around—when you activate it, you’ll be (almost) instantly whisked away to the nearest known flight master. More than ever before, you’ll want to get to know all of the flight masters in every zone!

Times and Places

The primary zones in which you’ll find World Quests are: Azsuna, Highmountain, Stormheim, Suramar, and Val’sharah. You and everyone else on your realm will be offered the same World Quests at any given time, so don’t forget to group up when necessary!

World Quests come in varying durations, and those that are more difficult (and rewarding) typically have longer durations. This is so that you can decide when to do them, and since completing World Quests doesn’t cause more World Quests to immediately spawn, you can make the most of your time.

A Variety of Offerings
There are many different types of World Quests that you’ll see on your map. They might include:


  • A solo adventure.
  • A difficult challenge that requires multiple people.
  • A task related to one of your professions.
  • A World Boss that requires many people.
  • A dungeon challenge that you’ll do with a group.
  • Pet Battling.
  • Player-versus-player activities.


You’ll get to see several details about each World Quest for yourself before you travel to it. Those details include rewards offered, such as:

  • Gold
  • Artifact Power
  • Blood of Sargeras
  • PvE or PvP gear
  • Profession reagents
  • Pet Charms
  • Reputation with a specific faction

Some rewards scale with your current item level.


Special Requests
There are hundreds of World quests in store for you in the Broken Isles, so you won’t be seeing too many of the same World Quests anytime soon. You’ll want to keep your eyes on for Emissary Quests, which reward you with a valuable satchel when you complete them. Each day, a new Emissary Quest will become available to you, and you can have up to three Emissaries at the same time.

Each of the Emissary World Quest turn-ins offers reputation with the primary faction of its associated zone. That means that if your biggest focus is Nightfallen reputation, you’ll want to make sure you don’t miss the Emissary World Quests in Suramar when they’re available.

Questions and Answers
On July 14, Senior Game Designer Jeremy Feasel answered many questions about World Quests. Check it out:


Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Game Stuttering After Login
I wanted to jump in here regarding this issue, this is actually something that is being worked on already. The main cause is the game loading in hotfix data, the stutter will go away after ~10-15 seconds or so in most cases and depending on the connection/hardware. So as a workaround, you can try logging into the character let it sit for 10 seconds or so before moving around, should help.

Now that said, if it continues past 60 seconds it's likely a different issue and I would suggest opening a new thread with the issue you're running into. (Official Forums)

Mythic Dungeons
Ugh. There's actually mythic only dungeons? I really didn't realise this. That's kind of !@#$ty. Ffs, isn't destiny and vanilla wow a case study in why you don't difficulty gate content anymore. It's not like these games have enough ndgame content for casuals during these huge dryspells as it is. I assume anyone intelligent at blizzard has moved on to other projects (the state of many classes in the beta which are not going to be fundamentally changed before release are a good example of this.)
I think it's worthy to note that base Mythic in Legion is comparable to some of the older Heroic dungeons many are used to in terms of difficulty. These dungeons become harder as Keystones are used to scale them and increase their challenges, but this is not a system you need to participate in if you don't want to.

If your concern is over grouping, the in-game Group Finder tool will be a good way to find groups for Mythic dungeons, much as it is now.

Well that is good to hear. But why force people to use a lfg tool instead of just the Finder? Just ends up with people being weird and dicky about who they bring and will quickly turn a lot of people off. Again, like destiny. To be honest it seems like an even weirder choice to not have the option if they start as the same difficulty as normal heroics.
You then could, of course, create your own group and find people who aren't going to be weird/rude while in the dungeon. Again, the dungeons are a bit more challenging (akin to older heroics), so there is a level of cooperation and communication (CCs, boss strategy, etc.) that may need to take place that, I think, is best served by building a group yourself most of the time.

Since the Mythic dungeons evolve into Mythic Keystone dungeons, I assume that was onr of the driving points behind disallowing LFD groups to take on these challenges, as they require much more cooperation.

Edit: That, and one of our goals with Legion was to create an alternative to Raids as a form of end-game progression. In the same way that if you want to participate in end-game raiding progression, you will also need to find a group yourself to participate in end-game dungeon progression. Grab some of your friends and hop in, and fill the remaining slots through the Group Finder!

My only concern about Mythic dungeons is trying to get a group with this character. I figure if I'm not getting any groups today even with 707 ilvl the situation won't be much better in legion's endgame.
Again, you can always create your own group and find people whose ilvl may be closer to yours, or who don't care about the disparity.

Mythic dungeons are not the same thing as mythic raids, they aren't even in the same realm of difficulty.
This is accurate at the base. With Mythic Keystone scaling, however, we could see high Keystone levels being quite possibly harder than some Mythic raid encounters, I think.

Edit: This is terrifying to think about. Oh god, what have we done.

But those who exclusively run LFD will mostly have no interest in the mythic keystone system. I know I don't. I enjoy running LFD and LFR as my end game content and to see them withheld as a way of trying to make me play in a way that I don't enjoy is a sad change for me.
Completely understandable. The hop-in hop-out nature of LFD/LFR is a good way for many players to engage in that side of end-game content.

I'm interested in what is keeping you away from wanting to try/participate-in Mythics?

So Heroic was rebranded as Mythic, just as I suspected... thanks for the confirmation.
Not necessarily. Heroics exist still, and are more challenging than the normal/leveling version of dungeons, but Mythic is us creating an alternative to raiding and PvP as an end-game activity.

What's the point of putting a label on something when the label has no specific meaning? They are causing too much confusion in the player base by slapping the Mythic label on multiple forms of content that all have different difficulty levels.

What exactly does Mythic mean anymore?
Nothing has changed there. The progression, on the dungeon side, is still:

Normal->Heroic->Mythic.

The only difference is that Mythic can now scale up through the use of Keystones, creating a more and more challenging dungeon experience.

We welcome the feedback and discussion on this topic, but I just want to reiterate that our goal here with Mythic and Mythic Keystones is to create a dungeon-focused end-game progression system as an alternative to raiding, etc.

We have a blog planned for later this week which will cover some discussion and developer insight on the two Mythic-only dungeons - so be on the lookout for that. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Dark Legacy Comics #548
DLC #548 has been released!

This article was originally published in forum thread: Gamescom Developer Interview, Legion World Quests Preview, Blue Posts, DLC #548 started by chaud View original post
Published on 2016-08-23 03:27 AM
73 Comments
Comments 73 Comments
  1. teverin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Seahnjin View Post
    I'm pretty much that person in the blue posts, and the response in this thread unfortunately doesn't surprise me at all.

    It's a shame, because I enjoy WoW as a game, its world and lore and everything. But the community is so fucking ridiculous and the devs listen to them.

    Think I'll go back to FFXIV where I can anonymously queue for something semi-challenging like Weeping City of Mhach, guildless, friendless, and still spend a nice moment with strangers and get up-to-date loot with cool models. Haven't had this much fun with "LFR" since Lei Shen. But nah, WoW devs have somehow decided that LFR and LFD should now be braindead with worthless ugly loot.
    So sorry the MMO made you talk to other people...
  1. Explicit Teemo Nudes's Avatar
    Gigz <3

    88chars

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Kurtlol View Post
    I4m blown away by the people who hate the new Mythic dungeon stuff. It's the best thing that could Happen to small PvE groups. And I'm a PvP player at first, I absolutely welcome the new Mythic DGN system
    I don't think there are many people that dislike the new mythic dungeon system.
    What some people dislike is that there are two dungeons with only a mythic mode, and no other mode. Roleplayers and players that just want to see the whole story, or every story in the world(of warcraft) do not like that there isn't an easier version of these dungeons that suit them so that they can experience them.
  1. teverin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Aggrax View Post

    One more thing that I want people to think about. Why do you assume there is such a stark difference between a group assembled in the dungeon finder and one assembled through the group finder? They are both just a random pool of players, the only real difference is you have to assemble the group yourself. Why is it so different if the game does it for you?
    Because making the group yourself shows you are willing to put in the extra effort. If I use the finder to actually search through groups or put up my own group I tend to think that the people who join are more willing to talk things through. LFG people just press a button and wait.
  1. Chetti's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kektonic View Post
    Good god those people complaining about having to actually get groups for Mythic+ were so fucking cringy.
    The thing is, it would be that same type of person that would complain if you could just queue up for a random Mythic+ that they were "too hard" for a group of random people. If they were to make it so you could queue for it, they'd have to pick a base ilvl to require to queue. This is that "gating" thing the person questioning was talking about. Lets say they meet that ilvl and queue up, get grouped with others that fall at or above the ilvl and they go in. You'd think getting to the required item level would mean people are comfortable in their role, know how their class works, have good awareness, all that good stuff. But you don't know these people at all. Someone takes the lead and suggests something, like CC, or the tank just runs in and starts pulling things. Trash pulls go ok, but now it's boss time. Does everyone know the fight? Does this random group of people take the time to discuss if everyone knows the fight? From experience in early heroics in most expansions, no they don't. Boss gets pulled, everyone tries to wing it. It fails horribly. Rinse, repeat the rest of the dungeon. Who knows how many wipes later and how much time has passed, it'd finally over and you've either gotten loot or you haven't, and you've paid a repair bill higher than any gold that you picked up. Some lessons can be learned here. Go in more prepared the next time, try to talk to your group, try to find out what page everyone is on, but that only goes so far - the rest have to be willing to communicate as well. The other option is complain that they're too hard, and from the extent of those already complaining before we even get to see a mythic, let alone a Mythic +, it is easy to see which side they'd fall on. Though the "questions" would then be "how are we supposed to survive these mechanics in random groups?" "the damage is too high, can it be tuned down?" The flip side is that Blizzard will take notice of more people queuing up in groups of 3 or more, if not full groups, just to avoid the amount of rng in the people they'll be grouped with. This was probably noticed in some of the harder heroics of past expansions with the dungeon finder.
    What I don't understand is what exactly their problem IS. If Mythic or Mythic+ isn't content they are intersted in doing, then simply don't. Don't say that you only do LFD/LFR and complain that there is more content out there that you just don't want to persue. Yes, it requires more effort, earning more gear, actually socializing in this giant MMO, maybe even being part of a guild to make grouping easier. Difficult content, high end content, has always been there. It used to be heroic raiding, now it's mythic raiding. But also, for smaller groups, mythic dungeons. There will always be content that some players just don't do, and that is ok, there are other things to do. To claim to not know mythic dungeons existed, yet still post questions to the blues, just makes no sense at all. Read sites and yet somehow miss a feature of the current expansion and complain about a feature of the new expansion. I think some people just complain because they want to complain.
  1. Explicit Teemo Nudes's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Lintgamer View Post
    So what time for EU is this exactly?
    It'll release 00:01 August 30 for EU. Don't think about US times. EU will get the expansion before US.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by teverin View Post
    Because making the group yourself shows you are willing to put in the extra effort. If I use the finder to actually search through groups or put up my own group I tend to think that the people who join are more willing to talk things through. LFG people just press a button and wait.
    Oooor they just swear, harass and kick you if you don't play like a mythic(raid) player.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Chetti View Post
    The thing is, it would be that same type of person that would complain if you could just queue up for a random Mythic+ that they were "too hard" for a group of random people. If they were to make it so you could queue for it, they'd have to pick a base ilvl to require to queue. This is that "gating" thing the person questioning was talking about. Lets say they meet that ilvl and queue up, get grouped with others that fall at or above the ilvl and they go in. You'd think getting to the required item level would mean people are comfortable in their role, know how their class works, have good awareness, all that good stuff. But you don't know these people at all. Someone takes the lead and suggests something, like CC, or the tank just runs in and starts pulling things. Trash pulls go ok, but now it's boss time. Does everyone know the fight? Does this random group of people take the time to discuss if everyone knows the fight? From experience in early heroics in most expansions, no they don't. Boss gets pulled, everyone tries to wing it. It fails horribly. Rinse, repeat the rest of the dungeon. Who knows how many wipes later and how much time has passed, it'd finally over and you've either gotten loot or you haven't, and you've paid a repair bill higher than any gold that you picked up. Some lessons can be learned here. Go in more prepared the next time, try to talk to your group, try to find out what page everyone is on, but that only goes so far - the rest have to be willing to communicate as well. The other option is complain that they're too hard, and from the extent of those already complaining before we even get to see a mythic, let alone a Mythic +, it is easy to see which side they'd fall on. Though the "questions" would then be "how are we supposed to survive these mechanics in random groups?" "the damage is too high, can it be tuned down?" The flip side is that Blizzard will take notice of more people queuing up in groups of 3 or more, if not full groups, just to avoid the amount of rng in the people they'll be grouped with. This was probably noticed in some of the harder heroics of past expansions with the dungeon finder.
    What I don't understand is what exactly their problem IS. If Mythic or Mythic+ isn't content they are intersted in doing, then simply don't. Don't say that you only do LFD/LFR and complain that there is more content out there that you just don't want to persue. Yes, it requires more effort, earning more gear, actually socializing in this giant MMO, maybe even being part of a guild to make grouping easier. Difficult content, high end content, has always been there. It used to be heroic raiding, now it's mythic raiding. But also, for smaller groups, mythic dungeons. There will always be content that some players just don't do, and that is ok, there are other things to do. To claim to not know mythic dungeons existed, yet still post questions to the blues, just makes no sense at all. Read sites and yet somehow miss a feature of the current expansion and complain about a feature of the new expansion. I think some people just complain because they want to complain.

    These people wouldn't complain about these mythic dungeons if there was an easy version of these 2-3(?) dungeons. Some people just want to see the full story in the game. Blizzard created LFR for these people, so they probably wouldn't mind if Blizzard made normal dungeon difficulty versions without any loot.
    I mean, these dungeons were supposed to come with normal versions, but Blizzard decided to only have mythic versions because these dungeons fucked up the reputation grind with some faction in Suramar I think.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Cyram View Post
    That's exactly what I was thinking when I was reading those questions, I have not had an problems using the LFG tool, and I've tried it on a varied number of ilvl-ed toons to do HFC (I even got group as a post-patch Survival hunter with a 698 iLvl for Heroic Mannoroth).
    Sometimes I think they just can't be real - those white questions, I mean - they're too whiny to be true.
    I'm looking over to using it even more now tat we're gonna have a crapton of things to do in Legion, as previously I've used it mainly to do raids and Mdungeons with alts.
    I think most of these people have been burned so many times before they have stopped bothering with the LFG tool. It also depends on what realm you play on. From my experience realms with high populations tend to be more elitist, vicious and ask for way higher ilvl than needed, and people tend to have a lot less patience.

    Personally I have stopped trying. If you don't have higher ilvl than you get from the dungeon/raid and you don't have an achievement to show up, don't even bother. I'd be surprised if this has changed.
  1. Tisane's Avatar
    The Flight Master’s Whistle is one of the most-useful items around—when you activate it, you’ll be (almost) instantly whisked away to the nearest known flight master.
    Does this mean you pretty much don't have to move yourself anymore to travel somewhere in Legion? It'll all just be flight paths and teleportation?
  1. mmocfd328e0b6e's Avatar
    That was a clear example that the Blizzard employees don't play their own game.

    You cannot even make your own Mythic group... You can be snaeky about your ilvl but when they inspect you they will leave... Nobody likes leechers no matter how hard you try you end up on the ignore list or worse. Before the nerf you couldn't make a good group for Mythic dungeon without 710+ilvl.

    Mythic dungeons are simply not worth our time. It is too much effort... 1-2hours (making a group, finding people, replacing people, kick people) for lower ilvl gear (you run these dungeons with 715+ilvl and the lootable is 685...).
  1. mmocc1f11a099b's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Tisane View Post
    Does this mean you pretty much don't have to move yourself anymore to travel somewhere in Legion? It'll all just be flight paths and teleportation?
    Not sure what it means but I take it as we get to discover flight paths first while leveling so we still need to run but don't have to do that as much when we have already leveled up and discovered every place. Whistle only teleports to near flight path (maybe it has some max distance it can teleport, so not through half of zone) if I understood it correctly. Then I am not sure if we can use the whistle from the start or at level 110. It could be quite useful, especially that normal flying won't be available for some time.
  1. Aggrax's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Tisane View Post
    Does this mean you pretty much don't have to move yourself anymore to travel somewhere in Legion? It'll all just be flight paths and teleportation?
    No. If you have a quest you want to do, you have to fly to the nearest point and then move to that quest. Once your done, you can then use the whistle to go to the nearest flight master and go somewhere else. It's basically the same as setting your hearthstone to a central location, hearthing there after every quest and then flying somewhere else, but with slightly more location flexibility.
  1. vaeevictiss's Avatar
    im really diggin this recent DLC comic lol. That could actually be a legit title for the new raid...or "Crusher of Nightmares" at least.
  1. mmocc1f11a099b's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dhru View Post
    That was a clear example that the Blizzard employees don't play their own game.

    You cannot even make your own Mythic group... You can be sneaky about your ilvl but when they inspect you they will leave... Nobody likes leechers no matter how hard you try you end up on the ignore list or worse. Before the nerf you couldn't make a good group for Mythic dungeon without 710+ilvl.

    Mythic dungeons are simply not worth our time. It is too much effort... 1-2hours (making a group, finding people, replacing people, kick people) for lower ilvl gear (you run these dungeons with 715+ilvl and the lootable is 685...).
    I guess that Mythic dungeons without LFG tool are punishment for all those who were complaining to Blizzard about LFG runining all fun, social game-play and such. These people (often old Wow gamers) wanted LFG to be removed and argued that people would be much more social if they HAD to be social. Mythic dungeons (or how were they called in past two expansions) are just such opportunity.
  1. chewie49's Avatar
    I honestly prefer passive trinkets instead of the use ones. I otherwise forget/save them till a boss fight. Would be much nicer to have the thing proc'ing while questing/instancing imo
  1. Murderdoll's Avatar
    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.
    Good. It felt shit to have melee just escape doing mechanics.

    However, I have an issue with their last sentence.

    Its not the community's fault that ranged are a REQUIREMENT for raids. Its not the community's fault that ranged simply deal with mechanics easier. Its not the community's fault that majority of fights are simply easier with fewer melee and if Blizzard thinks the difference is 1% they are having a laugh at our expense.

    There were instances where there were up to 70% in damage done differences this expansion. There were ranged that were better at handling mechanics and then took a collective shit all over melee during HM and BRF.
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