Blizzard was at PAX to talk about Legion and the next chapter in its evolution. You can watch the panel here. We already got some Patch 7.1 details at Gamescom.
- Patch 7.1 probably will be on the PTR in the next couple of weeks.
- Karazhan isn't just an update of the old raid, there are new areas and bosses.
- The WoW companion app will let you do missions and see world quests on Android and iOS.
- Trial of Valor has three bosses, fits in between the two previously announced raids, and has some good trinkets.
World of Warcraft Companion App
- You can see a video overview here.
- A free World of Warcraft companion app is coming out on Tuesday Android and iOS!
- You can do missions from your phone, complete them, and get the loot.
- You can research Order Hall talents.
- You can manage your champion's equipment.
- You can train new troops.
- You can see world quests, rewards, and timers on the app.
- You can sort and filter the quests.
- You will need to be logged out of the game to use the app. (Zorbrix)
- Now we know what the Mobile App Icons in Legion were for!
Karazhan
- Khadgar was shoring up the defenses of Karazhan last time we were there.
- When we come back in Patch 7.1, the demons have broken in to Karazhan.
- You can quest with Khadgar outside of Karazhan to rid the area of Legion influence.
- Karazhan is slightly more challenging than five player Mythic and is on a weekly lockout, so the team can be very generous with the loot.
- Karazhan feels like a love letter to five man dungeons, fans will really love it.
- There is an upside down section, a chess encounter, an Alice in Wonderland section, and all new plays.
- In Legion, there are more endgame activities other than raiding and PvP, there is something for almost everyone.
- The team has gone back to old raids in the past and turned them into dungeons, but Karazhan is done differently.
- In the past, the team has changed the art or added a few new mechanics to a boss, but Karazhan deserves much more.
- When the team did Karazhan, they wanted to add entire new areas and bosses to the dungeon.
- There will be a mix of the nostalgia that makes Karazhan feel awesome and a fresh new experience.
- This isn't an update of the old Karazhan.
Trial of Valor Raid
- This raid ties up the story of Odyn and Helya.
- You fought Odyn in a dungeon and bring him down a little bit before the challenge ends.
- Odyn is brought down a little further in the raid, deems you worthy, sends you to Helheim.
- In Helheim, you fight Guarm, the three headed dog you see Helheim during questing.
- You then get to fight Helya!
- You will play through different parts of Illidan's life and get a continuation of his story in this raid.
- Trial of Valor fits between the two raids that have already been announced, some good trinkets drop here.
Suramar
- You go on the offensive, taking the fight to Elisande and the Legion to deny them the Nightwell.
- There will be around nine weeks of weekly quests, allowing you to play through more of the story each week.
- A lot of the content is pretty far along, it will probably be on the PTR in the next couple of weeks.
Q&A
- Starting with Garrisons, the team designed new systems for a single expansion, so they don't have to keep bringing the system forward and updating them.
- This same idea was applied to Artifacts in Legion, so the traits can be baked into the class in the future if they aren't brought into a new expansion.
- Ogres as a new playable race has come up many times before.
- The team to use phasing really sparingly. It is a tool to show really powerful story moments, but that is a single player experience in a MMO. The feeling of community and being able to play with friends is important.
- There is a difference between phasing and sharding. Sharding is used to create multiple copies of zones so that there aren't 5000 players in the same zone.
- Expect to see the zone scaling technology expanded.
- The team had to restrain themselves and avoid making everything scale. So far it has worked well!
- The scaling tech exists, the question is where they should use it and where it fits.
- The team can't comment on if we have seen the last of Vol'jin.
- Demon Hunter movement kept triggering checks the game uses for cheating detection during early development, but it has worked out pretty well so far.
- At one point double jump and glide worked with a mount, so you could double jump on a mount.
- The team went into Warlords thinking about the story for the next few expansions so that they would flow together well.
- The zone scaling tech was added fairly late in Legion, there was originally a leveling zone flow.
- A lot of the Order Hall campaigns are designed as solo scenarios, as they are very narrative focused pieces of content.
Legion Recap
- The reviews and fan reception has been really positive!
- Concurrent user numbers are huge, higher than they have been in several years.
- Demon Hunters didn't feel right for the longest time, but the custom emotes, VO, animations and other work solved that.
- Coming up with the new Artifacts that weren't previously well know was one of the most fun things during development.
- The team took the parts of Garrisons that worked and modified them to include in Order Halls.
- You get a smaller number of important and meaningful Champions. You learn about them and can take them out into the zones with you.
- Players have asked for more class specific content over the years, so Legion really delivered on the class specific content.
- This makes playing different classes a different and unique experience.
- Level scaling allows the team to send you back to areas used when leveling and show new story there, rather than sending you to a small part of the Broken Isles at max level.
Patch 7.0.3 Hotfixes - September 2
vBulletin Message