World of Warcraft – Gameplay and Systems Deep Dive

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


This article was originally published in forum thread: World of Warcraft – Gameplay and Systems Deep Dive started by Stoy View original post
Published on 2017-11-03 11:00 PM
70 Comments
Comments 70 Comments
  1. Tackhisis's Avatar
    What victor can be there between two player-controlled factions? That's just retarded.
  1. mmoc8c38b7d291's Avatar
    I still think this is an official 'fake leak' and actual real expansion will be announced later. Together with 'educational' video why supporting 'leaks' is bad. Or something like that.
  1. Thrackerzod's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fuzzybacon1512 View Post
    nothing at all about classes, so freaking lame.
    I'm sure they just haven't gotten to it yet, I mean obviously there are going to be big class changes. I'm hoping they will undo some of the damage they did to hunters. They totally destroyed one of my favorite classes in Legion. I'm hoping Demon Hunters will get a third spec too, even though the entire class seems kind of pointless now with the Legion gone.

    Stromgarde: Ugh, more base building and resource gathering.
  1. Apart's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by kutija123 View Post
    I'm not talking about subraces, but our current playable races.
    I think at the very start they said there'd be new hairstyles etc.
  1. pateuvasiliu's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Mausingen View Post
    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.
    Nostalgia.

    Let's see how many of those people will have the time to level, gear up and raid in Vanilla.

    Farming hundreds of gold for progression raids at a measly 30g an hour, levelling for months, trying to get 40 people on the same page.

    Not an easy task at all.
  1. teidden's Avatar
    Still nothing that is mind blowing.
  1. topmaymay's Avatar
    that was quite possibly the most underwhelming panel they've had for any of the expansions. barely anything was revealed/discussed.
  1. mmoc9fee030701's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by topmaymay View Post
    that was quite possibly the most underwhelming panel they've had for any of the expansions. barely anything was revealed/discussed.
    Exactly! Literally nothing about potential changes to classes/skills/talents. Artifcat 2.0 is hm, okeish but I don't think really desired.
  1. Mhyroth's Avatar
    Watch the content draught inc now since they barely showcased/explained anything in this panel at all.
    No way the next expansion will be out before September next year, no way.
  1. Tarx's Avatar
    I will give a try too classic wow but I think it will be so hard for this days . Like if we have to farm arrows for hunters I will quit fast . Because vanila wow was 90% farm 10% play .
  1. Thrackerzod's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Tarx View Post
    I will give a try too classic wow but I think it will be so hard for this days . Like if we have to farm arrows for hunters I will quit fast . Because vanila wow was 90% farm 10% play .
    I don't remember farming arrows. You could buy ammo from vendors and the best ammo was crafted by players which you could make yourself or buy on the auction house. You never had to farm them.
  1. Mhyroth's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Thrackerzod View Post
    I don't remember farming arrows. You could buy ammo from vendors and the best ammo was crafted by players which you could make yourself or buy on the auction house. You never had to farm them.
    The best arrows were indeed crafted. Will be expensive though.
  1. IIamaKing's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Mausingen View Post
    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.
    Yeh, that a lot of the "Vanilla server rtehbest" people hang out on the Reddit, we already knew that.
  1. Javra's Avatar
    Wtf was that panel. They basically just gave us dumbed down explanations of mechanics that were very implicit.
    the 'What's next' panel was pretty well written and hyped. This was utterly boring. Essentially taking 10 min worth of the content from the Ion panel and stretching it to an hour without adding any info.
    That said procedural generation is the future of MMO but it has been proven time and time again that making such a system feel 'good' is extremely difficult.

    This really feels like they're not that far ahead in the development of this expansion, no spec info, no titan-forging info, not even a decent preview of the capital cities and the first raids.
  1. IIamaKing's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Tackhisis View Post
    What victor can be there between two player-controlled factions? That's just retarded.
    Dollars to Doughnuts that in the finial patch a real baddy shows up and we have to put aside our squabble over real-estate.
  1. Fuzzybacon1512's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Thrackerzod View Post
    I'm sure they just haven't gotten to it yet, I mean obviously there are going to be big class changes. I'm hoping they will undo some of the damage they did to hunters. They totally destroyed one of my favorite classes in Legion. I'm hoping Demon Hunters will get a third spec too, even though the entire class seems kind of pointless now with the Legion gone.

    Stromgarde: Ugh, more base building and resource gathering.
    I know they will eventually. I am just talking about this specific Blizzcon so far. Pretty shallow for an expansion reveal.
  1. ComputerNerd's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Balager View Post
    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.
    If this currency is deemed "mandatory", it will suck because we are "forced" to max out the grinding of it.
    If it is optional, it is useless.

    It will be despised no matter what the form.
  1. thoxrendar's Avatar
    Nostalgia.

    Let's see how many of those people will have the time to level, gear up and raid in Vanilla.

    Farming hundreds of gold for progression raids at a measly 30g an hour, levelling for months, trying to get 40 people on the same page.

    Not an easy task at all.
    Not to mention resist gear and such. Wonder if they will tune bosses out of needing it.
  1. Fuzzybacon1512's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Javra View Post
    Wtf was that panel. They basically just gave us dumbed down explanations of mechanics that were very implicit.
    the 'What's next' panel was pretty well written and hyped. This was utterly boring. Essentially taking 10 min worth of the content from the Ion panel and stretching it to an hour without adding any info.
    That said procedural generation is the future of MMO but it has been proven time and time again that making such a system feel 'good' is extremely difficult.

    This really feels like they're not that far ahead in the development of this expansion, no spec info, no titan-forging info, not even a decent preview of the capital cities and the first raids.
    ^ This. I feel like this is saying. Get ready for a year long Argus raid boys and girls.
  1. Sentynel's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by joebob42 View Post
    Looks like Blizzard decided to burn WoW to the ground. I'm glad I got my $40 refund for the virtual ticket in time. Some people have been asking for WoW 2.0, and it looks like they're getting something like that.

    I'm kind of glad. If the expansion had been about the Old Gods, I'd have bought it. This will give me a few years break from WoW to clean up my Steam queue.
    K. Nobody's forcing you to play the game. Don't like it, don't play it. That simple.
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