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
Comments 70 Comments
  1. ComputerNerd's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Tackhisis View Post
    What victor can be there between two player-controlled factions? That's just retarded.
    For gameplay reasons there can't be.
    And while the faction war is going back to the "war"craft theme I am not really sure how this lack of an external threat is going to work with raiding.
  1. Rukario'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.
    They already said Azshara is coming, so yeah.
  1. Fuzzybacon1512's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Sentynel View Post
    K. Nobody's forcing you to play the game. Don't like it, don't play it. That simple.
    He knows he already said that. Thanks for showing us it did matter to you.
  1. Nize's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fuzzybacon1512 View Post
    ^ This. I feel like this is saying. Get ready for a year long Argus raid boys and girls.
    It does blow my mind that there were people around saying they'd release this on March/April. I disagree that it'll be a year long deal though. There seems to be A LOT less new systems in play than in the last 3 expansions of a lot of new additions (even Garrisons seemed resource-heavy). Familiarity will help them get it out quicker, like in September of 2018
  1. Uncle's Avatar
    I think that expansion must be somekind of joke. This is, by far, the worst announcement ever. The story, the lore, the "allied races", none of those things have ANY sens at all ! They already tried a Alliance Vs Horde focused expansion in Mop, and ti didn't work, because that idea of war between both factions has NO meaning, in mean, what's wrong with you guy's? You really think you can AGAIN make an expansion heavily PvP based, while ALMOST every Wow player dislike Pvp? Where Pvp and faction war has absolutly no-sense since Warcraft 3?

    Today, the Horde ONLY exist because the Alliance authorized it, because Varian did choose to let them a chance; and now, the new Horde leaders are doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING Garrosh did.
    Who the hell is writing the story? Christie Golden? How the hell will you deal with the second defeat of the Horde? (Yes, the Alliance will win, because the Alliance have always been more powerfull than the Horde, and i dislike the Alliance though), another "I let you another chance, again, but be carefull !" ?

    The ONLY expansion you could create, was and Old Gods expansion, not this stupid retarded shit you dared show us, do you really want your community hates you? Do you really want to kill your game by making stupid decisions again and again? Well you are on the right way, because i can guaranty you that expansion will be a massive failure; probably not enought to plain kill Wow but remember: NO ONE has forgot Wod, NO ONE has forgiven you Wod, don't try to screw you community a second time, because this time, there will not be another chance.

    Battle for Azeroth has the clear potential to replace and beat to the death Warlords of Draenor off the rank of worst expansion ever, and i am almost sure it will.
  1. Nize's Avatar
    @Uncle To be fair, we don't know how this xpac ends. It can very well become an Old God xpac and the horde/alliance war just serves as a backdrop for the start of hte issues. Azshara is here. N Zoth is closeby.
  1. Tisane's Avatar
    The voice integration for LFG runs sounds interesting Like sometimes it will be fun and other times there won't be anything but rage
  1. baskev's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Shimmyan View Post
    All that instanced stuff is worrying me.
    Please make the teleporting stop. The world is going to feel so small...
    i am more afraid of that warzone stuff. It sounds like the main focus...and its sounds like pvp ...so forcing me to pvp now
  1. Eggroll's Avatar
    Panel is over. No deep diving has occured....
  1. beaver1024's Avatar
    I like how they say the scenarios are "role agnostic" when in reality it's DPS only, otherwise you'd kill things way to slow.
  1. Spiridon's Avatar
    sap not work in combat - AI will use cheap cheats?
  1. darkest4's Avatar
    Everything in this expansion just feels like a lazy reskin/rename... Artifact necks are just slightly tweaked artifact weapons without any of the cool weapon models. Subraces recolors of the normal races. Islands looks like the boring ass legion invasion 3 man scenarios with some randomness thrown in, meh. Feels like they put their B team on this and told them to just reskin the Legion systems and sent the good devs to work on a new game or something. Starting to wish Legion was just the last expansion and they went out with a bang and worked on a new MMO + Warcraft 4 or just WoW 2 with a new engine and what not. As is, if these are the type of reskin expansions we have to look forward to, WoW is going to die a slow and miserable death.

    They made the best cinematic trailer ever. That's about it. Probably rushed the work on that early this time for the hype because they knew they had nothing compelling to show of the actual gameplay..
  1. teidden's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Nize View Post
    It does blow my mind that there were people around saying they'd release this on March/April. I disagree that it'll be a year long deal though. There seems to be A LOT less new systems in play than in the last 3 expansions of a lot of new additions (even Garrisons seemed resource-heavy). Familiarity will help them get it out quicker, like in September of 2018
    Oh my. There is ton less in this upcoming xpac then in legion are you kidding me? There is barely anything new. Scenarios already in play, pvp is in play. Ok RTS version in game is new thats it. Lets see legion had

    Massive class changes
    Artifact system
    WQ system
    Order Halls
    Class specific storing telling lore and questlines
    Demon Hunter along with new class area
    Professions overhaul
    Wardrobe system


    This xpac has crap compare to the very little i said here there ws much mroe at launch and at the announcemnt of legion then this crap.
  1. BarelyLegalBear's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Uncle View Post
    I think that expansion must be somekind of joke. This is, by far, the worst announcement ever. The story, the lore, the "allied races", none of those things have ANY sens at all ! They already tried a Alliance Vs Horde focused expansion in Mop, and ti didn't work, because that idea of war between both factions has NO meaning, in mean, what's wrong with you guy's? You really think you can AGAIN make an expansion heavily PvP based, while ALMOST every Wow player dislike Pvp? Where Pvp and faction war has absolutly no-sense since Warcraft 3?

    Today, the Horde ONLY exist because the Alliance authorized it, because Varian did choose to let them a chance; and now, the new Horde leaders are doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING Garrosh did.
    Who the hell is writing the story? Christie Golden? How the hell will you deal with the second defeat of the Horde? (Yes, the Alliance will win, because the Alliance have always been more powerfull than the Horde, and i dislike the Alliance though), another "I let you another chance, again, but be carefull !" ?

    The ONLY expansion you could create, was and Old Gods expansion, not this stupid retarded shit you dared show us, do you really want your community hates you? Do you really want to kill your game by making stupid decisions again and again? Well you are on the right way, because i can guaranty you that expansion will be a massive failure; probably not enought to plain kill Wow but remember: NO ONE has forgot Wod, NO ONE has forgiven you Wod, don't try to screw you community a second time, because this time, there will not be another chance.

    Battle for Azeroth has the clear potential to replace and beat to the death Warlords of Draenor off the rank of worst expansion ever, and i am almost sure it will.
    Now that you've played the expansion and all, what's your opinion on it? Oh wait, it's not out yet. Kind of hard to judge something when you haven't even played it.
  1. Phood's Avatar
    I will admit that I usually am a Blizzard apologist, but this seems really, really bad. Like almost a "why-did-you-even-try-you're-just-embarrassing-yourself" bad. We've seen these amazing landscapes and traveled to all these worlds. Ya know, in retrospect WoD seemed like a xpack to get the character housing monkey off their back. This is looking like an xpack to get the vanilla server and sub-races off their back. We all know it didn't end well the last time.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Nize View Post
    @Uncle To be fair, we don't know how this xpac ends. It can very well become an Old God xpac and the horde/alliance war just serves as a backdrop for the start of hte issues. Azshara is here. N Zoth is closeby.
    If this is the case, they need to fire the entire PR team.
  1. Nize's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by teidden View Post
    Oh my. There is ton less in this upcoming xpac then in legion are you kidding me? There is barely anything new. Scenarios already in play, pvp is in play. Ok RTS version in game is new thats it. Lets see legion had

    Massive class changes
    Artifact system
    WQ system
    Order Halls
    Class specific storing telling lore and questlines
    Demon Hunter along with new class area
    Professions overhaul
    Wardrobe system


    This xpac has crap compare to the very little i said here there ws much mroe at launch and at the announcemnt of legion then this crap.
    Um, that's what I said? Not sure why you quoted me and responded in a way that you disagreed when you were just reiterating and reinforcing my point.
  1. Jodmos's Avatar
    Interesting paddle in the pool of gameplay and systems.
  1. Role Unknown's Avatar
    People keep saying that this game wont be released til Sept. I wholeheartedly disagree....outside of The Heart of Azeroth, there is nothing new. Everything is just stuff already in the game, prettied up and repackaged as new. I'd say this expansion will be released in Spring.
  1. Jaronicity's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by thoxrendar View Post
    Not to mention resist gear and such. Wonder if they will tune bosses out of needing it.
    That wouldn't be very "vanilla" of them to do that, would it now?
  1. Thulsadoom's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Uncle View Post
    I think that expansion must be somekind of joke. This is, by far, the worst announcement ever. The story, the lore, the "allied races", none of those things have ANY sens at all ! They already tried a Alliance Vs Horde focused expansion in Mop, and ti didn't work, because that idea of war between both factions has NO meaning, in mean, what's wrong with you guy's? You really think you can AGAIN make an expansion heavily PvP based, while ALMOST every Wow player dislike Pvp? Where Pvp and faction war has absolutly no-sense since Warcraft 3?

    Today, the Horde ONLY exist because the Alliance authorized it, because Varian did choose to let them a chance; and now, the new Horde leaders are doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING Garrosh did.
    Who the hell is writing the story? Christie Golden? How the hell will you deal with the second defeat of the Horde? (Yes, the Alliance will win, because the Alliance have always been more powerfull than the Horde, and i dislike the Alliance though), another "I let you another chance, again, but be carefull !" ?

    The ONLY expansion you could create, was and Old Gods expansion, not this stupid retarded shit you dared show us, do you really want your community hates you? Do you really want to kill your game by making stupid decisions again and again? Well you are on the right way, because i can guaranty you that expansion will be a massive failure; probably not enought to plain kill Wow but remember: NO ONE has forgot Wod, NO ONE has forgiven you Wod, don't try to screw you community a second time, because this time, there will not be another chance.

    Battle for Azeroth has the clear potential to replace and beat to the death Warlords of Draenor off the rank of worst expansion ever, and i am almost sure it will.
    1) Varian authorized nothing, he just didnt want to start a war after defeating Garrosh
    2) No faction is the strongest and no faction will ever really win, otherwise the game would be over. (look at the trailer)
    3) The worst expansion was Cataclysm

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