Before the Storm Delayed, Developer Interviews, Blue Tweets, DLC #607

Card Design Competition Season 6 - The Grand Finale!

Christie Golden's Before the Storm Delayed
Christie Golden's upcoming novel Before the Storm has been delayed until June 12, 2018. It was originally scheduled to release on May 15, 2018.

Amazon doesn't have the official cover art yet, but it was posted on Twitter. The book description was updated, but you can see the original description here.

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
An all-new, official prequel novel to The Battle for Azeroth, Blizzard Entertainment’s next expansion to the critically acclaimed World of Warcraft.

In Before the Storm, Anduin Wrynn, king of Stormwind, and Sylvanas Windrunner, warchief of the Horde, are new to their positions of power, both ascending before they were truly prepared. As the Alliance and the Horde struggle to recover from the devastating war with the demonic Burning Legion, a terrible discovery will test both leaders, threatening to reignite the bitter enmity between their factions and shake the very foundations of the world of Azeroth.



Developer Interviews
We're continuing to take a look at new information from the BlizzCon developer interviews. Automatic Jak talked to Sigma at Blizzcon 2017.


  • The team went into Legion knowing that they might have to revisit some of the classes that received major changes once player feedback was collected.
  • There most likely will not be complete class revamps again any time soon.
  • Mythic dungeons are a great way to show off each class’s unique toolkit.
  • The team likes classes having unique abilities.
  • Going forward a big question is what unique abilities each class should have.
  • The team wants to spread out class strength and weaknesses more.
  • Utility will be spread out and balanced more in the future.
  • Everyone should feel like they have some sort of cooldown to help them survive.
  • The best thing the team can do to help showcase unique abilities is to have more variety in dungeon encounters.
  • Talent tweaks and the future of the class artifact abilities are being looked at moving forward.
  • The passive health increase on Artifact Weapons was essentially to also help healers heal into a set of players with higher health pools who take more damage that stays balanced with the amount of healing done.
  • Thorns and other design elements are being experimented with more to counter the issue of healing getting boring as players get stronger.
  • The team is pretty happy with where raid cooldowns are at now.
  • Steady damage is important to the design of healing in encounters.


Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Vol'jin status: still dead, not letting that stop him (Muffinus)

Thanks all for another incredible BlizzCon full of excitement and hugs. I love this community so much! (Celestalon)
Was talking back stage with one of the convention organizers, who works on several big conventions... he said something that made me think. (Celestalon)
"You look at big cons like ComicCon, E3, GamesCom, ChinaJoy... those are for hundreds of games/things. BlizzCon is for 5 games [franchises]" (Celestalon)
"BlizzCon matches them in scale (with the new North Hall), with just 5 games. It's incredible.", he said. (Celestalon)
It really is incredible. It's because of the people. The community. The FAMILY. I am so honored to have the privilege to contribute to it. (Celestalon)

In a creative industry, it's valuable to let your creatives take some time every cycle to work on whatever they're passionate about. (Muffinus)
WoW's level designers took on crafting the oceans of Broken Isles as a fun project once pencils were down for most of the world. (Muffinus)
I'd encourage everyone to take a swim, you'll find all kinds of cool little moments, and giant pearls, and salty krakens, and passion/love. (Muffinus)
Plus it drives the Secret Finding Discord nuts so, bonus (Muffinus)

I would consider everyone a creative - designers, artists, engineers can be creative, even producers with their multi-colored spreadsheets! (Muffinus)
Did you know that Gull Rock in Stormheim was created by a producer that wanted to see what would happen if he learned to add seagulls? (Muffinus)
The result was a LOT of seagulls, who were then eaten by Falcosaurs. Never forget the look he gave me when I told him they ate his seagulls (Muffinus)
A combination of unfathomable sadness and "did you have time for that, let me consult my spreadsheet" (Muffinus)

Dark Legacy Comics #607
DLC #607 has been released.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Before the Storm Delayed, Developer Interviews, Blue Tweets, DLC #607 started by chaud View original post
Published on 2017-11-13 09:53 AM
44 Comments
Comments 44 Comments
  1. Snowmist's Avatar
    The delayed release date of the book would seem to indicate that the Expansion won't be out until at least July 2018, as they will want the book out on the shelves before then to build up hype.
  1. Tomana's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Uncle View Post
    You want a feedback? Here is one: completely delete ALL your work on Bfa, and work on a TRUE expansion, the ONLY expansion that can follow Legion: focus on the Old Gods, and not a artificial war between the two factons who will lead to nothing more than the most massive failure in the Wow history. Yes, Bfa WILL BE A FAILURE, worse than Wod, it is already written.
    The problem of WOD was not the story, but the total lack of non-raid content.
    Besides, we don't know how heavily Old Gods will be featured in this expansion.
  1. sociald1077's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rurin View Post
    Who's saying there won't be old gods?

    The premise sounds a lot like MoP, and that ended with Garrosh getting corrupted by Y'Shaarj.
    Garrosh didnt get corrupted. He willingly infused himself with the essence of the Old God in a bid for power and domination. Just like his dear old daddy did (except that was demon blood). However, unlike daddy he was unwilling to finally see the error in his quest for power and instead blamed others for for his path. It was a nice juxtaposition.
  1. Rurin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by sociald1077 View Post
    Garrosh didnt get corrupted. He willingly infused himself with the essence of the Old God in a bid for power and domination. Just like his dear old daddy did (except that was demon blood). However, unlike daddy he was unwilling to finally see the error in his quest for power and instead blamed others for for his path. It was a nice juxtaposition.
    Well, he corrupted himself. Regardless of that the Old Gods were involved and the last boss of the expansion had nothing to do with the initial premise of the expansion.

    No reason BfA can't end up in an Old God invasion or something.
  1. gboydp3's Avatar
    "Everyone should feel like they have some sort of cooldown to help them survive" while in the back of their minds they are laughing at shamans shitty astral shift
  1. babyback's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Snowmist View Post
    The delayed release date of the book would seem to indicate that the Expansion won't be out until at least July 2018, as they will want the book out on the shelves before then to build up hype.
    Expansions usually release abut a year after announced. I don’t see why this should be an exception.

    A release prior to next fall is highly unlikely.
  1. Elim Garak's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fleugen View Post
    "Gigz" is not a human, "Gigz" is a Night Elf.

    The person who plays the Night Elf "Gigz" is human, yes.
    Irrelevant splitting of hair. Character has no feelings. It's the human behind Gigz who doesn't care about a tree.
  1. Menz's Avatar
    There most likely will not be complete class revamps again any time soon.
    I don't want to be that guy, but... What about class Devamps? Like bring back old Brm ?
  1. Firen's Avatar
    Wonder why the book is delayed, thought she already tweeted that she finished it? I guess it's to better coincide with the expansion release.
  1. Elim Garak's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Firen View Post
    Wonder why the book is delayed, thought she already tweeted that she finished it? I guess it's to better coincide with the expansion release.
    Beta delayed
  1. Darknessvamp's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by cparle87 View Post
    Orcs bad guys, attack first. Humans good guys, defend their land from evil. Orcs ultimately lose due to infighting and betrayal from within. It wasn't until WC3 that orcs were anything but always chaotic evil bloodthirsty monsters.
    So I guess we can take from this that Blizzard really likes to reuse the Horde started it plot. The older RTSes, WotLK with Wrathgate, Pandaria and it's whole plot and now BfA again. You'd think at one point they could try the morally grey war story as opposed to another one where one faction is painted as the villain and the other in the right.

    Quote Originally Posted by Firen View Post
    Wonder why the book is delayed, thought she already tweeted that she finished it? I guess it's to better coincide with the expansion release.
    If she had, it's possible someone high up on the writing team actually read through it all and went "um no" and asked for some major rewrites. A two month delay would suggest some major work has to be done on it as opposed to some fixing, grammer checks and plot consistency (haha who am I kidding Golden doesn't really care about that, also bet it had something to do with an AnduinxGenn fanfic level of writing). I mean Blizzard rarely releases their books based on when an expansion releases so why would they start now?
  1. GSN's Avatar
    Perhaps Gigz is just an evil maniac. Doesn't she like to eat gnomes, after all?
  1. Shibito's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by grexly75 View Post
    And the horde "fanboys" would not also throw a hissy fit if the same thing happened to them??
    You got to raid fucking orgrimmar you alliance fanboy
  1. Muguin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Mhyroth View Post
    "The team wants to spread out class strength and weaknesses more."

    Basically: if you're a Rogue you'll be fine; anything else depends.
    Lol play outlaw and say that.
  1. Elim Garak's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fleugen View Post
    But for all intents and purposes, Gigz, who is standing on the tree, should.
    Nope.
    Quote Originally Posted by Fleugen View Post
    You're the one who brought up the irrelevant point of character vs. player distinction, so I dunno why you're now complaining about it.
    The fuck? I said there's no character, only human. Human doesn't care. Case closed.
  1. judgementofantonidas's Avatar
    Thorns and other design elements are being experimented with more to counter the issue of healing getting boring as players get stronger.


    Pretty stupid statement and or design goal.
    Players should be easier to heal when they get more powerful, until new content is released and the cycle starts again.
    A system where everything scales and you are always getting crushed no matter how much gear/power you acrue is not a fun system to play in.
  1. micwini's Avatar
    Why does the delay of the book mean the expansion will be delayed? Apart from that the book needs to be released BEFORE the expansion, they aren't tied together at all. Like what does it matter that the book is released in july instead of may....
  1. OriginZero's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fleugen View Post
    There is a character.

    It's a comic.

    On the contrary, there is no human, it's a character in a comic about WoW.
    Have you read those comics? It's a comic about gamers playing WoW. They're talking about raiding and such...UI...etc. all the time. So, what they're saying is that it's a real human playing a Night Elf character.
  1. Multodi's Avatar
    For the love of god please fix shaman totems! The pathing for them has always been terrible! For the love of azeroth!
  1. Pokot's Avatar
    The team likes classes having unique abilities.
    Best joke this month so far.
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