Developer Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas - Battle for Azeroth

Developer Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas - Battle for Azeroth
Ion answered World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth beta questions today!


Patch 8.0 PTR
  • The pre-expansion patch is going live on the PTR right now!
  • Everything but Battle for Azeroth content or content specific systems will be in the pre-expansion patch, just like always.
  • An exact release date will be announced closer to release.

Allied Races
  • Blood Trolls aren't an Allied Race, someone misspoke in an interview.
  • We could see more Allied Races in the future, but they aren't necessarily required for each expansion.

Patch Cycle
  • The patch cycle in Battle for Azeroth will be similar to Legion. Alternating large and small patches.

Flying
  • You will be able to unlock flying later in Battle for Azeroth.
  • The achievement had a display bug on beta, you will only need to complete requirements on one faction.
  • The team is wary of devaluing the effort that goes into earning Pathfinder if they were to remove it right away.
  • Leveling through Draenor was designed to be done on the ground, so you don't need flying to level there today.

Class Changes
  • The window for any major spec changes is rapidly closing. An example of major changes is Fury Warrior or Balance Druid changes recently, major overhauls of a rotation or spells.
  • A few more abilities are coming off the GCD in the next beta build.
  • The team doesn't want to make major changes that won't have time for feedback this close to release.
  • The focus needs to shift to basic balance and tuning changes for launch.
  • Feel, pacing, complexity and other rotation feedback is ongoing, but soon the target will shift to changes being put in Patch 8.1.
  • Enhancement Shaman, Elemental Shaman, Shadow Priest have been talked about recently.
  • It's frustrating, but any more major changes will probably have to wait for a patch.
  • Balance and Tuning changes can still completely change your rotation, so major changes can happen as a result of balance and tuning.
  • Changes will be mostly numerical from here to release.
  • The BlizzCon build with class buffs was an experiment that the team has pulled back from a bit.
  • The team wants to make sure there is a reason for all of the classes to feel special. Everyone getting some passive throughput buff isn't a great solution, no one really feels special.
  • The team looked at the overall utility package of classes and where it made sense to bolster that package by bringing back some of the old buffs.
  • Druids have pretty great utility, between Battle Res, Innervate, control talents, and more, they already have enough utility. Adding Mark of the Wild on top of all of this seemed excessive.
  • Balance and tuning is mostly focused on BfA content. The team doesn't want old content to be significantly harder or things to be significantly broken.

War Mode
  • War Mode and the new Honor Talent system will be available as part of the pre-expansion patch.
  • There will be some War Mode specific events as part of the pre-expansion patch.
  • If you are on an RP server and turn on War Mode, you will see players from your server in the world. You can still see people from different realms if someone from your realm invites them to a group.
  • Patch 8.0 changes realms to Normal and RP only, there is no more PvP and PvE server.

Mythic Raids
  • There is a lot of value in preserving what remains of server and guild identity.
  • The team wants to look at potentially unlocking Mythic cross-realm earlier in the raid release cycle.
  • There are some new achievements in Battle for Azeroth, Hall of Fame
  • The top 100 guilds of each faction in the world will get the Hall of Fame achievement.
  • There will be a web leaderboard for the top 100 guilds.
  • Once the top 100 Horde and Alliance guilds have earned a Hall of Fame achievement, Mythic will unlock cross-realm.

Artifacts
  • Artifact Traits will go away with Patch 8.0, as the weapons are retired.
  • You will keep the Artifact weapon and relics, which will still increase the item level.
  • Artifact transmog will remain spec specific in Battle for Azeroth.

Mythic+
  • It is intended that you aren't able to swap gear while inside Mythic+ dungeons.
  • People would love to change gear and talents during the middle of raid encounters, but you can't do that. The same idea applies to Mythic+ dungeons. You will have to pick one set of gear and talents for the entire dungeon, as it is one encounter.
  • The vast majority of most Mythic+ players aren't swapping gear right now.
  • The game will be balanced around not being able to swap gear. Mythic+ dungeons shouldn't be any harder as a result of this, and if the dungeons are harder the team will do tuning to fix it.
  • There isn't a huge set of changes coming to Affixes compared to the ones in Legion.
  • Tyrannical and Fortified are available from the start of Mythic+. You'll either have tougher bosses or tougher trash. This gets rid of the big jump in difficulty from 9 to 10.
  • There will be a seasonal Affix and for Season 1 it is Infested. Makes units more dangerous, resistant to CC. When the target is damaged, the parasite jumps out of the target and makes its way to another NPC, giving you a chance to kill it.
  • The seasonal affix will be retired at the end of a season and a new one will be added.
  • Mythic 10 will yield the best possible loot once everything is unlocked, Heroic Uldir items from runs, Mythic Uldir from the weekly chest. This model worked well in Legion, so no reason to change it.
  • The power of Azerite effects is proportional to the item level of the item with the effect.
  • The team wants a large item level jump to make it clear that the item is better for you and you should equip it without having to sim things.
  • Once you get past blue quality loot from dungeons, all of the Azerite Armor sources are gated by something. Raids, chests, and PvP all have some kind of weekly gating. You won't need to spam run Mythic+ forever to try and get specific Azerite armor.
  • Mythic (non plus) dungeons will work like they did in Legion. The first 3 weeks only have Mythic dungeons, with a lower ceiling on the Warforged / Titanforged cap. Once Normal and Heroic raids open, the cap will be raised a bit, but not to Mythic Raid quality. After Mythic raids open, the cap will be raised to Mythic.

Heart of Azeroth
  • The catch-up mechanism for Heart of Azeroth is similar to Legion, but reduces the cost instead of increasing the amount of Artifact Power you earn. You'll see a 25-30% reduction in the cost that unlocking the next Heart of Azeroth level if you don't play for a week. Legion Artifact Power numbers got far too large.

PvP
  • The team wants to complement the random end of match rewards with more deterministic rewards.
  • With gear mattering once again in PvP, the team wants to give people a reliable path to the gear they want.
  • At the end of a match, you'll have a chance to get an item. The quality of the reward is based on your PvP Tier.
  • You'll earn Conquest points, filling a bar on the UI, reward is a raid quality piece of armor or weapon. Week 1 is a Raid Finder quality weapon.
  • The gear cycle repeats again with higher quality loot.
  • If you are behind, there is a catch-up system in place.
  • If you invest time in PvP, you will get a full set of PvP gear over the season, regardless of your rating.
  • When you fill up the Conquest bar for the week, you get a reward from a chest. One reward per week, proportional to your rating and ranking, based on your highest one.
  • PvP seasons will be a little bit longer than Legion. Rewards systems should parallel each other, so it's cleaner if PvP and PvE reward systems are moving in parallel.
  • In Legion, the team tried to fit 2 seasons into the time of a raid tier, so the first season in each pair had gear that felt weak.
  • The team wants to announce and end PvP seasons with more warning, without them being tied to a patch or content release. There will be a post-season where you can still earn the rewards like the end of match random loot, including during the pre-expansion Patch 8.0.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Developer Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas - Battle for Azeroth started by chaud View original post
Published on 2018-06-14 05:45 PM
201 Comments
Comments 201 Comments
  1. Eapoe's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kallisto View Post
    You don't have to do anything, you just are choosing to.
    To progress as fast and efficiently possible, people feel forced into these things. I’m not saying people are forced, I’m saying they feel it, as m+ awards the same ilvl gear as raiding, which also skews gear acquisition as trinkets and armor pieces, and once again weapons, can roll better stats at equivalent ilvl as the raid people are working on.
    As I stated in other threads on similar topics, I don’t mind raiding=m+, but I think Blizz needs to separate them more and have raid gear not work in m+ and m+ not work in raids (think of loot I.d. and the pieces are scaled down).
  1. Nathasil's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Eapoe View Post
    To progress as fast and efficiently possible, people feel forced into these things. I’m not saying people are forced, I’m saying they feel it, as m+ awards the same ilvl gear as raiding, which also skews gear acquisition as trinkets and armor pieces, and once again weapons, can roll better stats at equivalent ilvl as the raid people are working on.
    As I stated in other threads on similar topics, I don’t mind raiding=m+, but I think Blizz needs to separate them more and have raid gear not work in m+ and m+ not work in raids (think of loot I.d. and the pieces are scaled down).
    How is that new?
    In classic the best items for many slots for most specs came from 5mans until mid AQ40/Naxx.
    In BC you had to play Arena for good weapons in T4&5 AND cap your valor points in dungeons to fill slots you had bad luck in the raids with. Valor remained a factor until WoD.
    In WoD you had to clear a CM dungeon at the start of the xpack weekly.
    In Legion (&BFA) you have to play ONE dungeon per week.

    So, for players like you it has always been "worse" than BFA/Legion except for WoD....and bringing the WoD model of "absolutely nothing to do except raid once per week" back would kill the game for the vast majority of players.
  1. Wyrt's Avatar
    Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of shitty ass developer just says, "Your class is fucked at launch, wait until the first patch for it to be fixed." Seriously?
  1. Sungamnori's Avatar
    Haha, so some specs get absolutely shafted for weapon transmog options for an entire expansion because they won't let you transmog, say... axes over a fist weapon artifact.

    But now in BfA they're let you transmog that first weapon artifact over a random axe?

    Where was this two years ago...
  1. Beefkow's Avatar
    For those who are obsessed with fashion, races, overall content, and the simplest and boring as hell rotations....

    You win.

    The evil, bad, and the worst always triumphs over the good.
  1. The Stormbringer's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Alroxas View Post
    So I guess faction imbalanced RP servers are going to be great for the faction majority. You can enable War Mode (and gain the benefits) without worrying about PvP because the sharding tech won't pull in additional War Mode flagged players from other realms automatically.
    Yeah, I hope we don't get a ton of PVPers swarming RP servers to try and take advantage of this.
  1. kamuimac's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Grevmak View Post
    "Once you get past blue quality loot from dungeons, all of the Azerite Armor sources are gated by something. Raids, chests, and PvP all have some kind of weekly gating. You won't need to spam run Mythic+ forever to try and get specific Azerite armor."

    Legiondaries 2.0? Just instead of a badluck protection we're fully gated off of getting new gear? Not being a negative nancy but this sounds...Weird. Hope this isn't as game-y as it sounds, I liked the whole idea of Azerite gear just being set in stone traited gear which always drops in the same way so that there's actually some "chase items" outside of trinkets again. Tiersets and Legos are gone, we do need a carrot on a stick for most players to keep chasing.
    not surpising at all

    they realised they are fucked and without legendaries people wont farm dailies erm wq eveyrday so they put azerite as random drops without a tinies doubt from daily wq chest too ^^

    have fun farming legiondaries 2.0
  1. Korru's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Beefkow View Post
    For those who are obsessed with fashion, races, overall content, and the simplest and boring as hell rotations....

    You win.

    The evil, bad, and the worst always triumphs over the good.
    Nah man, transmog farming will be dull this expansion.
  1. Justpassing's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Korru View Post
    Nah man, transmog farming will be dull this expansion.
    Yeah I got no idea why he's PMS'ing either... We'll just have one look per armour class every raid tier, what's there to collect other than shit like Tusks?
  1. silverdragon234's Avatar
    No more getting ganked on rppvp/pvp servers!
  1. oathy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MakeMeLaugh View Post
    So blizz just ruined shamans and they basically don't care. All they say is "deal with it".
    This has been my main concern for a while now.
    its not a question of sacking ION or the team. they need some new fresh faces to stand back
    and just give new input. some of these answers just reinforce that feeling IMHO.
    Its a new expansion yet as others posted. they might have to wait till a patch to fix some classes...
  1. muto's Avatar
    "The vast majority of most Mythic+ players aren't swapping gear right now."

    So the vast majority of players are bad. Got it. If you're not swapping legos and trinkets depending on the situation you're doing it wrong.
  1. Strakha's Avatar
    "It's frustrating, but any more major changes will probably have to wait for a patch."

    sounds more like you should not have moved up the release window and instead focused on creating a finished product instead of a public beta.
  1. SirCowdog's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MakeMeLaugh View Post
    So blizz just ruined shamans and they basically don't care. All they say is "deal with it".
    This isn't the first time that's happened. Blizzard has a history of neglecting shaman.
  1. Kendros's Avatar
    Can anyone check on the PTR if the option to straighten your orc back is available?
  1. truulte's Avatar
    "The window for any major spec changes is rapidly closing. An example of major changes is Fury Warrior or Balance Druid changes recently, major overhauls of a rotation or spells."

    I thought this was the company that waited to release their games until they were 100% complete and polished...
  1. mmocecfb32e0bd's Avatar
    So, every single class has received changes. Except mage. Great.
  1. schwarzkopf's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by PapaRockett View Post
    So, every single class has received changes. Except mage. Great.
    You are quite correct - but in addition mages have received changes too. I'm pretty happy with the Arcane changes - no longer having to farm for AM procs.
  1. SirCowdog's Avatar
    "Once you get past blue quality all the end-game sources of azerite armor are from sources that are gated by some lockout, and not endlessly spammable.

    This allows for much greater certainty and stability in the rate at which these items are rewarded."

    TRANSLATION: We're going to put even more checks on your progress so we can better control and predict how long content lasts. We don't care how you want to play, you'll only be able to progress how WE want you to.

    Why am I not surprised? Granted, this is sort of how it's worked in the past. But at the same time they're just locking down the rate of progression even further, which is not something I'm ever going to be in favor of. Let players play at the rate they want. Stop trying to be a nanny. Stop being such greedy corporate a-holes and go back to making a good game instead of a super-profit-focues-milk-the-players-soulless-machine.

    Uhg.
  1. xcitng's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Strakha View Post
    "It's frustrating, but any more major changes will probably have to wait for a patch."

    sounds more like you should not have moved up the release window and instead focused on creating a finished product instead of a public beta.
    Gone are the days when blizzard released an amazing polished product....
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