Alex Afrasiabi and Patrick Dawson Interview, Moonkin Festival, Dev Interviews

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MMO-Champion Interview with Alex Afrasiabi and Patrick Dawson
We had the opportunity to talk to Alex Afrasiabi and Patrick Dawson at BlizzCon. Our interview was before the World of Warcraft: What's Next panel, so we couldn't ask about the new content.
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
  • Mythic Raiding and Faction Imbalance
    • The team wanted to preserve the concept of server/guild Mythic raiding but also wanted cross realm mythic raiding to happen while the content was still relevant, which is why the concept of the Hall of Fame came into play.
    • The team has corrected racials over the years, but Alex acknowledged that many people gravitated towards Horde in the past because of racials. They don't believe there is a significant difference in faction racial balance today, but they are always looking at ways to solve this problem without just making the Alliance overpowered.
  • Warfronts
    • The team quickly realized that the item level of the rewards given out in Warfronts should not be obtainable by a fresh Level 120. They wanted progression to be incremental and this is why they hotfixed in a minimum item level to queue for a Warfront. They are happy with where it is at now.
    • The Warfront rewards were purposely made slightly better as an incentive for players to do Warfronts because it is new content.
    • The question the team wants to take from the Warfront launch is "Was it necessarily that Warfront rewards were too high or were world content rewards just not high enough?" The answer to this is that world content rewards were probably not high enough.
    • Alex is more interested in using Warfronts as a platform for story.
  • Water Walking Mounts
    • Adding more water walking mounts is something that has been discussed a lot by the team.
  • The War Campaign
    • The War Campaign seems shorter than the Legion campaign because the story is not over. Suramar's story ended after Legion's second patch whereas the War Campaign will span the whole expansion and evolve over time.
    • Sometimes there will be fewer quests, but if the quests given make you feel something or advance the story in a meaningful way, then the team has done their job.
    • Alex believes that quests should still help you have an understanding of what is going on in the story even if you are a player that instantly accepts quests and does them without reading the text.
  • Island Expedition Rewards
    • The team believes that the community has done well with figuring out how Island Expeditions rewards work. They did try something new with the way rewards drop but can't say it's EXACTLY how the system works. They like there to be some sort of discovery involved in the game.
  • Mythic + Dungeons
    • When there is a huge disparity between the difficulty of specific dungeons in Mythic+ the team will address it.
    • Internally, there is a talented team that runs Mythic+ dungeons and provides feedback. Sometimes things get through, but community feedback usually results in a fix.
  • Graphics
    • Multithreading for the renderer has been a long time coming and the team is excited for players to take advantage of the improved frame rates.
    • Internally, they have seen improvements of up to 50% in framerate. Player's experiences will depend on their hardware and software configuration.



Moonkin Festival Micro-Holiday on November 12
Moonkin Festival is today! Head to Moonglade and pick up Moonkin Monitoring from Makkaw.

There is a small quest line that ends with a fight against a group boss that drops Beanie Boomie. Completion of the quest line increases the number of hatchlings that are following you.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Join the celebration of all things Moonkin in Moonglade, November 12!


A new addition to Legion is what we’re calling micro-holidays. Each one is meant to make the world feel more alive without making players feel like they need to participate for big rewards—while still providing some more variety and fun.

Method Interview with Ely Cannon and Morgan Day
Method sat down with WoW devs Ely Cannon and Morgan Day to discuss Battle for Azeroth.


  • Battle of Dazar'alor
    • Boss 2 (King Grong) for Horde is Boss 3 for Alliance. Other than this, the fights happen in the same order.
    • The team may add small scenes to show the other faction raid during the events and bosses, such as seeing them fighting in the distance or Alliance players switching to the Horde perspective and seeing their own characters down with Mekkatorque from the balcony above.
    • The team wanted to justify the encounters with purpose. The reason the Alliance fights the Treasure Guardian is because it makes sense for them to break into the treasury and steal artifacts during a siege.
  • Nazjatar
    • The team poured a lot of resources and time into Nazjatar. It will be an extensively large zone with 5 different environment types that contain full questing and end game content.
  • Mechagon
    • They wanted the dungeon to launch feeling like Karazhan, meaning you know you will spend substantial time in there in a small group.
    • Eventually it will be split into 2 wings for Mythic +.
  • Mythic + Affixes
    • The season two affix Reaping will do the following:
      • Cause all trash mobs killed every 20% of the progress bar (5 times total) to raise and rush your team no matter where you are on the map.
      • They want it to feel scary and creepy. Bwonsamdi will appear and say "rise" and a blood moon will appear in the sky whenever it happens. The dungeon will also get darker.
      • If you lose the timer something interesting also happens, but they don't want to spoil it!
      • You should be able to plan around this affix because it happens at set times.
    • Necrotic will be changed to physical instead of magical to better play to the weaknesses of tanks that heal a lot.
  • Global Cooldown
    • DPS cooldowns were looked at to design them around having more impact or reason to not activate multiple at once. They also are making visual improvements to them to make them feel more epic.
    • Many mobility abilities are being taken off the GCD again.
    • Defensive abilities are still being discussed.
  • Raid Incentives
    • Raids have unique traits not found outside of the raid that do fun and exciting things.


Wowhead Interview with Ion Hazzikostas and Chris Robinson
Wowhead sat down with Ion Hazzikostas and Chris Robinson for some new information!


  • Heritage Armor
    • In regards to the Tauren Heritage Armor, the giant totem on the back is actually the cloak slot.
    • There could be more Heritage sets in the future outside of the ones being created for both the Allied races and older races.
    • The current armor worn by a lot of the Night Elf NPCs is not planned as the Night Elf Heritage Armor, but player feedback could cause designs reminiscent of it.
  • Night Elves
    • The events of the Darkshore quests in 8.1 are setting up future lore and stories for the Night Elves.
    • The Night Elf glaive is currently restricted to Demon Hunters, but a weapon will that silhouette may become available to other classes down the line.
  • Rise of Azshara
    • Blizzard thought it was important to capture the vibe of being underwater while not constantly being underwater.
    • They don't have finalized travel gameplay mechanics for Nazjatar, but it may involve waterfalls and currents.
    • The patch name "Rise of Azshara" is not just a turn of phrase.
  • Darkmoon Faire
    • The Darkmoon roller coaster is a first person POV simulator.
    • The coaster was a passion project from one of the artists. It wasn't initially planned for the faire.
  • Character Customization
    • Glowing eyes for female Worgen are planned.
    • The team is happy that the perma-scowl is gone from the female Worgen model, but still want to iterate further on facial customization for the Worgen.
    • There are no plans currently for straight-backed undead.
    • Adding different undead races to the lineup depends on where the story goes and whether or not they should just be standard members of the Horde or playable characters.
  • Battleground Visual Updates
    • They currently have no plans to update Alterac Valley like they are doing to Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin. These two are much smaller and are part of the rotation for rated play.
  • Allied Races
    • The character slot limit per server will increase with each Allied Race added to the game.
    • The 50 character cap per account will not increase as of now.
  • Mechagon
    • Goblins see Mechagon as a way to salvage and create new lucrative inventions.

WoWChakra and 4Fansites Interview with Morgan Day & Shani Edwards
WoWChakra and 4Fansites sat down with Morgan Day and Shani Edwards to discuss Battle for Azeroth and its future.


  • Azshara's Eternal Throne
    • The team is aware of the challenges an underwater fight presents, but think this raid is a time where they have to create a fight like this.
    • The team looked at the Horde quest that took place underwater for inspiration.
    • The raid designers want to try to create new fights that they have never done yet and this is the perfect opportunity.
  • Story
    • Thrall could possibly make a return in the future, but the team doesn't want to spoil too much.
    • They admit that the Horde got more quests and context for the Uldir raid, but the Alliance might get more intimate context for The Crucible of Storms and Mechagon because they take place in their zones. They are also the ones taking the fight to the Horde in The Battle for Dazar'alor.
  • Allied Races
    • Allied races will be added as they make sense in the story.
    • There are more coming, but the team isn't ready to announce anymore at this time.
  • Warfronts
    • There are currently no new Warfronts after Darkshore to announce at this time, but that is not to say that new ones are not coming.
  • Azerite Armor
    • The team has heard and agree with the feedback that having to unlock the same traits over and over is not fun and plan to use address this. They don't have any specifics to share at the moment, however.
  • Class Stacking
    • It is important that classes have strengths where they shine, but also weaknesses. In the instance of stacking Subtlety Rogues for Zul, the team admits that the raid designers could have simply had damage shields on the adds to deter this in Mythic difficulty, which is something that they have done for the robot adds in the Mekkatorque fight in Dazar'alor.
    • The team liked giving classes time to shine in Uldir that didn't necessarily involve damage, such as mobile classes in the G'huun fight. They then realized that people just stacked Warlocks for it, and kind of negated the original intent, though Warlocks got to shine!
This article was originally published in forum thread: Alex Afrasiabi and Patrick Dawson Interview, Moonkin Festival, Dev Interviews started by chaud View original post
Published on 2018-11-12 07:41 PM
61 Comments
Comments 61 Comments
  1. Kryptoon's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MakeMeLaugh View Post
    At least you tried, calling people "dragon slayers". It's just a fact that pvp is an extra thing in the game. See next patch or any other patch, almost 100% is PvE content. They are not going to waste a full expansion to center it around pvp.
    It didn't start as mainly pve, on the opposite. We've had from the start two factions clashing for a reason.
    It was brought here by the average joe, who is too dumb to learn how each class play and how it can be countered, thus blizz catered around mediocre players and their comfort. Because is way easier to slay a scripted mob when dbm assist you at any step.

    Pvp is way more complex and punish players way faster for lack of skills, so it is rather like "bricks don't fight back" vs "everyone had a plan until gets punched in the face".
  1. mmoc29e4727ea9's Avatar
    "The team has corrected racials over the years, but Alex acknowledged that many people gravitated towards Horde in the past because of racials. They don't believe there is a significant difference in faction racial balance today, but they are always looking at ways to solve this problem without just making the Alliance overpowered."

    Yeah being overpowered is a horde only feature, can't have alliance suddenly being overpowered when horde have been so in pve for the last 10 years. Also, good luck on getting people to switch to the underpopulated faction while not giving them some kind of edge against the faction that already have the large advantage in player population which makes all kinds of content easier to do, warmode being one of the obvious ones.
  1. Ukerric's Avatar
    The team liked giving classes time to shine in Uldir that didn't necessarily involve damage, such as mobile classes in the G'huun fight. They then realized that people just stacked Warlocks for it, and kind of negated the original intent, though Warlocks got to shine!
    That's one of the big questions I have for this fight. Given the orb debuff duration, how do you do heroic G'huun with 10 people? Because you're supposed to be able to raid with 10... and then you stack ultra-mobile classes that can do an orb in one run, or you're screwed.

    But bring the player, not the class, right?
  1. Sonneillon's Avatar
    They want to add more water walking mounts... I dunno... how about some sort of flying boat...
  1. Muros's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by pina View Post
    "The team has corrected racials over the years, but Alex acknowledged that many people gravitated towards Horde in the past because of racials. They don't believe there is a significant difference in faction racial balance today, but they are always looking at ways to solve this problem without just making the Alliance overpowered."

    Yeah being overpowered is a horde only feature, can't have alliance suddenly being overpowered when horde have been so in pve for the last 10 years. Also, good luck on getting people to switch to the underpopulated faction while not giving them some kind of edge against the faction that already have the large advantage in player population which makes all kinds of content easier to do, warmode being one of the obvious ones.
    Shadowmeld is OP atm tho .
  1. RangerDaz's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Ilyiana View Post
    i knew it! azshara is raising nazjatar from the seafloor!! so happy they took this route. she'll seem even more menacing than she already does. they're doing her very well, as long as she escapes in the raid and doesn't die i'll be very happy with her treatment in game.
    I read somewhere that she isn't raising it from the floor, but instead it would have the "Moses crossing the red sea" effect: walls of water will clear the underwater zone.
  1. Psygon's Avatar
    One does not simply raise Azshara.
  1. Avengerx's Avatar
    So at 100% with reaping, the entire bloody dungeon respawns and rushes you, possibly pulling other mobs you managed to avoid? I don't think that's thought out well enough.
  1. Surreality's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kryptoon View Post
    It didn't start as mainly pve, on the opposite. We've had from the start two factions clashing for a reason.
    It was brought here by the average joe, who is too dumb to learn how each class play and how it can be countered, thus blizz catered around mediocre players and their comfort. Because is way easier to slay a scripted mob when dbm assist you at any step.

    Pvp is way more complex and punish players way faster for lack of skills, so it is rather like "bricks don't fight back" vs "everyone had a plan until gets punched in the face".
    Actually it did start as just PvE. PvP wasn't in the original release off the game. It was shoehorned in to appease a small portion of the player base and to attract a broader audience. As soon as they implemented this travesty, class imbalance became the biggest issue in WoW, and remains the biggest issue to this very day. All because people wanted to ruin this great PvE game to stroke their epeens.
  1. ihyln's Avatar
    "but they are always looking at ways to solve this problem without just making the Alliance overpowered."

    So they sat on their dumb asses for the last few years with OP horde racials but now to fix the imbalance they are just going to sit on their dumb fat asses because Alliance can't have something that helps them.

    fucking shit game company. why do people still support this trash? they literally don't give a shit about the other half of the playerbase
  1. Aeula's Avatar
    Knowing that there are more allied races coming is disssappointing.

    I was hoping we were done with the feature and that focus would be shifting to existing races.
  1. splatomat's Avatar
    "Discovery system" = Discover that you need to play the Expeditions in one specific, obtuse way...that is never even hinted at slightly...and goes completely against the overall sentiment of the mission.

    I think they need to "discover" that their players fucking hate that shit.
  1. Zyrinx's Avatar
    Island Expedition Rewards

    The team believes that the community has done well with figuring out how Island Expeditions rewards work. They did try something new with the way rewards drop but can't say it's EXACTLY how the system works. They like there to be some sort of discovery involved in the game.
    "The team" can go Ook themselves right in the Dooker, because this system combined with the Go Go Go mentality of Islands, is utter and complete, 100.0000000000000% shite.
  1. h8ryan's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ihyln View Post
    "but they are always looking at ways to solve this problem without just making the Alliance overpowered."

    So they sat on their dumb asses for the last few years with OP horde racials but now to fix the imbalance they are just going to sit on their dumb fat asses because Alliance can't have something that helps them.

    fucking shit game company. why do people still support this trash? they literally don't give a shit about the other half of the playerbase

    Confirmed that you're either 14, an idiot, or simply don't remember how OP human racials were for several years.
  1. mmoc29e4727ea9's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by h8ryan View Post
    Confirmed that you're either 14, an idiot, or simply don't remember how OP human racials were for several years.
    Oh so that's why there are 43.9% alliance players vs 56.1% horde players on level 120, because of the amazing alliance racials.

    Having a powerful pvp racial won't even make a dent in the faction population, it's pve racials that matter to most people and horde racials are way superior there, it's just a simple fact that is backed up by statistics from wowprogress and realmpop.
  1. h8ryan's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by pina View Post
    Oh so that's why there are 43.9% alliance players vs 56.1% horde players on level 120, because of the amazing alliance racials.

    Having a powerful pvp racial won't even make a dent in the faction population, it's pve racials that matter to most people and horde racials are way superior there, it's just a simple fact that is backed up by statistics from wowprogress and realmpop.
    Confirmed you can't read or just struggle with basic reading comprehension.

    When I said the word "remember" it was implying I was talking about the past you troglodyte.
  1. mmoc29e4727ea9's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by h8ryan View Post
    Confirmed you can't read or just struggle with basic reading comprehension.

    When I said the word "remember" it was implying I was talking about the past you troglodyte.
    And when did the Alliance have better PvE racials then if I might ask, since I assumed you meant pvp when you mention the human racial since it's completely garbage for pve and always has been. If you were talking about pvp then my last post is correct and your insult doesn't make much sense, it only makes you look dumb.
  1. Firebeast's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by pina View Post
    "The team has corrected racials over the years, but Alex acknowledged that many people gravitated towards Horde in the past because of racials. They don't believe there is a significant difference in faction racial balance today, but they are always looking at ways to solve this problem without just making the Alliance overpowered."

    Yeah being overpowered is a horde only feature, can't have alliance suddenly being overpowered when horde have been so in pve for the last 10 years. Also, good luck on getting people to switch to the underpopulated faction while not giving them some kind of edge against the faction that already have the large advantage in player population which makes all kinds of content easier to do, warmode being one of the obvious ones.
    Racials are still favoring horde. Who is he kidding? Why do they stack blood elves on the Zul fight? Why to cheese the mechanics. Just get rid of them and see what happens, I offer that as a challenge. But that will never happen because if doesn't favor the horde
  1. Daveon's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Avengerx View Post
    So at 100% with reaping, the entire bloody dungeon respawns and rushes you, possibly pulling other mobs you managed to avoid? I don't think that's thought out well enough.
    I read it as every 20%, the last 20% you killed rises and rushes you... But yeah, if you skip stuff, is it going to aggro the stuff you skipped?
  1. mmoc79972df15a's Avatar
    I don't think fixing racials is wrong. But there also would be nothing to be gained by making Alliance racials powerful. The ship has sailed and for the most part people are playing horde. To get people to transfer you'd have to offer something that, if possible, shouldn't break the game and it probably would have to be a long time move. Small, temporary, incentives and more interesting story could be an option. Won't happen but would be an option...

    As for the war campaign and the raid ... no it doesn't make sense that the alliance would go for the treasury. Hell, it probably won't make sens that they're there in the first place. Within the war campaign you spend time to scout and setup bombs but there is nothing that would make you start an all out attack.

    Quote Originally Posted by ctrlaltwalsh View Post
    Edit: I'd love to see a list of your specs Strengths and weaknesses, Everyone give me 2 Strengths, and 2 Weaknesses.
    Shadow Priests can respec into Holy and Disci, their weakness is that they have a defensive CD that just lets them die more slowly (you already mentioned that) and their design is backwards in regards to their damage curve in comparison to most/all other classes.

    Quote Originally Posted by h8ryan View Post
    Confirmed that you're either 14, an idiot, or simply don't remember how OP human racials were for several years.
    Let me guess you still cry about Onyxia?
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