BlizzCon 2019 - Developer Interview

[Sezh]

...except nearly every one of my suggestions could sell an entire Xpac, and yours, while not stated, most likely would not.

I sense you're a mythic raider? That's not even a quarter of the player base.

That's correct. But besides the point. You did not write a list of things you said you think would sell the game, that I could agree with. You wrote a list of things the game needs. And I think there's a big difference between what people think the game needs and what it actually needs.

Shiny new toys like classes, races and cosmetics are good for drawing people in. But what the game really needs to stay relevant and make people stick around when those toys don't seem so shiny anymore is engaging gameplay and a reward structure that feels meaningful.

[Philomene]

No TF no buy tbh. The last time they shafted casuals (WoD) the game almost died. Catering to those of us that are the top 5% or so is absolutely moronic.

lmao if we’re going this way check the sub numbers when TF as it stands rn wasn’t a thing and compare them to nowadays

[RoKPaNda]

lmao if we’re going this way check the sub numbers when TF as it stands rn wasn’t a thing and compare them to nowadays

Are we pretending that a singular issue is the cause of all sub drops or what? Because what you said is completely nonsensical.

On the other hand, when they've chosen to bone the casuals in favor of catering to players like me the game has lost HALF of its subs in a single quarter. It makes zero sense to cater to the 5% of us that raid Mythic at the expense of the casuals that actually keep this game afloat.

[Kaver]

Please, no more titanforge. The best gear should exclusively come from the hardest content.

[Locruid]

It doesn't make sense for players to be suddenly restricted from things they used to be able to do.

<cough> <Cough> Pathfinding

[emilpor]

Yeah, if Titanforging makes it to Shadowlands, I am 100% quitting the game this time. There's just far too much RNG compared to how it used to be.

I see hope when they say that they haven't decided yet, but I really hope they see that 4 years of cancerforge was enough.
I hope they reconsider on the tier sets as well... They removed them at the start of BFA, but nobody liked that. Can easily be undone.

[Smeller]

How on earth can you be so ridiculously oblivious to the fact that millions of people play this game and a large portion of those people actually like titanforge? I don't care if it stays or goes personally but quit acting like literally everyone hates it.

Your argument would carry a lot more weight if you liked titanforged items. But since you don't it's like advertising public transportation although you don't leave your house anyway.

[Mardux]

Your argument would carry a lot more weight if you liked titanforged items. But since you don't it's like advertising public transportation although you don't leave your house anyway.

You’re implying that arguments carry more weight when they are obviously biased.

You’re also implying that someone who doesn’t use something (public transportation in your absurd example) can’t see or say how it’s still good for a community.

Your argument is just... wow.

“You don’t like to use buses so you can’t say other people want buses.”

[Smeller]

You’re implying that arguments carry more weight when they are obviously biased.

You’re also implying that someone who doesn’t use something (public transportation in your absurd example) can’t see or say how it’s still good for a community.

Your argument is just... wow.

“You don’t like to use buses so you can’t say other people want buses.”

I'm not saying you can't argue for something you don't want to use yourself. I'm just saying you open up an unnecessary point in the discussion. If I like A and argue for A it shouldn't matter for the argument that you don't like B yourself but when you bring it up yourself how can you blame the other side for attacking your point when you made yourself attackable in the first place?

[Philomene]

Are we pretending that a singular issue is the cause of all sub drops or what?.

That’s exactly what you did but w/e

[RoKPaNda]

That’s exactly what you did but w/e

Not at all, actually. I said it's disastrous when they cater to us and bone the casuals. I then said that if we used your single issue logic the biggest sub drop in WoW's history happened the quarter after they boned casuals the hardest with WoD.

[Monster Hunter]

Lots of transmog stuff but are they forgetting about druids no comments on that anywhere. I'm talking forms of course.

Druids and the lack of value of tmog for them are always an issue and arn't likely to ever get resolved, a bone was throne in legion with the artifact skins changing druid forms but I didn't and wouldn't expect that to be the norm, more a one off, its alot of Art time spent on just one class and unlikely to be seen again for a while.

You shouldn't be suprised if there's nothing special for druids in any of the appearance rewarding systems in shadowlands, either torgast or through the covenants.

It's sux but it's not a new thing,

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Please, no more titanforge. The best gear should exclusively come from the hardest content.

Yes, but there should be more options of hard content.

Raiding isn't for every one, I've Personaly grown very bored and tiered of it and hung up my mythic raiding days after uldir, I also have no desire to raid heroic or normal at all and no desire to be part of a wider raid focused guild preferring a small group of freinds or solo play.

Mythic+ has been a huge success and a boon to players like me who want challenging pve content but are tiered of or don't like mass raids.

What I want to see is the exclusivity of mythic raiders to the highest level gear end but in a way that opens it up to players who push hardcore at arguable more difficult content, doing a mythic+20 key is imo more challenging than any mythic raid boss I have ever downed and should reward mythic raid level loot. Not be capped 15 I levels behind.

The best gear should come from the hardest content. Crazy high m+ keys are the hardest content so it should be rewarded as such.

Hopefully blizzard will recognise this in Shadowlands and reward solo players pushing really far in torgast, teams pushing m+ keys way above +15 at the same level as mythic raiders get currently rewarded to recognise the difficulty of the content they completed.

[Kaver]

Druids and the lack of value of tmog for them are always an issue and arn't likely to ever get resolved, a bone was throne in legion with the artifact skins changing druid forms but I didn't and wouldn't expect that to be the norm, more a one off, its alot of Art time spent on just one class and unlikely to be seen again for a while.

You shouldn't be suprised if there's nothing special for druids in any of the appearance rewarding systems in shadowlands, either torgast or through the covenants.

It's sux but it's not a new thing,

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Yes, but there should be more options of hard content.

Raiding isn't for every one, I've Personaly grown very bored and tiered of it and hung up my mythic raiding days after uldir, I also have no desire to raid heroic or normal at all and no desire to be part of a wider raid focused guild preferring a small group of freinds or solo play.

Mythic+ has been a huge success and a boon to players like me who want challenging pve content but are tiered of or don't like mass raids.

What I want to see is the exclusivity of mythic raiders to the highest level gear end but in a way that opens it up to players who push hardcore at arguable more difficult content, doing a mythic+20 key is imo more challenging than any mythic raid boss I have ever downed and should reward mythic raid level loot. Not be capped 15 I levels behind.

The best gear should come from the hardest content. Crazy high m+ keys are the hardest content so it should be rewarded as such.

Hopefully blizzard will recognise this in Shadowlands and reward solo players pushing really far in torgast, teams pushing m+ keys way above +15 at the same level as mythic raiders get currently rewarded to recognise the difficulty of the content they completed.

I completely agree. It doesn’t matter what the content is as long as it is at the same level of difficulty/challenge. The only issue with m+ is that the amount of gear isn’t “capped” so you can run 40 +20 keys in one week and get all the gear you need. But I guess Blizzard should be able to find a good solution for that issue.

What I don’t want is for the weekly chest from completing a +10 key to give the same level of gear as killing the Mythic end boss in a raid.

[Monster Hunter]

I completely agree. It doesn’t matter what the content is as long as it is at the same level of difficulty/challenge. The only issue with m+ is that the amount of gear isn’t “capped” so you can run 40 +20 keys in one week and get all the gear you need. But I guess Blizzard should be able to find a good solution for that issue.

What I don’t want is for the weekly chest from completing a +10 key to give the same level of gear as killing the Mythic end boss in a raid.

Though on the flip side of the argument, if a group puts in that effort to run 40 20+ keys in a week then shouldn't they deserve the reward?

I agree on the weekly, but tbh I'd remove the weekly chest of they made the m+ loot match the difficulty

My solution would be, let people farm m+ as much as they want, if they want to do +20 to get mythic raid level loot then fine, but make mythic + difficulty scaling above 10 unlock only after the mythic raid is released to prevent it becoming something that the 1% of mythic raiders feel forced to do pre opening.

Eaither way, I'd welcome a return to difficulty being directly related to reward as along as equally difficult content is rewarded equally.

M+ is now at the maturity that the gear cap the was there to prevent mythic raiders feeling they needed to push high keys to raid is now making the mythic+ scene players feel they need to do mythic raiding to be able to reach the highest keys in a season.
Both of these are wrong.

[Kaver]

Though on the flip side of the argument, if a group puts in that effort to run 40 20+ keys in a week then shouldn't they deserve the reward?

True, but you can use the same argument for raiding and Blizzard have always set a limit to how much gear you can get in a week.

In general I think it is good that there is a "cap" on how much progress you can make in one week.

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I agree on the weekly, but tbh I'd remove the weekly chest of they made the m+ loot match the difficulty

My solution would be, let people farm m+ as much as they want, if they want to do +20 to get mythic raid level loot then fine, but make mythic + difficulty scaling above 10 unlock only after the mythic raid is released to prevent it becoming something that the 1% of mythic raiders feel forced to do pre opening.

Eaither way, I'd welcome a return to difficulty being directly related to reward as along as equally difficult content is rewarded equally.

M+ is now at the maturity that the gear cap the was there to prevent mythic raiders feeling they needed to push high keys to raid is now making the mythic+ scene players feel they need to do mythic raiding to be able to reach the highest keys in a season.
Both of these are wrong.

At least they have removed tier sets now which make M+ and raiding more equal.

If they introduce tier sets to the game again they would also need to add them to the M+ loot table.

[Monster Hunter]

True, but you can use the same argument for raiding and Blizzard have always set a limit to how much gear you can get in a week.

In general I think it is good that there is a "cap" on how much progress you can make in one week.

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At least they have removed tier sets now which make M+ and raiding more equal.

If they introduce tier sets to the game again they would also need to add them to the M+ loot table.

Aye. Here's hoping they get the message.
And hoping torgast lives up to the expectation of being something that can provide a sort of solo insurance challenge, if its something where we can say things like "OMG this dude got to level 15 of torgast what a mad man" and the loot correctly reflects that difficulty then we will hae 3 solid pillars of pve difficulty to throw our selves at next expansion which is a good thing imo

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I see hope when they say that they haven't decided yet, but I really hope they see that 4 years of cancerforge was enough.
I hope they reconsider on the tier sets as well... They removed them at the start of BFA, but nobody liked that. Can easily be undone.

Tbh im glad tier sets are gone. Unpopular opinion but I really didn't like the trend the devs fell into where they would use tier set bonuses to fix broken and under performing specs instead of just fixing the specs. It led to situations where your class felt shit till you got the tier set and kind of forced you into lfr to complete set bonuses as quick as possible if you were lacking a pice. Then you would be stuck with that shitty pice till you got its exact higher level equivilant.
It's also ment I had to raid if I wanted to push the highest possible keys.

Nah if they brought tier sets back I'd only be OK with it if they added those prices to the m+ and Hugh rated pvp loot tables.

A better idea I saw someone propose was have set bonuses as a kind of enchant unlocked by doing certain levels of difficult content. That means it can be obtainable through different difficult content paths and also stay relevant the whole expansion let players choose what set or mix to use.

[getupkid55]

So, THIS was the Blizzcon 2019 that everyone was waiting for?

Meh, pretty disappointing. Seemed pretty much the same Blizzcons and worse, seems pretty much Blizzard has not learned no shit.

Lore, still sucks. Why the fuck they destroy a good lore like N'Zoth and Nylotha in a single patch and come up with stupid stories out of thin air like Shadowlands?

If you think the Shadowlands is out of 'thin air', then you have been extremely blind. It is heavily tied in to Orc lore, Lich King/Death Knight lore, the Val'kyr, and pretty much anything to do with death, going back years and years.

Also, the expansion will likely wrap up the story of Sylvanas and her motivations going back several expansions, which has been a pretty central storyline.

Though, I do agree with you that they handled N'zoth poorly.

[Hydra]

Speak for yourself. I don't hate titanforging.

Then you're a casual who got Mythic level gear from raid finder. It's a terrible system dude. RNG for getting your item to drop is fine, adding more RNG onto that...no.

[Kaver]

Aye. Here's hoping they get the message.
And hoping torgast lives up to the expectation of being something that can provide a sort of solo insurance challenge, if its something where we can say things like "OMG this dude got to level 15 of torgast what a mad man" and the loot correctly reflects that difficulty then we will hae 3 solid pillars of pve difficulty to throw our selves at next expansion which is a good thing imo

I agree. I don't mind solo content as long as it's damn hard. I loved the Mage Tower just when it came out (before we completely outgeared it). Not that it was extremely difficult, but it still offered a good challenge in the beginning. Blizzard should build on that and make some crazy solo challenges.

[october breeze]

If you think the Shadowlands is out of 'thin air', then you have been extremely blind. It is heavily tied in to Orc lore, Lich King/Death Knight lore, the Val'kyr, and pretty much anything to do with death, going back years and years.

Also, the expansion will likely wrap up the story of Sylvanas and her motivations going back several expansions, which has been a pretty central storyline.

Though, I do agree with you that they handled N'zoth poorly.

But the jailer is out of no where. You have a big bad boy for the whole expansion who you have never heard of, while there were N'zoth or Kiljaden or Sargerass, who were thrown into bin by the writers! They had years and years of build up.

And Sylvanas, yeah, lets have 2 and half expansions only for the goth bitch elf because why exactly? She is a third tier character. She is not more important than many many other lore characters, but gets 2.5 expansions! and here is the funny thing, even after 2 expansions, her character development is absolute garbage!

Man, the lore of WoW no longer worth the discussion. It had potentials, but Metzen gone, and the new kids are wrecking the place. It seems Sylvanus can kill" hope" after all.