Developer Interview - Morgan Day

[Swizzle]

Maybe Mirror Images could become a talent again. A survivability or utility button rather than another damage cooldown.

What? Why? Why can we not just have things that were baseline for nearly a decade be before STAY baseline? Do they just want every class to have one filler, one proc, and one DPS cooldown going forward? Is that the only way they know how to balance?

[Omedon]

Honestly hope they keep the GCD stuff as is. Messing with it would break all the macros I use to simplify tank gameplay for trivial content.

[endorus]

Don't worry, the mirror images comment is taken out of context slightly, watch that whole interaction before the panic sets in.

[Biomega]

He said he didnt like it because it was too rng. That is a pretty low bar to hate someone for.

You clearly haven't read the comment above mine lol

[LordVargK]

Ion clearly stated they have to put a sort of barrier for Thorgast runs because they don’t want ppl to stay in there the whole time ignoring the rest of the content.

How strong will this barrier be we don’t know for the moment.

Well, deducting from this interview it will be some kind of farmable currency.
Which kinda kills my hype tbh, I was hoping that you could play Thorghast 24/7 but only get character power rewards like once a day or so. The rest of the time you could play for fun and for cosmetics. But no, seems like we can't have nice things. At least not at the beginning of an expansion.

If Thorghast is so much fun, that you want to play it all day, why would the Devs not let me to that? I mean, Every other content in WoW (except visions) can be done as much as you like. There are no raid lockouts anymore, just loot lockouts. M+ can be run as long as you want. PvP has also no restrictions. Thorghast will be the only thing in WoW that has some sort of barrier to actively prevent you from playing it. Which sadly reduces its fun factor, because you won't be able to explore, experiment and simply have fun while doing it, because you will be punished for failure, rather than rewarded for success. And so everyone will look up a guide and try to play as optimal as possible. Which ruins this feature for me.

This interview tells me, that it will probably be best to purchase SL with 9.1 or 9.2 like Legion or BfA. All of those Expansions were horrible at the start and got ironed out over their runtime. I was hoping that SL would be different but if they don't implement a "fun mode" (or infinite play mode) right from the beginning, then I don't see myself really motivated to play right from the start.

[Queen of Hamsters]

If they keep currency as the means of accessing Torghast, then they didn't learn the most valuable lesson possible from Visions.
And the solution for the GCD issue, is to revert it back to a time before it became an issue to begin with.

[Essem]

I think their stance on gcd is fine. If you have to press 2 buttons with gcd before you can do damage. The solution shouldnt be to remove the gcd on one so you just macro them together. It's better to just outright remove one of them.

[Cosmic Janitor]

If they keep currency as the means of accessing Torghast, then they didn't learn the most valuable lesson possible from Visions.
And the solution for the GCD issue, is to revert it back to a time before it became an issue to begin with.

Depends on how you get the currency. Visions is just absolute shit because you need to do total garbage content that is EXTREMELY timegated and comes with massive diminishing returns for the currency until the next daily reset. If they manage to actually tune the currency in a way that these short maw runs are done quick and you can repeat them as needed and gain access that way, then everything is fine imho. It just becomes shit if I need to scour the whole fucking zone again for 30 minutes to find 1 of 3 rares to get a measly <5% of my next torghast key.

[DemonDays]

If they keep currency as the means of accessing Torghast, then they didn't learn the most valuable lesson possible from Visions.
And the solution for the GCD issue, is to revert it back to a time before it became an issue to begin with.

The GCD is a problem THEY created and THEY should fix.

The fact that they identify it as a problem but so far have done absolutely nothing to address it just goes to show that we're still seeing the same stubborn dumbass Blizzard from BfA.

Alpha has been up for ages and nothing has been done or said about the GCD. There are still multiple specs that have 3-4 buttons to press before they can even start their rotation. It's such an intrinsic part of overall Class Design that if it isn't addressed EARLY on in Alpha/Beta then it won't be addressed at all.

[Saltysquidoon]

Alpha has been up for ages and nothing has been done or said about the GCD. There are still multiple specs that have 3-4 buttons to press before they can even start their rotation. It's such an intrinsic part of overall Class Design that if it isn't addressed EARLY on in Alpha/Beta then it won't be addressed at all.

Blizzard needs to let go of this stubborn "Blizzard style" of patching once every four months.
They also need to stop sticking to this 'rule' they invented that they won't iterate on classes beyond numbers tweaks during an expansion, all it does is front load so much pressure and community expectation into an alpha (and let's be real they dont do class changes during beta) that only happens once every two years.

[Rinnegan2]

bliz team just keeps welding other games and their systems into WoW instead of just adding more content to the already successful gameplay loop, arguably torghast may end up as quality content but the progression/grind devs seem to keep ruining the dopamine by adding too much grind. Like right now torghast requires grinding a currency to get an attempt similar to the corruption system. Players just want to do the activity, not grind something they may not like before they can actually do the activity.

this team judges success by participation instead of better metrics and that success is skewed because they regularly tie the most compelling rewards into them

broken design loop

well put /10chars

[Gasparde]

Cooldowns on the GCD are... FINE...

It's the boring ass 1998-game-design bullshit cooldowns a la *you have 15% increased critical strike chance* (on a spec that scales fuck all with crit) that are the problem. It's specs like Arcane & Fire Mage or Frost DK, specs with 5 GCD CDs that all do absolutely nothing when you press the button that are the problem.

Fuck, Paladin Wings are boring as fuck. Woopdeedoo, deal 500% more damage for 20s, that's gonna make my gameplay enjoyment so much more... nothing. Literally, if I played without a dmg meter I wouldn't even really notice that shit. CDs need to have an effect on your gameplay. Explode for phat damage, crazy resource gen, silly stupid procs, extra abilities (HoW / Voidbolt (more frequently than like twice per CD (looking at you stupid HoW with a 7s CD during a 25s CD wooohooooo ACTION))), even just cast while moving... fucking ANYTHING. Like, stuff like adding AP to Celestial Alignment is a neat first step.... but even that is like.... woohoo, after pressing CA I can immediately press Starsurge, awesome gameplay inc - why, instead of buffing damage by 50000%, does it not half the cost of Starsurge, turning me into a fucking starbomberturretfromhell?

People wouldn't be half as mad, fuck, they wouldn't be an eighth as mad if CDs were actually satisfying abilities to use. But these shit ass boring bland 20% stat/dmg/summon adds that shoot 500 dmg Frostbolts CDs are simply not satisfying to press... especially not if you add a 1.5s GCD to each and every single one of them. Fuck, when I press Combustion I want to fucking explode and ignite everything in a 40yd radius around me, make me feel that fucking spell, like, please give some fucking weight to a spell that's called APOCALYPSE, you know, more than just popping 4 zits and then having a bunch of extra white hits popping up. Put some actual goddamn fantasy into those spells for the love of god and prune some of those pointless ass garbage spells like Aspect of the Wild out of existence. Bestial Wrath? Oh, I guess I'm red now and my Kill Command hits for 50k instead of 48k, man, I'm so excited, well worth pressing that button, one can almost taste the adrenaline on their tongue.

And then, with each and every single of these interviews, Blizzard always act like *please give us specific examples* - like, holy fuck, play your own goddamn game, log into any character and press any fucking spell with more than 60s cooldown, if you don't ejaculate immediately that spell is shit ass boring to press and should either not be on the GCD or changed. What fucking more specific examples do they want, need, require, I don't fucking know, this is so immediately obvious from playing any spec for more than 10 minutes - this shouldn't be something that requires 3 years of nonstop community feedback that ultimately results in 1-2 spells getting a 1000dmg proc upon usage. Let a fucking bot go through all the forums and make a word collage from all the cooldown mentions and you'll have all your feedback within 10 minutes, you'll know exactly what to work on - that is if you actually want to be told what to work on, if you actually want to work on syomething.

[Shahad]

You clearly haven't read the comment above mine lol

On mmo-champion in particular, it's really hard to tell if someone is being facetious or is genuinely batshit insane :x

[Biomega]

On mmo-champion in particular, it's really hard to tell if someone is being facetious or is genuinely batshit insane :x

I mean, yeah, you're not wrong XD

[Trumpcat]

- - - Updated - - -

Cooldowns on the GCD are... FINE...

It's the boring ass 1998-game-design bullshit cooldowns a la *you have 15% increased critical strike chance* (on a spec that scales fuck all with crit) that are the problem. It's specs like Arcane & Fire Mage or Frost DK, specs with 5 GCD CDs that all do absolutely nothing when you press the button that are the problem.

Fuck, Paladin Wings are boring as fuck. Woopdeedoo, deal 500% more damage for 20s, that's gonna make my gameplay enjoyment so much more... nothing. Literally, if I played without a dmg meter I wouldn't even really notice that shit. CDs need to have an effect on your gameplay. Explode for phat damage, crazy resource gen, silly stupid procs, extra abilities (HoW / Voidbolt (more frequently than like twice per CD (looking at you stupid HoW with a 7s CD during a 25s CD wooohooooo ACTION))), even just cast while moving... fucking ANYTHING. Like, stuff like adding AP to Celestial Alignment is a neat first step.... but even that is like.... woohoo, after pressing CA I can immediately press Starsurge, awesome gameplay inc - why, instead of buffing damage by 50000%, does it not half the cost of Starsurge, turning me into a fucking starbomberturretfromhell?

People wouldn't be half as mad, fuck, they wouldn't be an eighth as mad if CDs were actually satisfying abilities to use. But these shit ass boring bland 20% stat/dmg/summon adds that shoot 500 dmg Frostbolts CDs are simply not satisfying to press... especially not if you add a 1.5s GCD to each and every single one of them. Fuck, when I press Combustion I want to fucking explode and ignite everything in a 40yd radius around me, make me feel that fucking spell, like, please give some fucking weight to a spell that's called APOCALYPSE, you know, more than just popping 4 zits and then having a bunch of extra white hits popping up. Put some actual goddamn fantasy into those spells for the love of god and prune some of those pointless ass garbage spells like Aspect of the Wild out of existence. Bestial Wrath? Oh, I guess I'm red now and my Kill Command hits for 50k instead of 48k, man, I'm so excited, well worth pressing that button, one can almost taste the adrenaline on their tongue.

And then, with each and every single of these interviews, Blizzard always act like *please give us specific examples* - like, holy fuck, play your own goddamn game, log into any character and press any fucking spell with more than 60s cooldown, if you don't ejaculate immediately that spell is shit ass boring to press and should either not be on the GCD or changed. What fucking more specific examples do they want, need, require, I don't fucking know, this is so immediately obvious from playing any spec for more than 10 minutes - this shouldn't be something that requires 3 years of nonstop community feedback that ultimately results in 1-2 spells getting a 1000dmg proc upon usage. Let a fucking bot go through all the forums and make a word collage from all the cooldown mentions and you'll have all your feedback within 10 minutes, you'll know exactly what to work on - that is if you actually want to be told what to work on, if you actually want to work on syomething.

True, all of that wouldn't be a thing if WoW class design wasn't stuck two decades ago. They must have seen all Mages are happy with Mirror Image going back to baseline, so considering reverting that change now. Fun can't be allowed to happen.

[DemonDays]

Cooldowns on the GCD are... FINE...

It's the boring ass 1998-game-design bullshit cooldowns a la *you have 15% increased critical strike chance* (on a spec that scales fuck all with crit) that are the problem. It's specs like Arcane & Fire Mage or Frost DK, specs with 5 GCD CDs that all do absolutely nothing when you press the button that are the problem.

Fuck, Paladin Wings are boring as fuck. Woopdeedoo, deal 500% more damage for 20s, that's gonna make my gameplay enjoyment so much more... nothing. Literally, if I played without a dmg meter I wouldn't even really notice that shit. CDs need to have an effect on your gameplay. Explode for phat damage, crazy resource gen, silly stupid procs, extra abilities (HoW / Voidbolt (more frequently than like twice per CD (looking at you stupid HoW with a 7s CD during a 25s CD wooohooooo ACTION))), even just cast while moving... fucking ANYTHING. Like, stuff like adding AP to Celestial Alignment is a neat first step.... but even that is like.... woohoo, after pressing CA I can immediately press Starsurge, awesome gameplay inc - why, instead of buffing damage by 50000%, does it not half the cost of Starsurge, turning me into a fucking starbomberturretfromhell?

People wouldn't be half as mad, fuck, they wouldn't be an eighth as mad if CDs were actually satisfying abilities to use. But these shit ass boring bland 20% stat/dmg/summon adds that shoot 500 dmg Frostbolts CDs are simply not satisfying to press... especially not if you add a 1.5s GCD to each and every single one of them. Fuck, when I press Combustion I want to fucking explode and ignite everything in a 40yd radius around me, make me feel that fucking spell, like, please give some fucking weight to a spell that's called APOCALYPSE, you know, more than just popping 4 zits and then having a bunch of extra white hits popping up. Put some actual goddamn fantasy into those spells for the love of god and prune some of those pointless ass garbage spells like Aspect of the Wild out of existence. Bestial Wrath? Oh, I guess I'm red now and my Kill Command hits for 50k instead of 48k, man, I'm so excited, well worth pressing that button, one can almost taste the adrenaline on their tongue.

And then, with each and every single of these interviews, Blizzard always act like *please give us specific examples* - like, holy fuck, play your own goddamn game, log into any character and press any fucking spell with more than 60s cooldown, if you don't ejaculate immediately that spell is shit ass boring to press and should either not be on the GCD or changed. What fucking more specific examples do they want, need, require, I don't fucking know, this is so immediately obvious from playing any spec for more than 10 minutes - this shouldn't be something that requires 3 years of nonstop community feedback that ultimately results in 1-2 spells getting a 1000dmg proc upon usage. Let a fucking bot go through all the forums and make a word collage from all the cooldown mentions and you'll have all your feedback within 10 minutes, you'll know exactly what to work on - that is if you actually want to be told what to work on, if you actually want to work on syomething.

I think I replied to you on reddit too dude.

I suggested this during BfA Beta and was shot down by salty fanboys.

All that needs to be done is to clean up how some specs have 4-5 CDs that just "increase damage". Bring it down to 1-2 and give them flashy fucking animations and make them do CONSIDERABLE DAMAGE.

That's all that needs to be done.

EG. Going in to Metamorphasis for Demon Hunters. You jump up into the air and slam down on the ground going into Demon Form. Currently this only does a stun but it could do a big slam of damage. This is one example.

That's literally all that needs to be done to make them feel better on the GCD.

How is the solution this obvious to your average player?

- - - Updated - - -

Blizzard needs to let go of this stubborn "Blizzard style" of patching once every four months.
They also need to stop sticking to this 'rule' they invented that they won't iterate on classes beyond numbers tweaks during an expansion, all it does is front load so much pressure and community expectation into an alpha (and let's be real they dont do class changes during beta) that only happens once every two years.

They only invented that rule in BfA.

Ion just out of no where claimed "we don't do major class changes during expansion cycles". Despite doing it all during Legion.

It's already making everyone nervous because they made a statement saying that what you see on Alpha is mostly what you're going to get in terms of Class Design. Like - it's already a lock. Now they'll just do numbers tuning.

Some of the specs are still SO BAD.

[MrLachyG]

Cant wait to read comments personally attacking Preach for no reason other than they dont like him cause he said something wrong about their class 3 years ago.

wow literally 4 minutes after you posted this comment you were proven right.

- - - Updated - - -

"Battle for Azeroth waited to turn on Mythic+ but the team probably won't wait as long this time."

Confirmed, m+ will not be availible on day one.

We will once again be stuck with a weekly lockout on dungeons..

of course it won't be available from day one.... when has that ever worked? they usually release it with the raid yeah? so they can scale rewards up to the raid? otherwise by the time the raid comes out everyone is already geared at the raid level and it becomes pointless

at the start of this expansion heroic dungeons gave 325 gear, mythic 340. the first raid, Uldir, gave 355 (N), 370 (H), 385 (M) levels of loot. if they released M+ immediately then they would have to cap it at 350 basically which, if you're fine with that then yeah ok, but holding off until the raid opens and then it can scale to 370 then 385 the week after is better yeah?

- - - Updated - - -

You clearly haven't read the comment above mine lol

you need to put the /s otherwise people take you seriously lol

[Gasparde]

- - - Updated - - -


True, all of that wouldn't be a thing if WoW class design wasn't stuck two decades ago. They must have seen all Mages are happy with Mirror Image going back to baseline, so considering reverting that change now. Fun can't be allowed to happen.

I mean, even Mirror Images could be improved so obviously and easily by making their spellcasts affect your procs - give the player FoF or BF procs as Frost, give them Hot Streak procs (give them some sort of crit protection or whatever), give them Missile procs, any-fucking-thing. But nope, instead they're just standing there, firing stupid ass boring 500 damage Frostbolts or whatever, whoopdeefuckingdoo. Same with Rune of Power, how about rooting myself in place for 10 seconds with this most unic spell... actually did something for my gameplay other than making my numbers slightly bigger? Again, more procs, all my Frobos give FoF and BF, all my Fireball crits give 2 Hot Streak stacks, 2 Arcane Blasts for the cost of 1, shit you can actually feel instead of just boring fucking bigger numbers. Why are 19 out of 20 cooldowns just boring fucking bigger numbers for fucks sake >.<

[Ausr]

Could just revert the GCD changes you made and not make it retarded again?

[Argorwal]

Also I don't think they want people to constant reroll Torghast to get easiest anima powers.

This was my takeaway too with a somewhat limit on the attempts.

They want people to work with overcoming obstacles and not “reset 73939929 times until you get the best starting power”

Or maybe players want that to be the meta?