Shadowlands Development Update - October

[Stoy]

Shadowlands Development Update - October

As we continue to work towards making Shadowlands worth the wait, we have an update on several changes and improvements players can expect to see coming to the Beta over the next few weeks.

The Maw
The Maw is intended to be the desolate and brutal domain of the Jailer, and not a place any soul in the Warcraft cosmos ever hopes to visit. But this is, after all, a video game, and telling that story can’t come at the expense of creating a fun environment for adventurers. We’ve heard feedback that this content is currently falling short of that mark, and we agree.

We’re working to increase visual distinction and combat gameplay variety across the different areas of the Maw, as well as exploring adding new localized events and world interactions. We also want give players who journey to the Maw a bit more direction, while still preserving the “sandbox” roots of Maw gameplay. Players will venture into the Maw weekly to rescue souls to aid in restoring their Covenants, and the mysterious broker Ve’nari offers a range of cosmetic, convenience, and power rewards in exchange for Stygia. Those goals need to be more immediately apparent early on. We’ll share more info about specific updates when these changes are ready for Beta testing and feedback.

Conduits
We’ve also received a lot of feedback about the Conduit system. Many of you have expressed concerns that the current system will unreasonably limit experimentation and multi-spec play early in the expansion. While the existing weekly cooldown may provide sufficient flexibility once players have all three soulbinds fully unlocked, we agree that it is initially too limiting. A single weekly reset also fails to draw any distinction between someone who only wants to adjust a single conduit, and someone who wants to clear and rebuild their entire soulbind tree.

In an upcoming build, we will be replacing the weekly cooldown on changing conduits with a more flexible system: When first unlocked, the Forge of Bonds will be charged with 10 Conduit Energy, and placing a conduit into a socket will consume a single charge. Conduit Energy recharges at the rate of one per day, up to a cap of 10, and adding a new conduit to your collection immediately restores one Conduit Energy as well.

Our goal with this change is to ensure that, especially when players are acquiring new conduits and only have access to a small number of soulbinds and conduit slots, all players feel free to try out new upgrades and to adjust their soulbinds to support multiple specializations or activities. After the initial collection period for a given character, 7+ swaps per week should allow for more adaptation to suit specific roles or activities, while still requiring thoughtful decisions about how to customize each Soulbind for your playstyle preferences.

Class and Covenant Balance
Tuning has been underway over the past couple of weeks, but much work remains. Our initial tuning efforts have focused on Covenant class abilities that were outliers on either end of the spectrum, including some substantial redesigns where necessary. The coming weeks will see continued iteration on these abilities, as well as the soulbinds that complement them. Balance in this area means pursuing a mix of offsetting strengths and weaknesses rather than identical capabilities, and our goal in this process is that every class/covenant combination should have something to commend it.

Alongside these specific areas of focus, we are all using this time to tune various endgame rewards, fix bugs (thousands of which continue to come from the in-game Bug Report tool - thank you!), and add the finishing touches that will hopefully make your journey into Shadowlands a magical one when the time comes.

Thank you very much for all of your testing and feedback!

[Laqweeta]

Why even have any CDs on this stuff to *begin with*

This isn't some fucking mobile game off the app store, really wish Blizzard would stop treating it as such.

[pewpmeiser]

Why even have any CDs on this stuff to *begin with*

This isn't some fucking mobile game off the app store, really wish Blizzard would stop treating it as such.

Because it's an RPG, and cooldowns aren't foreign to the genre. Has nothing to do with mobile games.

[dojichan]

Very great changes all around. <Excitement for SL increases>

[Omedon]

"The Maw is intended to be the desolate and brutal domain of the Jailer, and not a place any soul in the Warcraft cosmos ever hopes to visit. But this is, after all, a video game, and telling that story can’t come at the expense of creating a fun environment for adventurers."

This made me chuckle, and not in a mocking way, just in the sense that it seemed they were so focused on expressing their art that they lapsed in the goal of making it actually fun to experience. I can think of a few elements of BFA where this memory also lapsed. (And probably not the points that others might mention. I significantly enjoyed Islands and Warfronts :P )

[MORGATH99]

good stuff

- - - Updated - - -

[Lorgar Aurelian]

But it’s beta and every thing is set and stone and they never listen to feed back or make changes! Clearly this is all an Activision plot to take our money!

/S

[FelPlague]

Why even have any CDs on this stuff to *begin with*

This isn't some fucking mobile game off the app store, really wish Blizzard would stop treating it as such.

"Why even have Cd's on this stuff to begin with"

Would you like it if wow had no CD's on raid? week 1 of the raid being out, you raid 24/7 or else you fall drastically behind?
no, that would be fucking horrible, so it has a weekly cooldown.
sometimes things have cooldowns for the good of the player.

with this its so you dont literally feel forced to change conduits every single fight, meaningi tsj ust another ffing talent tree, its supposed to be player choice, not "press this button and now you can do this fight"

- - - Updated - - -

Guy replying in the US forums comments:

"Please consider allowing mounts in the Maw. Until then, play will be at an absolute bare minimum."

Exactly this, I honestly can't understand why mounts aren't allowed in the Maw and the Eyes of the Jailer mechanic isn't an excuse. It could as well be designed around players having the ability to mount up while currently it doesn't at all interact with the ability not being able to mount up. It's my main gripe with Shadowlands and I will definitely do the Maw absolutely minimum until/unless mounts are available. Additionally, the Corridor Crawler mount from Torghast isn't good either. I just don't want to ride a **** worm or whatever it is. It's just limiting player choice and not fun at all.

IMO they should just remove the Eyes of the Jailer system completely but that's not going to happen..

Because mounts make it so you can literally just walk past mobs, the maw is uspposed to feel dangerous.
plus mounts do work in the maw, do torghast and get the mount.

not being able to mount has NOTHING to do with the eye of the jailor, it has to do with mounts making world content trivial, cause who cares about mobs when you can just run through them at double speed.

people constantly complain about the world not being dangerous unlike in vanilla, but thats because in vanilla it took a long time to get a mount, and even longer to get one that was fast enough to decently outpace mobs.

any mob you pull you need to kill in classic or it will kill you before you get away.
first mount sometimes you may die.
but once you get your 100% speed mount you can just run through whatever you want no worry.

[gcsmith]

"Why even have Cd's on this stuff to begin with"

Would you like it if wow had no CD's on raid? week 1 of the raid being out, you raid 24/7 or else you fall drastically behind?
no, that would be fucking horrible, so it has a weekly cooldown.
sometimes things have cooldowns for the good of the player.

with this its so you dont literally feel forced to change conduits every single fight, meaningi tsj ust another ffing talent tree, its supposed to be player choice, not "press this button and now you can do this fight"

- - - Updated - - -



Because mounts make it so you can literally just walk past mobs, the maw is uspposed to feel dangerous.
plus mounts do work in the maw, do torghast and get the mount.

not being able to mount has NOTHING to do with the eye of the jailor, it has to do with mounts making world content trivial, cause who cares about mobs when you can just run through them at double speed.

people constantly complain about the world not being dangerous unlike in vanilla, but thats because in vanilla it took a long time to get a mount, and even longer to get one that was fast enough to decently outpace mobs.

any mob you pull you need to kill in classic or it will kill you before you get away.
first mount sometimes you may die.
but once you get your 100% speed mount you can just run through whatever you want no worry.

There are mounts you can use, they're just rewards from shadowlands content.

[FelPlague]

There are mounts you can use, they're just rewards from shadowlands content.

plus mounts do work in the maw, do torghast and get the mount.

Thats why i mentioned them.

[Henako]

Why even have any CDs on this stuff to *begin with*

This isn't some fucking mobile game off the app store, really wish Blizzard would stop treating it as such.

I think this change is a good one. Your decisions should have weight. Inconvenience can be a powerful tool that adds needed flavor and gravity, especially in an MMO.

[arandomuser]

basically maw getting revamped is what i read

[gcsmith]

Thats why i mentioned them.

Meant to reply to the person above you, sorry.

[Aggrophobic]

This is some good changes actually. Good job Blizzard.

[Adam Jensen]

Guy replying in the US forums comments:

"Please consider allowing mounts in the Maw. Until then, play will be at an absolute bare minimum."

Exactly this, I honestly can't understand why mounts aren't allowed in the Maw and the Eyes of the Jailer mechanic isn't an excuse. It could as well be designed around players having the ability to mount up while currently it doesn't at all interact with the ability not being able to mount up. It's my main gripe with Shadowlands and I will definitely do the Maw absolutely minimum until/unless mounts are available. Additionally, the Corridor Crawler mount from Torghast isn't good either. I just don't want to ride a **** worm or whatever it is. It's just limiting player choice and not fun at all.

IMO they should just remove the Eyes of the Jailer system completely but that's not going to happen..

I thought there were specific mounts you could use in the Maw.

[FelPlague]

I think this change is a good one. Your decisions should have weight. Inconvenience can be a powerful tool that adds needed flavor and gravity, especially in an MMO.

Imagine if no cooldowns existed on any abilities how stupid that would be?
"I cast army of the dead"
"I cast army of the dead"
"I cast army of the dead"
"I cast army of the dead"
"I cast army of the dead"


yeah, Cd's are required to make a game good.

- - - Updated - - -

I thought there were specific mounts you could use in the Maw.

there is. but people are dumb.

[Shedaar]

Thanks for the update
2 points:
Class & covenant balance - but they talk ONLY about covenants. The specs will stay broken because all balancing power has to be used to balance this stupid system
Soulbinds - why, why???? are you designing some stupid limiting system that takes programmers time in an already delayed xpac instead of letting us swap them in the citires/rested areas/respec books?
What does this solve? How does "10 conduit energy" help us play offspecs? What if I want to go mythic+ as guardian, but then as resto, but then as feral?
I mean come on, why do you hate us so much Blizzard, jesus.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

I just don't want to ride a **** worm or whatever it is.

It's this guy btw:

I'm not too sure why you imagined a worm.

[Grimalkin of Old]

Whoa, at some point they actually thought The Maw is good for release in this state?

[Laqweeta]

Imagine if no cooldowns existed on any abilities how stupid that would be?
"I cast army of the dead"
"I cast army of the dead"
"I cast army of the dead"
"I cast army of the dead"
"I cast army of the dead"


yeah, Cd's are required to make a game good.

- - - Updated - - -



there is. but people are dumb.

So abilities are completely different, if you had half a braid you’d realize this.

Back in WotLK the only CDs like this were raid and crafting CDs. CDs like the covenants trash exist to increase metrics. Put two and two together.