Originally Posted by
MoFubuki13
Good morning everyone,
Given the current turmoil in our studio and the refusal of anyone at any level of management to communicate with each other or the community, I thought I'd take it upon myself to share a few details about what is currently going on internally with the WoW team.
Firstly, the lawsuit. It is affecting every level of development and, honestly, we're not really getting any direction from supervision currently. That is, if you still have supervision at all. The closest I'll get to identifying myself is stating that I was in Jon LeCraft's stable. As I'm sure you've heard, he has "voluntarily" resigned (for good reason). As you may not know, senior developers like him tend to have an inner circle that follow each other from job to job. Much of that inner circle has also left, voluntarily or otherwise. There is a lot of "guilt by association" going around right now, and since virtually everyone in supervisory or management positions have associated with these bad actors as a function of their position at one point or another, everyone is walking on eggshells, trying to keep their heads down, and whatever other analogies you want to make for trying to go unnoticed and keep their jobs. This survival-mode mindset is making it difficult to progress. That being said, despite everything grinding to a halt for a couple days and people taking one tweet out of context, work is being done. We just aren't able to get clear direction or certain decisions made that would assist us in upping the quality of clarity of that work.
The biggest example of that lack of decisiveness is the fact that we literally do not know what the next expansion is going to be yet. It was narrowed down to two paths a little bit after Shadowlands launched and the path be took was going to be dependent on how certain features of Shadowlands were received. Unfortunately, Shadowlands has not been received well in any respect (and we are not blind to this), so we haven't been able to settle on the next. Add in a lot of management departing and the remainder trying to be as invisible as possible, and you have a recipe for indecision. Furthermore, the elephant in the room is FFXIV. The worker bees discuss it a lot, and management (when they do talk at all) tend to talk about its features instead of just naming it directly. There are certain elements we would definitely like to add to WoW, but again, the lack of direction is hurting us right now.
So what are the two options? There is a small civil war that has been escalating over which of these options we will take.
The first is a Wrathion-centered setting that has been an alternate candidate for both Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands. The often referenced Dragon Isles would be an element of this, but "Dragon Isles" is a bit of a misnomer. Those draconic pocket dimensions called "Sanctums" beneath Wyrmrest Temple exist as a sort of back up save for Azeroth when the Titans first ordered it. With the Sundering, Cataclysm, and Sword of Sargeras all irrevocably damaging Azeroth, Wrathion feels that the dragonflights have failed in their duty to defend our world. So, Wrathion hits the reset button. These Sanctums manifest physically out in the world in strategic locations, collectively called "Isles," and begin to heal the surrounding landscape to a primordial default. (Small sidenote: concepts for a revamped Caverns of Time have been really trippy - this route would be worth exploring just to see those realized.)
The second option would ratchet the cosmic scope of the story up another notch. Honestly, I don't have the best idea of what exactly the narrative would be about because I really don't care for this idea at all. From what I can tell, we get embroiled in a cosmic civil war - Order, Shadow, and Death against Chaos, Light, and Life. The "flagship" champions of these realms are all already known to us - Illidan represents Order, Xal'atath represents Shadow, Sylvanas represents Death, Sargeras represents Chaos, Yrel represents Light, and Alexstrasza represents Life. Essentially, Sylvanas succeeds in her goal to defeat Death, but that disruption to the cosmic structure prompts other forces to make their moves. Alexstrasza finally gets her turn as a corrupted Aspect. Most of the details are lost on me, honestly.
No one has yet made the call on which direction we are going to go. A lot of the more seasoned developers want to revisit the old world while the newer blood generally wants to escalate our current narrative directly. Once management comes out of their foxholes, we might get an answer on this, but it doesn't look to be coming soon. Development on 9.2 proceeds slowly, but there are certain elements that will need to be adjusted based on which direction we're going to go in, and the thematic of 9.3 (and yes, there will be a 9.3) is going to be heavily reliant on that decision.
The next build-around feature is going to be themed around either choosing a Dragonflight or Cosmic Force to represent and the foundations for this are already being developed. Conceptually, we're aiming for a hybrid between artifacts and Covenants. Mechanically, all choices are going to be identical, much like artifacts. Only the aesthetic rewards and associated narrative will change. (As another sidenote, there have been discussions around revamping grouping restrictions along these lines as well, but something like that won't be happening in the near future.) The Soulbind idea is being carried forward, but these will be more strongly identified with specializations than they are now, but we are still giving the players to choose: maybe a Priest wants to PvP and would be more comfortable with defensive passives than the healing ones, for example. Additionally, the intent is to bring this system beyond the next expansion. We want to create a system that is informed by the lessons learned over the past three expansions and stop tying up so many man hours with entirely new progression systems.
Speaking more to FFXIV's influences, I'm confident of two things.
Firstly, legitimate housing is coming. It took a lot of effort to convince management that garrisons are not the same thing, but FFXIV's example was able to reinforce that point enough to make it stick. Regardless of which direction is chosen, housing is going to be a tentpole feature, so the tech is already being worked on. It is going to be more modular and limited than FFXIV's "put anything anywhere" approach because of the limits of the engine. The current idea is that each guild will have a unique instance, with a central guild hall that will provide small boosts to player power based on its configuration, and a surrounding neighborhood of individually owned houses, and rooms available within the hall once those plots are used up. Part of the idea is to make guilds matter again and to foster those communities by giving them shared goals.
Secondly, our take on Eureka / Bozja content. Because it has been rather difficult to define the player's place in the narrative, for the purposes of this content, we aren't involving the player character at all. The intent is to create new characters for each class and have the player take on their role in the story, complete with voiced dialogue choices. Progression in these narratives, and the zone in which it occurs, will be separate from the overall player progression system - you'll be able to find titles, mounts, achievements, and pets, but no power rewards will be available. That is to say, all power progression rewards will be internal to this system - you can still grow more powerful as your proxy character. We hope that we can capture some of FFXIV's narrative immersion with this mode of gameplay, as honestly, WoW just isn't otherwise structured in a way that allows the player character establish themselves as an actual character in the narrative.
As for other new additions, a new class is completely off the table for the foreseeable future. We simply aren't able to commit future development resources to an investment like that. We have enough on our plate already on that front. We're also very satisfied with our currently offered options. Most of what we see suggested already hews too closely to already playable options (like Dark Ranger, Tinker or Necromancer) or just isn't a thematic fit for our game (like Dragoons or Bards). However, playable races, new and old, are in active development, and there is a commitment to further expanding the options for the already playable options.
Suffice it to say, things are a bit of a mess right now. We do have internal roadmaps and work is being done on things that have been set in stone already, but there is very little forward momentum otherwise. Morale doesn't exist and we're honestly just waiting for things with management to settle so we can get a clear vision of where we're going without it being changed every month.
I know it might not seem like it at times, but we honestly just want to make a great game for you all. It is just so difficult to do so in the current climate, particularly when we aren't getting clear direction from the top.