Gamescom Developer Interview, Legion World Quests Preview, Blue Posts, DLC #548

[chaud]

Templar Patch 2.4.2 Greater Rift Build

One Night in Karazhan Compendium - The Expansion as Rated by the Community

Upcoming Balance Update - August 24th

Eichenwalde is now Available on the PTR, New Reinhardt Legendary Skins

Gamescom Developer Interview
Sloot did one final interview with Watcher at Gamescom.

Release Times

• Mythic dungeons will be closed until the first raid reset of each region, so EU won't be able to powerlevel and get in some clears.
• The expansion launches at 12:01 AM PT in North America.

Artifacts

• The Artifact will be relevant throughout Legion. There will be good reasons to get Artifact Power and things to spend Artifact Power on.
• An easy change to make later in the expansion would be to increase the cap on Artifact Traits so that you can put more points in and keep spending Artifact Power.
• Artifact Power is a nice consistent reward with no RNG, so you end the night stronger than you started, even if you didn't get any great item drops.
• The Artifact Knowledge cap will likely be increased down the road, but that is still to be determined.

Currency

• Ancient Mana remaining relevant will be touched on when the team shares more Patch 7.1 details in a couple weeks.
• The patch has additional outdoor world content in Suramar, continuing the story and quest line.

Mythic+ Dungeons

• For the average player, there is an effective cap on Mythic+ loot, which is in the form of keystones. Those aren't infinite and everyone only gets one per week per character, so the typical experience will be that people aren't infinity running Mythic+ dungeons.
• Being able to loot an additional keystone from the chest at the end of the Mythic+ dungeon is a bug. You should only be able to get one per week.
• There are three ways to get a keystone: Killing a regular Mythic dungeon end boss, looting your weekly jackpot chest in your order hall, or looting the chest at the end of a Mythic+ dungeon run. You should only be able to get one per week total.

Trinkets

• Trinkets are one of the coolest and potentially most interesting items that the team has to work with, so they would feel bad going with boring and more passive trinkets. In Legion effort was put in to make trinkets more interesting.
• The delta between a raid's DPS during the first 30 seconds of a fight and their damage for the rest of it is bigger than it should be.
• A cooldown was added so that you can't use two of the on-use trinkets at once. Allowing the use of both at once makes them harder to balance as well.

Addon Changes and Raid Mechanics

• The design for bosses in Hellfire Citadel probably wouldn't have been different if the addon change was made earlier in Warlords.
• One of the concerns raised by players is boss mechanics that are designed around addons and otherwise impossible.
• Internal testing for raids is done without custom boss mods for each boss and the mechanics. The bosses can be beat with the stock UI.
• There are three levels to a mechanic:
  
  • Tactical complexity - How easy is it to figure out the right answer to this mechanic? This mostly only matters to the top guilds in the world, as by the time most guilds get to a boss this problem has been solved. Four Horseman in Vanilla was all about the tactical complexity.
  • Execution - How hard is this mechanic to execute correctly or perfectly? How hard is it to dodge all of the things, spread, not get hit by things.
  • Failure - How punishing is it when you make a mistake? This is one of the biggest things that can be tuned. Kromog in Blackrock Foundry was mostly done by players with an addon that assisted them. This leads to players thinking that the fight would be impossible without an addon. If it ended up being too hard, the team would have seen that people were having a hard time and changed the tuning. They could have added more time for you to run to the hands, reduced their health a little bit (especially on Mythic), or other tuning so that the actual difficulty in terms of how many wipes it takes to beat the boss doesn't change. Actually playing the dynamic game of musical chairs is more interesting and fun from a cooperative raid perspective than running to a specific point on the ground, assuming equal difficulty. Removing the capability from the addons should lead to a better experience for players.
• The addon changes won't affect things outside instances, buff/debuff tracking, and things like TomTom.
• The reason this change wasn't in at launch was the team putting in the extra effort to make sure the other addons wouldn't be broken.

Professions

• You can start on your profession at skill level 1 in Broken Isles.
• Leveling your profession gives you more efficiency.
• You also need a certain skill level in a profession to get the profession world quests.
• It is easier than before to change professions, as you can relearn the Broken Isle recipes that you had before.
• The team doesn't want people constantly changing professions to do all of the world quests.
• Professions will be kept up to date throughout the expansion.

Legion Preview - World Quests

In World of Warcraft: Legion, questing at level 110 comes in new variations called World Quests.

The new World Quest system represents a major change from how player characters used to make regular progression daily or weekly. In Legion, you’ll find the war taking place on multiple fronts—all over the Broken Isles, with a wide variety of ways you can participate in pushing back the invaders, as well as growing your character and being a big part of the story of Warcraft.

Getting Started
First and foremost, World Quests are available to players starting at level 110. When you reach 110, you’ll be called upon to prove that you’ve reached Friendly reputation with the five primary factions of the Broken Isles, you’ll receive your Flight Master’s Whistle, and World Quests will begin to appear all over your map.

The Flight Master’s Whistle is one of the most-useful items around—when you activate it, you’ll be (almost) instantly whisked away to the nearest known flight master. More than ever before, you’ll want to get to know all of the flight masters in every zone!

Times and Places

The primary zones in which you’ll find World Quests are: Azsuna, Highmountain, Stormheim, Suramar, and Val’sharah. You and everyone else on your realm will be offered the same World Quests at any given time, so don’t forget to group up when necessary!

World Quests come in varying durations, and those that are more difficult (and rewarding) typically have longer durations. This is so that you can decide when to do them, and since completing World Quests doesn’t cause more World Quests to immediately spawn, you can make the most of your time.

A Variety of Offerings
There are many different types of World Quests that you’ll see on your map. They might include:

• A solo adventure.
  
• A difficult challenge that requires multiple people.
  
• A task related to one of your professions.
  
• A World Boss that requires many people.
  
• A dungeon challenge that you’ll do with a group.
  
• Pet Battling.
  
• Player-versus-player activities.

You’ll get to see several details about each World Quest for yourself before you travel to it. Those details include rewards offered, such as:

• Gold
  
• Artifact Power
  
• Blood of Sargeras
  
• PvE or PvP gear
  
• Profession reagents
  
• Pet Charms
  
• Reputation with a specific faction

Some rewards scale with your current item level.

Special Requests
There are hundreds of World quests in store for you in the Broken Isles, so you won’t be seeing too many of the same World Quests anytime soon. You’ll want to keep your eyes on for Emissary Quests, which reward you with a valuable satchel when you complete them. Each day, a new Emissary Quest will become available to you, and you can have up to three Emissaries at the same time.

Each of the Emissary World Quest turn-ins offers reputation with the primary faction of its associated zone. That means that if your biggest focus is Nightfallen reputation, you’ll want to make sure you don’t miss the Emissary World Quests in Suramar when they’re available.

Questions and Answers
On July 14, Senior Game Designer Jeremy Feasel answered many questions about World Quests. Check it out:

Blue Posts

Game Stuttering After Login
I wanted to jump in here regarding this issue, this is actually something that is being worked on already. The main cause is the game loading in hotfix data, the stutter will go away after ~10-15 seconds or so in most cases and depending on the connection/hardware. So as a workaround, you can try logging into the character let it sit for 10 seconds or so before moving around, should help.

Now that said, if it continues past 60 seconds it's likely a different issue and I would suggest opening a new thread with the issue you're running into. (Official Forums)

Mythic Dungeons
Ugh. There's actually mythic only dungeons? I really didn't realise this. That's kind of !@#$ty. Ffs, isn't destiny and vanilla wow a case study in why you don't difficulty gate content anymore. It's not like these games have enough ndgame content for casuals during these huge dryspells as it is. I assume anyone intelligent at blizzard has moved on to other projects (the state of many classes in the beta which are not going to be fundamentally changed before release are a good example of this.)
I think it's worthy to note that base Mythic in Legion is comparable to some of the older Heroic dungeons many are used to in terms of difficulty. These dungeons become harder as Keystones are used to scale them and increase their challenges, but this is not a system you need to participate in if you don't want to.

If your concern is over grouping, the in-game Group Finder tool will be a good way to find groups for Mythic dungeons, much as it is now.

Well that is good to hear. But why force people to use a lfg tool instead of just the Finder? Just ends up with people being weird and dicky about who they bring and will quickly turn a lot of people off. Again, like destiny. To be honest it seems like an even weirder choice to not have the option if they start as the same difficulty as normal heroics.
You then could, of course, create your own group and find people who aren't going to be weird/rude while in the dungeon. Again, the dungeons are a bit more challenging (akin to older heroics), so there is a level of cooperation and communication (CCs, boss strategy, etc.) that may need to take place that, I think, is best served by building a group yourself most of the time.

Since the Mythic dungeons evolve into Mythic Keystone dungeons, I assume that was onr of the driving points behind disallowing LFD groups to take on these challenges, as they require much more cooperation.

Edit: That, and one of our goals with Legion was to create an alternative to Raids as a form of end-game progression. In the same way that if you want to participate in end-game raiding progression, you will also need to find a group yourself to participate in end-game dungeon progression. Grab some of your friends and hop in, and fill the remaining slots through the Group Finder!

My only concern about Mythic dungeons is trying to get a group with this character. I figure if I'm not getting any groups today even with 707 ilvl the situation won't be much better in legion's endgame.
Again, you can always create your own group and find people whose ilvl may be closer to yours, or who don't care about the disparity.

Mythic dungeons are not the same thing as mythic raids, they aren't even in the same realm of difficulty.
This is accurate at the base. With Mythic Keystone scaling, however, we could see high Keystone levels being quite possibly harder than some Mythic raid encounters, I think.

Edit: This is terrifying to think about. Oh god, what have we done.

But those who exclusively run LFD will mostly have no interest in the mythic keystone system. I know I don't. I enjoy running LFD and LFR as my end game content and to see them withheld as a way of trying to make me play in a way that I don't enjoy is a sad change for me.
Completely understandable. The hop-in hop-out nature of LFD/LFR is a good way for many players to engage in that side of end-game content.

I'm interested in what is keeping you away from wanting to try/participate-in Mythics?

So Heroic was rebranded as Mythic, just as I suspected... thanks for the confirmation.
Not necessarily. Heroics exist still, and are more challenging than the normal/leveling version of dungeons, but Mythic is us creating an alternative to raiding and PvP as an end-game activity.

What's the point of putting a label on something when the label has no specific meaning? They are causing too much confusion in the player base by slapping the Mythic label on multiple forms of content that all have different difficulty levels.

What exactly does Mythic mean anymore?
Nothing has changed there. The progression, on the dungeon side, is still:

Normal->Heroic->Mythic.

The only difference is that Mythic can now scale up through the use of Keystones, creating a more and more challenging dungeon experience.

We welcome the feedback and discussion on this topic, but I just want to reiterate that our goal here with Mythic and Mythic Keystones is to create a dungeon-focused end-game progression system as an alternative to raiding, etc.

We have a blog planned for later this week which will cover some discussion and developer insight on the two Mythic-only dungeons - so be on the lookout for that. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Dark Legacy Comics #548
DLC #548 has been released!

[Deleted]

Raid's probably not being different if they broke the addons before HFC. Niceeeee, still rock solid. Good change.

[Shadowgraton]

Whoever the fuck was asking all the questions in the blue posts need to be shot. People like them is why WoW has gone down the gutter in recent years. "Oh no I dont want to put in the effort to form a group for mythic dungeons" Well boo fucking hoo and find another game. WoW's been fucked over enough by people like that.

[Saiona]

Whoever the fuck was asking all the questions in the blue posts need to be shot. People like them is why WoW has gone down the gutter in recent years. "Oh no I dont want to put in the effort to form a group for mythic dungeons" Well boo fucking hoo and find another game. WoW's been fucked over enough by people like that.

I agree it's disgusting. At 707 I could fill a mythic dungeon group with the group finder faster than it would be to sit in the que. Players are lazy now and think you shouldn't have to "socialize" to play this game. Its pathetic. I'm glad Blizzard is sticking to their guns on this one. 3 dungeons being mythic only is a step in the right direction (including Karazhan).

[Absintheminded]

Incredibly painful to read, that pity-party crybaby bullshit. That is not a job I want.

[varienus]

So when Mythic+ is up on live is not gonna be like in the beta were e.g. you could go farm mythic+1 to mythic+7 in the same week/day? I didn't got beta access so im a little confused with how mythic+ will work. If someone can clarify this to me that gould be nice.

[Kurtlol]

I4m blown away by the people who hate the new Mythic dungeon stuff. It's the best thing that could Happen to small PvE groups. And I'm a PvP player at first, I absolutely welcome the new Mythic DGN system

[Zyky]

Raid's probably not being different if they broke the addons before HFC. Niceeeee, still rock solid. Good change.

This is the problem, I can name one mechanic that would have been near impossible for guilds to handle on Mythic. Wrought Chaos. As per their "failure" comment, how long did it take them to nerf Gorefiend when they saw people were struggling, 3 months? Ya just typical Blizzard having no idea what they're actually doing is hurting the game more than helping.

[Kazuchika]

Good god those people complaining about having to actually get groups for Mythic+ were so fucking cringy.

[Fullmetal89]

The guy asking all those whiny questions about Mythic did have a point in that people are complete retards on item level requirements for LFD. Admittedly you could make your own group as suggested, just feel like this is going to cause another Wrath gearscore elitism. I mean it kind of already is, but seeing as Mythic dungeons are going to become a legit form of progression I can see it going the same route as pug raiding. Anyway, that's a community issue which Blizzard has no real control over. People will be dicks regardless, it's the nature of the game. Guess I'll stick to my guilds mythic schedule if I want to run them.

[Lintgamer]

The expansion launches at 12:01 AM PT in North America.

So what time for EU is this exactly?

[Deleted]

So what time for EU is this exactly?

Day 30 9:00 am CEST but it says NA release so I guess this won't be EU release time.

[Lioo]

Why i always have a feeling that i use some different LFG feature. Can not remember when i could not find the group i wanted really.

[Mizzet]

It's funny how mythic dungeons are technically the 'midcore' content slightly easier to do/organize for than mythic raids that people have been wanting, but for people like this they still exist in that bracket of "Hard content only 'elitists' do and I'll never see".

Goes to show you really can't please everyone.

Complaining about "People being weird and dicky about who they bring along" in preformed parties is also just a huge red flag for "I can't find anyone who wants to carry me, I need the auto-matching for LFD so I can force people to put up with me".

[Jngizu]

So what time for EU is this exactly?

AFAIK for EU it's the 30th at 12:00 AM CET. But a confirmation would be nice. Sad we will not be able to run Mythic dungeons the first day though, but it was to be expected.

[Mizzet]

This is the problem, I can name one mechanic that would have been near impossible for guilds to handle on Mythic. Wrought Chaos.

It isn't though, you and the playerbase at large have just been conditioned to think so because addons have been holding your hand for so long. People coordinate far more complicated mechanics manually in FFXIV without addons.

[nothinunik]

AFAIK for EU it's the 30th at 12:00 AM CET. But a confirmation would be nice. Sad we will not be able to run Mythic dungeons the first day though, but it was to be expected.

There have been blue posts about EU getting it at 12.01 AM CET, and therefor technically getting it before US.. Don't remember where the post was, but it was a reply to some EU player complaining over US always getting stuff first.

[cface]

" But why force people to use a lfg tool instead of just the Finder?"

If this is a troll attempt, it's a success. I'm facepalming so hard it hurts. I think Blizzard has real statistics that backs up that most of us are able to search a group. How can this guy have a job? And why do Blizzard even use energy to respond to this?

[Cyram]

Why i always have a feeling that i use some different LFG feature. Can not remember when i could not find the group i wanted really.

That's exactly what I was thinking when I was reading those questions, I have not had an problems using the LFG tool, and I've tried it on a varied number of ilvl-ed toons to do HFC (I even got group as a post-patch Survival hunter with a 698 iLvl for Heroic Mannoroth).
Sometimes I think they just can't be real - those white questions, I mean - they're too whiny to be true.
I'm looking over to using it even more now tat we're gonna have a crapton of things to do in Legion, as previously I've used it mainly to do raids and Mdungeons with alts.

[Higgit]

US gets patches first between expansions, EU always gets Expansion first by 5-8 hours, hope this doesn't change.