World of Warcraft: Q & A Panel

[Stoy]

Restoring History: Creating WoW Classic Panel Recap

World of Warcraft: Q & A

• Moments of player agency can only happen if there are repercussions. The Saurfang quest in 8.1 is a bit of an experiment in player agency. They want to avoid senseless choices like "should i collect these pumpkins? but emphasize major choices in the future.
• Chris Metzen is the next to ask a question!
• There may very well be a job posting in the future for a new warchief of the Horde, and if there is, they will call Chris Metzen! Translation - Thrall may have a part to play in the future, though the answer could have just been a joke!
• There is a fundamental rewrite of the code for the Auction House that is actively being worked on. When it is implemented, the band aid fix of the 20% Auction House cut will not be needed.
• Items collected in Classic will not transfer over to Modern WoW.
• The art team is still actively working on adding class cosmetics items, mostly infused in the Heritage Armor.
• The team is not satisfied with what leveling has turned into, especially at high level. They agree that something needs to change and are actively working on ways to improve leveling.
• Ion is not sure how a level squish would turn out psychologically and would like to hear feedback.
• The team has taken a lot of steps to be more aggressive against toxicity in chat. They plan to introduce some of the technology used in other Blizzard games to address toxicity faster.
• The team is trying to strike a balance between deterministic goals and RNG. Ion acknowledges that the RNG has gone too far. Going forward, they are introducing some vendors and trying to implement more deterministic methods of obtaining important gear.
• The team has discussed improving bad luck protection and streak breaking (getting multiples of the same item) especially in weekly caches.
• The team plans to continue to retire bad Azerite traits and add new ones to give more player choice. They also want to add more depth to the Heart of Azeroth necklace.
• The team is pretty satisfied with the offensive portion of the global cooldown changes. They want to avoid macroing a bunch of abilities into one key and better design specs around these abilities.
• Movement abilities such as Heroic Leap are being taken off the global cooldown in 8.1.
• Dying armor is basically tinting, and it works against what the art team creates in terms of gear. Colors add depth to the world.
• The team is not against bringing back some utility and abilities that have been lost if it makes sense. They want to continue to iterate on class strengths and weaknesses over homogenizing classes.
• The WoW: Classic Demo has sharding because everyone is starting a character in the same spot and they wanted the demo to run smoothly.
• They might use sharding in VERY limited ways for WoW: Classic to address launch day problems, but not for the long run once communities and populations stabilize.
• Alex will cover all of Azshara in Gallywix's Pleasure Palace once the team allows him to do so.
• Why have a giant cannon and never fire it (Gallywix's)? Alex says the cannon will be fired.
• Armor type transmog restrictions are in place because of class identity. The restrictions have been loosened a little bit with items such as Heritage Armor that can be worn by any class.
• You will be able to transmog over fist weapons with an array of one handed weapons in 8.1
• Wands will still not be able to be transmogged over because they are unique and do ranged damage.
• The story for Battle for Azeroth is far from over. Alex says if he was Sylvanas he would think Garrosh was an amateur.
• There are no plans to activate PvP talents in Island Expeditions.
• As of now they plan to have PvP talents work in the future battlegrounds that pit you vs AI.
• 8.1 will add an account bound item that unlocks all flight paths in the new continents.
• Mythic + Progression will be added to the armory panel in 8.1, showcasing your highest key for the week.
• It is entirely justified to blame Blizzard when a class gets the reputation for being bad, and they want to address these bad reputations. However, community perspective is often increased when players of a class constantly speak negatively of themselves.
• It is likely that class themed armor will return in the future, but for the time being they want to continue to create more armor appearances based on where it is obtained.
• The team plans to update WoW: Classic alongside the Modern game. They can't confirm if WoW: Classic will get expansion launches but will continue to ask for community feedback.

[Onikaroshi]

I'm prepared for disappointment and useless questions.

[Sastank]

I'm prepared for disappointment and useless questions.

Guess they'll read your question then.

[Theoris]

Duuude! Metzen!

[Izzyfurious]

Holy Shit Balls Metzen!!

[Fawkess]

Holy shit it's Chris Metzen!

[Hugnomo]

I died when Metzen appeared.

[Eazy]

Thrall! Come back!

[Gadzooks]

Things must be truly bad if they talked Chris into returning.

[The One Percent]

I don't want to collect these pumpkins.

[Sesto]

holy shit based metzen

thrall is coming back boiz

[Aeula]

So... what? Thrall is going to randomly appear and become Warchief again?

[Orby]

seeing Metzen made me so sad and happy... come back dude

[Gadzooks]

Why do any of you have any real expectations from this? This is Ion's show, and we know how Ion is.

Just play Ion Hazzanexcuse bingo. "We need to try harder", "The team feels", "working as intended", and "Doesn't feel good' are all tiles.

[Theoris]

So that's a "Don't hold your breath" regarding class cosmetics. Oh well, glad it was brought up regardless.

[Mouri Kogorou]

"Items collected in Classic will not transfer over to Modern WoW."


Really?? Someone asked this? Freaking waste of QA time.

[Zardi]

• Items collected in Classic will not transfer over to Modern WoW.

Welp, there goes the one reason for me to go back to Vanilla.

[Orby]

So that's a "Don't hold your breath" regarding class cosmetics. Oh well, glad it was brought up regardless.

I want my quiver appearance back

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

Warchief Sylvanas forever.

[Mascotte]

One of the first questions is a stupid fucking classic question that we already knew the answer to. You'd think if you went to Blizzcon you'd at least google your question if you had one jesus christ

Im more annoyed with WTBGold wasting a 'question slot' on something that has been known ever since they changed it.
He got the default reply that was stated in the original blue post about the AH change, someone that makes a living from WoW vids about goldmaking surely can do more research..