Battle for Dazar'alor Mythic Progression - Limit, Method, and Pieces at 8/9
Method and Pieces have joined Limit at 8/9.
Developer Interview - Jeremy Feasel
Taliesin & Evitel has the opportunity to talk to Jeremy Feasel, who has moved off of Island Expeditions onto a general oversight and planning role.
Crestfall
- Crestfall is a new Island Expedition coming in Patch 8.2, with elements of the Warcraft map.
- There will be dragon skeletons, gryphon rider hammers, cannon towers, destroyed battleship, and more.
- It will tell micro stories, such as "This is where the Humans would have built their barracks", but now it's a rundown and destroyed castle.
Island Expeditions
- A lot of stories were started on islands with one time questgiver quests, such as something going on with the Mantid. Those are setting up stuff.
- Some of those threads will get pulled on as we go through the patch process. It'd be interesting to look at those and figure out which of them will take off and where they will go, because a couple of them will go to some pretty interesting places during this expansion.
- Maybe in some Normal Island Expeditions, you could have more time to do exploring and less time pressure. The team may experiment with this in Patch 8.2.
New NPC AI
- The new brawl in Patch 8.1.5 that puts players up against AI in Arathi Basin will be the first big use of the new AI tech outside of Island Expeditions. This is an opportunity to give the AI meta battleground strategies. Should the AI jump off the cliff and Slow Fall down to the Blacksmith?
- They could use the NPC AI to make a new bodyguard buddy, jumping around you, climbing up rocks and looking off into the distance.
Story and Nazjatar
- Whenever the team develops the story, they keep in mind the story that is going throughout the entire expansion. One in this expansion is Sylvanas's rise to power, how she is using it, and how people react to it. That's a key to how we get to Nazjatar and what happens there.
- You'll start to see links between what people are doing and how it is impacting our story and where we are going really start to come out during the Nazjatar questing.
- You will have some impact on your surrounding area in Nazjatar. You'll be meeting a group that is indigenous to Nazjatar and helping them out, which has it's own local impacts.
- The effects of what's going on with the greater story may not necessarily take place in Nazjatar, but in other places across the world.
Allied Races
- The team loves the Allied Race system and thinks it is a strong system.
- The team does plan to add more Allied Races, but nothing to announce right now.
Systems
- The team is pulling away from gating content with quests that require you to collect thousands of shards and instead focusing on big story quests that you can complete and feel like you got an awesome story reward for playing through a space.
- In addition to that, there are a significant number of people working on sandbox systems and overworld systems, as well as an updated world quest system across the entire zone.
Nazjatar and Mechagon Content
- You'll be introduced via big cinematic moments, unlock your hub, meet your new friends, and then you've got the new bodyguard system.
- Your bodyguard will be leveled up, gaining additional stories and abilities as you are leveling them up. The new quests will tell you about the new races, giving you drips of story.
- You'll have a whole new set of world quests, unlike anything the team has done previously.
- There may periodically be public events that pop up, similar to the Legion Assault system. You can join in on the scenario in the world with everyone and finish it.
- It should feel like there is stuff happening all over the place.
- What were some of the coolest sandbox systems of Timeless Isle? Every once in a while you would see a shrine that you could click on and spawn a mini event. Things that you don't see every day, but will come upon occasionally when playing through a space.
- The team wants to double down on the feeling of an exploratory sandbox. You should still see things for the first time, even a couple months into playing.
- Mechagon is going in an entirely separate direction in terms of how content is unlocked and what it turns into.
- You can gather all sorts of crafting materials across the space, and it has a local crafter with lots of mechanical rewards. If you bring him a battery, spare parts, and some scraps, he can build a spider bot.
- It should feel like a breath of fresh air in terms of how content is being delivered and what you are getting over time.
- There isn't a dedicated team working on secrets added to the game, they are just passion projects.
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment