BlizzCon 2019 - Developer Interview

[Lurker1]

Titan Forging is a cancer eating away at the game, the fact that the DEV's don't see it is scary.

They pretty much said no in a nice calm way lol.I highly doubt people will do the visions if they don't they will keep forges if they do then visions and the tower from Sl expansion will replace i for sure then.

[Aggrophobic]

Ok but all this sounds rather unintresting if there is no flying.

[huldu]

So it'll be an expansion that turns into a second job. What's with the endless tedious grind for some fictional power growth? We'll have to do raids, m+, world quests, the tower and probably some other bs like ies/warfronts just to max out the mythic chest. I see exactly where they're going with this. I'm not going to play this game for 6-12+ hours a day.

[Constraint]

What an absolute crock of shit.

100% agreed. What a fucking load of bullshit. Yeah, I'm really sure they chose to scrap tier sets in BFA because it didn't make sense for the story as it was more "faction oriented". How can anyone living say that with a straight face, hahahahahah

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Imagine like gathering 2 set pc for passive 200+ armors
Imagine like gathering 4 set pc for passive 20+ Primary stats
Imagine like gathering 6 set pc for passive 10% mount movement.

You get the idea :-\

Imagine actually playing WoW, and literally never having set bonuses that boring, even in Vanilla T0.5?

Ever since TBC, set bonuses have actually made a pretty big difference to many specs rotations which helps keep things fresh throughout an expansion cycle, instead of absolutely nothing changing other than increasing your stats by 10% per tier and hitting/healing harder as a consequence.

[Cazmosis]

Every expansion is a chance to do something fantastic.

That said, not only is level reconstruction not needed, its doesnt even move the needle for hype, when compared to the laundry list of things this game is dying to have implamented.

More classes.
Less class race/restrictions
Player housing (c'mon guys, its just not that hard, and its LITERALLY THE MASSIVE time sink of your dreams)
More animations, better animations
PROPER attention to transmogs and cosmetics expansion.........Stop.Making.Casters.wear.Dresses
Prestige leveling
Etc, etc, etc

[trapmaster]

Flying

Flying will work similar to previous expansions, with a variation of Pathfinder.

Lol forget it... Next

[lordjust]

"If you want to go back to Pandaria and farm for transmog or rares, you wouldn't want the zone scaling, so you need Chromie Time to scale it."

I'm confused, what does this mean? You wouldn't want the zone scaling but you need to scale it? Huh?

I just assumed that if you're lvl 60, every other expansion outside of Shadowlands will be capped at 50. So you can just farm everything and everything will be 10 levels below you.

The current scaling and level brackets stay, so classic is scaling up to lvl60, TBC and WotLK scales up to lvl80, MoP to lvl90, WoD to lvl100 and Legion to 110. If you talk to Chromie you get teleported into another version of the expansion where everything scales up to lvl50. If you take the portal in Orgrimmar for example and go to Jade Forrest or vale of eternal blossom, everything will be lvl60. But if you talk to Chromie Jade Forrest will be caled down to lvl10-15 or so and vale of eternal blossom will be something like lvl40.

They want to use the existing scaling tech they have so when a new expansion comes out they can either increase the max level or put the new expansion into the lvl 10-50 bracket and let us again level up to 60. That way they can get level speed and endgame power progression under control and create a coherent story progression for new player. New player will always be an adventurer that survived a ship crash on an oger infested island, gets recognized by it's faction for his/her heroism and then gets thrown into the last expansion.

[MidnyteTV]

"If you want to go back to Pandaria and farm for transmog or rares, you wouldn't want the zone scaling, so you need Chromie Time to scale it."

What does this mean? That I have to toggle something to farm xmog?

[Asaliah]

Scaling is gone for the old zones or for good???

[Biggles Worth]

I know at least four people and myself who don’t mind, so you’re wrong. Glad we could clear that up

I thought I'd take up after my dad and be right all the time. Glad I still am. XD

[Bellamas]

This may be the only expansion where I don't have an alt. It sounds like there is a lot of work besides just raiding to get geared. And, if you aren't geared you basically can't do much of anything content-wise.

[Aliven]

I agree, I think they are trying to get some hype generated with a player population that is much smaller and more skeptical of Blizzard. The problem is; they don't have the talent in house they used to and people are starting to see retail WoW as beyond fixing after playing Classic. It is kind of funny that they are obviously trying to compete with Classic WoW after seeing its success and maybe an ultimatum from the top guys at Activision.

Actually no. You need at the very least 16 characters to unlock everything, because there are 4 armor transmogs per covenant. Sooo good luck...

[Doffen]

This may be the only expansion where I don't have an alt. It sounds like there is a lot of work besides just raiding to get geared. And, if you aren't geared you basically can't do much of anything content-wise.

They are literally making the expansion alt-friendly AF. There was an interview during blizzcon that gearing will be just as easy as it is now in BfA, you know, where they toss gear after you.

Blizz: Here take it!
Player: No, I don't want it!
Blizz: Take it ffs!
Player: No, I have enough, get away from me!

It will feel like this once more.

And I don't get why people needs to be equally powerful on every alt. The Covenant system is good in the way that you make a choice for each character. On your alt you get to choose a Covenant fast. If transmogs/mounts etc is available for an alt with another covenant than your main, whats the point of choosing in the first place? Shall my mage choose Venthyr, but since my main Demon Hunter have gotten access to all the stuff from Bastion, it makes zero sense that my mage can hang out in Revendreath "Covenant Hall" with Bastion Transmog and mount. The Covenants lose every meaning it may have if this turns out to be like this.

[Eapoe]

More like for the top end players that want to min-max their dps to the 1%.

Just remember this when the whining starts from people that don’t get invited to do things at the high end because they make poor choices to not min max.

[Ophenia]

The current scaling and level brackets stay, so classic is scaling up to lvl60, TBC and WotLK scales up to lvl80, MoP to lvl90, WoD to lvl100 and Legion to 110. If you talk to Chromie you get teleported into another version of the expansion where everything scales up to lvl50. If you take the portal in Orgrimmar for example and go to Jade Forrest or vale of eternal blossom, everything will be lvl60. But if you talk to Chromie Jade Forrest will be caled down to lvl10-15 or so and vale of eternal blossom will be something like lvl40.

They want to use the existing scaling tech they have so when a new expansion comes out they can either increase the max level or put the new expansion into the lvl 10-50 bracket and let us again level up to 60. That way they can get level speed and endgame power progression under control and create a coherent story progression for new player. New player will always be an adventurer that survived a ship crash on an oger infested island, gets recognized by it's faction for his/her heroism and then gets thrown into the last expansion.

That seems awfully bloated for little benefits

Introducing scaling everywhere might not be the solution to everything...

[Eapoe]

On topic, what I gather is this:
Pathfinder remains, no changes.
Warmode stays.
Chromie seems to be an interesting way to circumvent rebalancing old content.
Covenants will be locked in and if you aren’t in a progression based guild or m+ group then you can pick whatever you want. Otherwise you’re going to have a bad time as certain abilities will always be better on what you do. Just as an example, with the way m+ goes, the AoE ability covenant will probably be the better choice, where as a single target one will more than likely be better in raids. Xmogs will be available later per faction, and Blizz will probably not let them go to alts until the players complain for over a year or two.
Loot chest is an interesting change, but I wonder if this means that if you do enough WQs will you get the same ilvl loot decision that a +10 player gets? Seems like that will make m+ lose most appeal.
Added customization features are always nice to have.
Torghast and the tower seems interesting, but the legendaries raise questions. Are they usable outside of the instance/zone? How many can we equip? Can we craft a new one easily (this is because say you make lego bracers and then a proc based bracer comes out next raid meaning that you benefit a lego in another slot)? How balanced will this be between healers/dps/tanks and the various specs?
TF needs to go. Just put a static ilvl, or a currency system that you can upgrade all gear to the ilvl of a TF.
Waiting for more info on exactly how Soulbinds work, but seems akin to the Legion weapon or BfA neck.
Individual class tier sets should return. Say what they want, but I honestly believe they thought single tier sets based on armor type was a good idea to save money and time for other areas and now coming up with why they did it. Class based tier sets always came across as great class identity, whereas current BfA is just more homogenization.

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Literally blizzcon weekend where the expansion itself gets revealed and bits and pieces of general ideas they want to do/ persue are shown in the alpha. Then everyone whines like a bitch seems legit. You guys need to chill out and really, REALLY stop whining about random bullshit as its literally in the alpha right now and has at least half a year+ before you will get an idea of what they are fully planning on completely changing etc. The Titanforging however, I understand and agree with as a majority of the community hates it and rightfully so.

I normally tend to agree with you; however, people bitches about things in Alpha from BfA that made it into the final product and still talk about it today as major problems with BfA. So for once, I agree with others and they need to voice concerns now; however, they should go thru proper channels. Go post on official forums, get on discord and get a community to address it on official forums. Don’t bitch about it on mmo-c where it does no good.

[Reinhart11]

Preach and Josh's interview with Ion kind of summed it up for me - more "we hear you", a LOT of "we don't know", and the followup commentary is they're hearing December 2020 for release. And, long term, if they're building this like Legion and BfA, patch 9.0 content will be left behind for 9.2 content, then that left behind for 9.3 content, so who knows what they have in store for the whole life of the expansion? It's not like the tower is expected to last the entire way, it's just for 9.0, 9.1, if it's anything like the last two expansions. (And Dragon Isles/something being released later as a surumar/timeless isle type content) The tower seems to be the central feature of the beginning of the expansion, but that's all.

I'll state up front it might just be me, but I'm not seeing a lot of confidence from the devs. The mood is definitely different when they talk now. I think BfA was a wakeup call for them, and not in a good way, like they thought they could sell anything, and "yeah, wow, that didn't work out how we expected." They're being REALLY cagey about talking about much of anything past what was already shown, same for Diablo 4. Now, it's possible they are doing that because so much is undecided, and don't want two years of "YOU PROMISED", but...again, it feels off. Less confident. More "like this, please?", and less "YOU'RE GONNA LOVE THIS" from past years. What's shocking is how little is done - what have they been working on, the whole while of BfA? They added more devs, even announced it to offset the layoffs last year, and managed to announce less, and it will take longer? Huh?

The most damning thing is, it looks like another year before anything comes out of their games, except Hearthstone. WoW Dec 2020 (Hope you love N'Zoth, 'cause that's all you get for a year), Diablo 4 is years off, and Overwatch, who knows? If I were an investor, I'd be a little concerned with that, and be asking where the income is gonna be coming from for 2020. So, yeah, warm that cash shop up, it's going into overdrive, folks.

Well, the number of developers aren't the only and certainly not the most important factor. Problem in my opinion is, Blizzard pay is bad when it comes to the average employee. Talented developers want to be paid at least decently, at the very least. And its official that a lot of Blizzard employees can barely make a living in California from what they're earning at Blizzard. Hell, most of them have probably a second or even third job. How in the world are they supposed to give their best in creating the games, when they have such problems? So thats one reason for talented people not to go to Blizzard.

Another point, it seems to be really hard to climb up the ladder at Blizzard, so you get into a position where you have influence on decisions. So thats another problem for really talented people.

Aside from that, the shareholders seem to be the only really important group for Blizzard these day and thus have the by far biggest influence on the decision making, which will of course ruin games and gaming companies over time. You could have the greatest ideas and visions for WoW or the other games as a new and really talented developer. If it costs too much money though (and great systems/feature do cost a lot of money, but of course they pay off big time, because players have fun playing the game, something which shareholders and most people at Blizzard these seem to no longer understand) and the danger looms, that the shareholders don't cash in enough, these expensive but great features won't be done. Blizzards and Activisions philosophy is pretty obvious. Investment as little ressources as you can, create hype as much as you can, find enough morons who play and believe any crap you tell them and cash in as much as you can. Rinse and repeat for the next expansion. Aside from the Art Team and maybe the Raid devs, i seriously don't see any passion for the game in these features and systems and certainly no talent. But its no surprise at this point.

[Sezh]

Torghast will either kill or make this expansion. I am very sceptical. All content that is role-agnostic is intrinsically impossible to balance. It will be too easy till you hit an artificial wall that has nothing to do with your skill level or character power. Mage Tower was none of that. You could do Holy Priest Artifact challenge on day one but it was a titanic skill challenge for 99% of Holy Priests who tried it on week one.

This won't be that, I'm afraid.

Man I remember reading tips from other players on discord while at work when mage tower was released before going home to do it on my Hpriest, that feeling when I made it on the first day is one of the best feelings I've had in this game to date.

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You think the casuals are gonna bitch about this? more like the mythic raiders and gladiators are gonna bitch.

I expect there to be a "best" covenant for each class/spec. So me and other mythic raiders will just pick that one, cosmetics are fun but at the end of the day who cares.

What I'm going to bitch about is if my "correct" choice of covenant turns to the incorrect choice later down the line because of Blizzard's balancing, and I have to spend time and resources switching because they changed things.

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Every expansion is a chance to do something fantastic.

That said, not only is level reconstruction not needed, its doesnt even move the needle for hype, when compared to the laundry list of things this game is dying to have implamented.

More classes.
Less class race/restrictions
Player housing (c'mon guys, its just not that hard, and its LITERALLY THE MASSIVE time sink of your dreams)
More animations, better animations
PROPER attention to transmogs and cosmetics expansion.........Stop.Making.Casters.wear.Dresses
Prestige leveling
Etc, etc, etc

Everyone is different, literally not a single thing you mentioned is on my list of getting me excited for a new expansions.

[easywayout]

"The team is still talking about what level getting Mage Portals is appropriate. It doesn't make sense for players to be suddenly restricted from things they used to be able to do."

You mean like fly everywhere when you hit max level, or even as soon as you start into the expac?

[Sinaa]

"Will tier sets return? Maybe. The team likes the tier sets a lot, but made the choice to go away from them in Battle for Azeroth because it doesn't make sense for the story anymore. They were great in Legion because it was such a class focused expansion, but Battle for Azeroth changed to a faction focused expansion, so the armor sets were more faction or raid oriented."


My interpretation: There will be no tier sets, but I'm not going tell you that because that would affect preorder numbers.

The way I see it this is hugely bad for MAU numbers as well. There are a lot of ppl that are actively farming Legion armor sets now in BfA, but what are they going to strive for in SL? Weapons from Uldir? XD Can they really justify 2 expansions like this in a row?

Probably internally this is communicated by saying that they free up resources by only making one ugly set instead of 3 cool sets, but then I look at Talanji's armor or many other npc armors and the entire thing feels like a huge facepalm.