Athalus Race to World First Interview with Morgan Day

[Stoy]

Athalus Race to World First Interview with Morgan Day
Warcraft Radio's Athalus spoke with Morgan Day on the Sepulcher of the First Ones Race to World First.

• The team has been working hard to make raid tuning a science rather than an art.
• They have used a lot of the level squish technology to add health mods to raid bosses, allowing easier adjustments for tuning.
• The Kel'thuzad encounter was tuned correctly, but Echo found a "clever use of game mechanics" late at night and the team wasn't able to address it fast enough.
• The team is happy with how the tier turned out, but they are taking the RWF length feedback to heart.
• Not having the final three bosses available on the first week caused guilds to have to spend additional time running splits for tier from these bosses.
• The team did not expect Halondrus to be as big of a road block. They realized having an encounter like this so early in the tier and the difficulty of the bombs was too much.
• Locking the last three bosses was done for story purposes, but the team had to decide whether or not they could QA them internally without a PTR test, and they are happy with how it turned out. It is not the template moving forward, but could be used when it makes sense.
• Phase 4 of the Jailer is not meant to be the most difficult part of the encounter.
• There has been a lot more emphasis on utilizing utility when designing raid encounters, and the Mortal Strike effect on the Jailer's heal for Phase 4 is an example.
• The Jailer not healing at all bug was extremely hard to reproduce.
• The excitement around tier sets has been heard loud and clear and they will continue in future tiers.
• The rules around trading gear between players will be talked about more soon. The special rules for trading tier were meant to stop "unfun" moments, but players still found ways around it.
• The team doesn't want loot trade rules to cause unfun moments for the general player just to deal with RWF issues.
• The team wants to create a more deterministic path to gear that heavily effects player power. This is the goal of the Creation Catalyst.
• The team is discussing the timing of adding things like the Creation Catalyst for the future based on feedback.
• The goal of the Great Vault is to always have something exciting for when you log in on reset. The team has been discussing how to make sure that you always get something useful when looting it.
• The team missed the mark on the amount of gold required for getting legendaries to higher item level.
• Being able to extend the fight past the Lords of Dread enrage was a surprise. Utilizing utility in a clever way is fun to watch.
• The plan for Shadowlands was always to have 3 raids.
• The team is excited to experiment with older content in Season 4 of Shadowlands.
• The ability to work from home has allowed the team to address raid issues faster than in the past.
• Blizzard as a whole has been trying to better their communication with players.
• Getting rid of the barriers to play with friends is a priority for Blizzard.
• The feedback against Shards of Domination has been heard loud and clear. They will likely not be important in Season 4 Sanctum.
• The team still wants tier sets to be part of the itemization in Season 4.
• 6-8 months is the general idea of how long a season should last.
• Morgan Day plays Final Fantasy XIV.

[exsanguinate]

Morgan Day plays Final Fantasy XIV.

Ok, cool. But I don't want WoW to become FF.

[gobarj]

"The Kel'thuzad encounter was tuned correctly, but Echo found a "clever use of game mechanics" late at night and the team wasn't able to address it fast enough."

Huh? Kel'Thuzad? I'm guessing they aren't talking about Sepulcher then.

[Villager720]

“The plan for Shadowlands was always to have 3 raids.”

I’m not sure anyone is ever going to buy that Shadowlands rolled out as intended and expected.
Being honest with the players is a form of communication - something they say they’re trying to improve on.

[Sharpbladez]

Blizzard as a whole has been trying to better their communication with players.

LOL complete lie

[Elflover99]

I’m not sure anyone is ever going to buy that Shadowlands rolled out as intended and expected.
Being honest with the players is a form of communication - something they say they’re trying to improve on.

What is hard to believe that Blizzard nickle and dimed people with a filler expansion? The Sylvanas raid armor was in at LAUNCH.

[Woggmer]

What is hard to believe that Blizzard nickle and dimed people with a filler expansion? The Sylvanas raid armor was in at LAUNCH.

Then why leave Ven'ari's story unfinished or have no follow up to Denathrius's sword (which holds Denathrius inside btw) getting taken by the Nathrezim? You don't cut an expansion short to two patches and say "Oh yeah, totally intended"

[enigma77]

[*]6-8 months is the general idea of how long a season should last.

LOLNO.

4-5 months, like in BFA & Legion you silly oafs.

[Elflover99]

Then why leave Ven'ari's story unfinished or have no follow up to Denathrius's sword (which holds Denathrius inside btw) getting taken by the Nathrezim? You don't cut an expansion short to two patches and say "Oh yeah, totally intended"

Denathrius is for a future expansion, they already set up a Life Nathrezim and then there is Lothraxion in the Army of the Light.

I’ll agree on Ve’nari, but Broker origins as a whole are never explained, so they may be a future hook as well. Maybe related to Constellars?

Quests being cut because people hate the expansion =/= a patch was cut.

[Onikaroshi]

LOLNO.

4-5 months, like in BFA & Legion you silly oafs.

More like 5-6 months based on raid size

4.5 months for Uldir
5.5ish months for Battle
6 Months for EP.

Over the course of time it's averaged 5-6 months per tier or "season"

8 months is too long, 5-7 would be fine, anything shorter than 5 is too short.

We didn't have a raider shorter that 10 bosses in SL, so 6-7 would have been fine, but obviously they were having issues, lots of issues.

[Gurbz]

Then why leave Ven'ari's story unfinished or have no follow up to Denathrius's sword (which holds Denathrius inside btw) getting taken by the Nathrezim? You don't cut an expansion short to two patches and say "Oh yeah, totally intended"

Blizzard has been abandoning story beats every expansion since vanilla. Some they come back to in a later expansion. Most have never been resolved in any way. So thats not exactly proof that content was cut.

Realistically the community can't prove that there was anything cut out, as all the evidence is completely circumstantial. And Blizzard likely cannot provide irrefutable evidence that content wasn't cut either. So the people who believe there was cut content will always believe that no matter what Blizzard says. In my opinion, I don't think it matters either way. We got what we got, and whether or not content was cut is not going to change anyone's opinion on the quality of SL.

[exochaft]

I easily do not believe half of what's said in this interview, or the stated answers are an extreme twisting of the truth. As an example, saying that only 3 raids were planned for Shadowlands just be lying via ommission, where the omitted detail is "Only 3 raids were planned once we abandoned the expansion in 9.1... but up until that point we wanted to have a patch 9.3 and a raid for every patch."

I wouldn't be surprised if there were some corporate talking points that had to be said, regardless if Morgan Day believed them. This is my most optimistic perspective on the situation. The cynical perspective? Everyone at Blizz believes their own lies to where they think it's the truth, and there's no hope for recovery in the near future if this is the case.

- - - Updated - - -

Realistically the community can't prove that there was anything cut out, as all the evidence is completely circumstantial. And Blizzard likely cannot provide irrefutable evidence that content wasn't cut either. So the people who believe there was cut content will always believe that no matter what Blizzard says. In my opinion, I don't think it matters either way. We got what we got, and whether or not content was cut is not going to change anyone's opinion on the quality of SL.

Depends what was cut and when. In relation to the Sylvannas novel, the book answers and addresses a lot of the issues with Shadowlands when it comes to the story. Story is still a wreck and has many issues/contradictions regardless of the book, but everything is more palatable with the book's information. The question is whether the book just coincidentally is attempting to answer a lot of issues and loose threads of the game's story, or the book was intentionally used (and delayed) in order to fix the narrative due to <insert whatever reasons>.

I think with the amount of information we have access to, it's a very safe assumption that the Shadowlands story got some massive revamps late in the development process. If you believe the people who have communications with Blizz devs hinting that things are as we assume (at least to some degree), it's seems way more likely than not that Shadowlands story was heavily revamped at the last second, as well as after a point where Blizz decided to abandon Shadowlands. If one was playing through WoD, the parallels and signs are evident that Blizz decided to cut their losses with Shadowlands and adjust the story to finish it faster. Regardless, it's a gamble on 11.0... and they have to nail it or likely suffer even more losses. I hope they knock it out of the park, but their words and actions through this expansion aren't inspiring much faith.

*edit* - I just wanted to clarify: while content and story has been cut from the game in the past, Blizz still has the job to give the players a good product and story even after the cuts have been made. Cutting content for whatever reason is not an excuse to only provide a terrible experience for players.

[Bakis]

Kudos for what he says. Only thing that I really object to is (with WFR in mind):

The team did not expect Halondrus to be as big of a road block. They realized having an encounter like this so early in the tier and the difficulty of the bombs was too much.

He just cement the age old bumb mentality that the first bosses need to be easy, with a mid boss that is a little more of an obstacle and the end boss being the fireworks.

No, make no bosses being pushovers, make more bosses requiring close to or perfection pulls.

Edit: and fewer bosses like both Echo/Liquid stated. Bosses should be hard but fewer. Make two raids with 5-7 bosses each instead. More fun and less burnouts.

[dope_danny]

Ok, cool. But I don't want WoW to become FF.

Bro i have some bad news about this thing called 'Mists of Pandaria' you might want to take a seat.

[Relapses]

Kudos for what he says. Only thing that I really object to is (with WFR in mind):

He just cement the age old bumb mentality that the first bosses need to be easy, with a mid boss that is a little more of an obstacle and the end boss being the fireworks.

No, make no bosses being pushovers, make more bosses requiring close to or perfection pulls.

That's a good way to kill off what little remains of the casual Mythic raiding scene. I doubt they're going to do this.

[Mic_128]

Blizzard as a whole has been trying to better their communication with players.

This should be their fucking slogan with how often they say it.

Blizzard Entertainment: Bettering our Communication with Players

[Bakis]

That's a good way to kill off what little remains of the casual Mythic raiding scene. I doubt they're going to do this.

I wrote WFR in mind so how does that matter? BLZ always nerf after the top 2-3 guilds kills it.
Casual guilds are either:
A: hardcore guilds trying to compete with WFR but doesnt have the playerskill or organisztion to even come close
B: casual mythic average guilds that will do fine after WFR nerfs

[Relapses]

I wrote WFR in mind so how does that matter? BLZ always nerf after the top 2-3 guilds kills it.
Casual guilds are either:
A: hardcore guilds trying to compete with WFR but doesnt have the playerskill or organisztion to even come close
B: casual mythic average guilds that will do fine after WFR nerfs

It's okay for there to be easier Mythic bosses my dude. Nobody will be happy if Halondrus is the opening boss of every raid tier. It just makes farming the raid a pain in the ass.

[Bakis]

It's okay for there to be easier Mythic bosses my dude. Nobody will be happy if Halondrus is the opening boss of every raid tier. It just makes farming the raid a pain in the ass.

Farming is kinda the opposite of what a WFR should be.
Shouldn't be about either 3 weeks cos of 10+ bosses of which 4 are roadblocks only or the majority of the tier being mundane.
Fewer bosses but overall a more even difficulty spread among them.
This tier has been a step in the right direction, the tuning was fine just too many bosses.
Make two challenging raids instead given BLZ continue with being on point with tuning and quick actions if needed.

[pinglong]

Pretty obvious there was a Drust raid at one point, i hope no one really believes 3 raids was the plan.