Dragonflight Prelaunch Interview Recaps

[SoulSoBreezy]

Bit of a bummer that professions lean closer to being low-ceiling progression with 'bad luck protection' for top end players.
But I hope my contributions helped some of the curious!

[Relapses]

This is a joke, Ion does not care about guilds at all.
We know this as there is currently a 5000+ thread in the general forum requesting that Ion follow through on his August 23rd 2018 commitment to return granular guild controls.

How does a thread that was started in July 2018 amas more than 5000 posts asking for Ion to keep his word fit into his claim that they really do care?

Because this community has a tendency to take things that practically nobody cares about and use Blizzard's inaction as "evidence" that they "don't care." Truth is, a game with as many players and moving parts is inevitably going to have pieces that aren't as important as others. Blizzard's refusal to stop everything and focus on {insert perceived community problem here} isn't direct evidence of them not caring but simply caring more about the kind of stuff which broadly impacts more end users directly.

[Nereidaa]

To this day, it still escapes me why "open world players" want high end mythic raid gear be rewarded from doing daily quests or crafting without ever stepping in any high competitive environment. When their trivial content doesn't get rewarded with something equivalent to raid gear they go around running in circles crying foul.

Like, wtf? Your rewards are lore, pets, mounts, transmogs, and that kind of shit which is what you allegedly play for. Stop being a retard asking for raid-equivalent gear just so you can pose around doing nothing with it. I wish any of these people could even realise how dumbtarded they sound everytime they try to make a case for "deserving" better gear.

[Unholyground]

I love that they low key confirmed cross-faction guilds lol.

[Cosmic Janitor]

The team doesn't have any specific plans for more Glyph spell customizations because the goal is to make spell animations well recognized, especially in PvP.

Fucking PvP ruining it for everyone again...

[lordjust]

Tuning is going to make 15s feel like 18s of previous expansions. 20s will feel like 22/23s. So if you haven't consistently been pushing this high (ie, stopping at 15 because that's where the rewards stopped scaled) then M+ will be a less lucrative source of "the best" gear. If you're consistently pushing then this just means that you'll scale even higher than you did in previous expansions but it will come at the cost of the dungeons themselves being more challenging.

A common criticism in the past is that because +15s were "so easy," M+ players could essentially become just as powerful as their raiding compatriots by completing weekly 15s and never actually stepping outside of their comfort zone. It remains to be seen if this change equalizes the skill threshold between raiding and M+ but I surmise M+ will remain more popular by virtue of simply being a helluva lot more accessible.

I don't think they will be that much harder. Keep in mind that gear is currently capped on beta to normal raid level. So something around 385-392 ilvl and people are already clearing +22 keys with the old dungeons being the harder ones. The consensus I've heard is that if you can time a +15 now, you'll be able to time a +15 in DF but it'll reward only a high heroic ilvl instead of a low mythic. Groups that aren't high end m+ players are timing something like +10-12 keys in normal gear. Get them a little bit more gear from heroic raids or gear that is rewarded from the vault and you can add maybe another 5 keylevels and you're right back at +15 keys being no problem at all and most people can probably push to time a +17 to be back at low mythic ilvl.

At first people were saying nobody will be able to time a +20 key the first week because they couldn't even time a +10 without affixes but now most people are saying a +20 will be timed day one. Lots has changed over the last few weeks with dungeons being rebalanced, changes to to classes and people knowing how to play the dungeons. Ruby lifepools went from being one of the hardest to one of the easiest dungeons with people already doing big pulls even on +15 and higher.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Fucking PvP ruining it for everyone again...

They have been able to change how spells look to enemy places for a long time with friendly/foe version they are just using it as an excuse to be lazy.

[Celement]

I remember they said something about adding content for people who don't like to do mythic+ or raids but don't want to feel left behind. I guess that was thrown out the window, especially with the confirmation that the crafting reagents will be from dungeon/raid content. Also, no questions about a third spec for Evokers? Everyone on my server says the same exact thing: "Why the heck don't they have a tanking spec?" Pretty meh, interviews. I'm hoping for the best, but we will see. At least borrowed powers are gone and that is the best thing to come out of this expansion.

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You are assuming people who want to get gear outside of raiding/mythic+ are lazy or can't handle those difficulties. Personally, I think raiding in its current state is a massive unfun timesink. I have raided many times over the years, and it just doesn't hit the same anymore. I would feel incentivized to raid higher difficulties again if they brought back the old Valor/Justice system. The solution to this problem has been here since Wrath. Blizzard simply prefers to waste your time.

It's also a complete failure of design and a betrayal of the original game. Classic WoW had players spend 90% of their time in the world, exploring and doing meaningful content outside of an instance. This all died at the end of Wrath and it has been an absolute detriment to the game.

It's been over 15 years nearing two decades...

Let it go. Even tbc didn't put up with this mind set.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

"The team will definitely iterate a lot on Talent trees throughout the expansion."

So...basically they know the new talent trees are still a giant mess and they know they're going to have to constantly keep fixing it.

"The team has been experimenting with making cooldown buffs worth triggering a global cooldown"

No, not this bullshit again. People hate CDs being on the GCD because it feels fucking awful to hit a CD and have to immediately wait to do anything else.

[Very Tired]

Really disappointing they aren't giving any new cosmetic options for the Evoker. In terms of armor, there's so few options to choose from to the point basically everyone looks the same besides whatever color they picked. That's really where the bulk of their design effort should have been spent. I don't need 20 different options for my dragon's snout.

Course the simpler solution that would make everyone happy would to simply not force every Evoker to take up their dragon form for using certain abilities, especially considering how buggy it is atm. But that would be far to much of a common sense approach for Blizzard.

[Loveliest]

"On the lower end it will be a harder for a lot of players to get the same quality of gear that was accessible through Mythic + in previous expansions"

Because surely this will go over well with most people. You know that thing you have been doing for 3 expansions? Well we figure you're not good enough for it anymore, that is now only for a smaller part of the playerbase.

[Nymrohd]

To this day, it still escapes me why "open world players" want high end mythic raid gear be rewarded from doing daily quests or crafting without ever stepping in any high competitive environment. When their trivial content doesn't get rewarded with something equivalent to raid gear they go around running in circles crying foul.

Like, wtf? Your rewards are lore, pets, mounts, transmogs, and that kind of shit which is what you allegedly play for. Stop being a retard asking for raid-equivalent gear just so you can pose around doing nothing with it. I wish any of these people could even realise how dumbtarded they sound everytime they try to make a case for "deserving" better gear.

It escapes you because they don't. Open world players want access to a continuing gear progression that lasts more than 2-3 weeks which would probably land them between normal and heroic raid gear after 2-3 months of continuous gameplay. The strawman that they want to get mythic gear from daily quests is just something you have constructed in your head because you don't want to actually argue against a reasonable position.

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"The team will definitely iterate a lot on Talent trees throughout the expansion."

So...basically they know the new talent trees are still a giant mess and they know they're going to have to constantly keep fixing it.

"The team has been experimenting with making cooldown buffs worth triggering a global cooldown"

No, not this bullshit again. People hate CDs being on the GCD because it feels fucking awful to hit a CD and have to immediately wait to do anything else.

Let's be fair. WHich expansion has done significant class revamps and not delivered an absolute mess for multiple classes?
We can just hope they follow through and maybe by the final patch they will have fixed most specs. Legion is the last time they did something similar (And still not as aggressive) and e.g. feral was only really fixed in 7.3 with demonology and survival having to be fully revamped for 8.0

Imo more than half the spec trees are solid. Class trees are the bigger mess by far. Some specs will absolutely still stink by the end of DF but as long as it's 2-3 then that's better than their usual performance.

[Loveliest]

I mean... look this isn't aimed at you but just what you are representing in general .

WoW has always given away far to powerful of gear for free. Even now you are getting 5 heroic raid ilv pieces for lfr and rep.

Casual is fine but you have to respect the difficulty curve

If you play in a certain way for 3 expansions and all of a sudden you can't do the same thing anymore, you're most likely gonna leave.
A high end player is not affected by a lower end getting some gear. A lower end is affected by not getting said gear.
Most people are actually not high end, but lower end. Alienating the most people is a major design flaw. Lower end peopke will not try harder, they'll just get frustrated and leave.

You say - "wow has always...". Which is exactly the point - most of your playerbase expects things to be this way because it has always been the design. When you decide to change things and tell people that what they used to do is no longer enough, that's bad.

[Nymrohd]

Bit of a bummer that professions lean closer to being low-ceiling progression with 'bad luck protection' for top end players.
But I hope my contributions helped some of the curious!

Yeah, we have been asking how this will work for the entire duration of the beta and it's nice to have an answer finally even though I feel it is deceitful from Blizzard to only given the response now. Beyond what this means for open world players it also means that profession leveling will be very much dependent on raiders requesting gear which means the margins will end up being very slim since they control both the supply and demand.

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You say - "wow has always...". Which is exactly the point - most of your playerbase expects things to be this way because it has always been the design. When you decide to change things and tell people that what they used to do is no longer enough, that's bad.

I'd say that there has been NO consistency in how gear has been awarded for open world gameplay. We can start putting numbers down but believe me you will see a massive range of outcomes. Not to mention that the introduction of Mythic Raiding in 6.0 completely changes the ceiling. What also matters is whether the rewards feature progression; Zereth Mortis gave rewards half a tier below normal raiding in 9.2 but the bigger issue was that you could easily grind to those rewards in 3-4 weeks; the progression was very limited. Korthia had similar reward levels but lasted a fair bit longer if you wanted to upgrade everything (the problem there was that Korthia itself sucked).
If you'd ask me, the high point for people who play the content at a low challenge level was either Throne of Thunder or BfA.
In 5.2 Valor cap and LFR together would reward you with gear at one tier below the best, gaining about two items every three weeks, giving you near full gear only after months but making all activities feel like meaningful progression (since they all contributed to Valor).
The highest point when it comes to outcome is easily BfA. Conquest gear was acquired through world pvp and covered every slot with great stats and a lot of choice in Azerite gear; by 8.3 you not only had full Heroic from conquest but you could work towards 5 pieces that were just below Mythic through Visions AND had two item slots whose ilvl cap was not bound to the PvP/Raids/M+ in the cloak and neck. And it took a long while to get there so you actually had progression.

[chiddie]

To this day, it still escapes me why "open world players" want high end mythic raid gear be rewarded from doing daily quests or crafting without ever stepping in any high competitive environment. When their trivial content doesn't get rewarded with something equivalent to raid gear they go around running in circles crying foul.

Like, wtf? Your rewards are lore, pets, mounts, transmogs, and that kind of shit which is what you allegedly play for. Stop being a retard asking for raid-equivalent gear just so you can pose around doing nothing with it. I wish any of these people could even realise how dumbtarded they sound everytime they try to make a case for "deserving" better gear.

This is entirely your movie and it does not apply to the vast majority of players wanting to have a decent gear progression outside the usual 3 pillars.

The idea we want free mythic gear is ridiculous. We simply want challenging content in ow with a proper progression path and rewards.

I’m not interested in mounts, pets, mogs, toys or whatever, I simply want my char to constantly be more powerful without having to do M+, PvP or raids and without reaching the cap 1 month after any season starts, landing 900 ilvls below the actual max ilvl.

[Nymrohd]

I’m not interested in mounts, pets, mogs, toys or whatever, I simply want my char to constantly be more powerful without having to do M+, PvP or raids and without reaching the cap 1 month after any season starts, landing 900 ilvls below the actual max ilvl.

Imo the ideal would be something like MoP Valor, with a weekly cap that rolls forward if someone starts late that awards gear between Normal and Heroic raiding for ALL SLOTS (no gatekeeping trinkets/weapons) over the course of 3-4 months for every slot to complete; every activity rewarding valor, some in tiny amounts but still if you want to do 200 PvP pet battles per week, that should be a choice, even better if once you cap on one character you get double gains on alts for the week. Imo the way conquest did it in BfA was perfect; 8 weeks of normal gear then 14-16 weeks of Heroic gear giving you constant progression throughout a tier. No need to invent a new system for every patch, just have the unique content from that current patch be the best way to grind your valor (like MoP did with Timeless Isle quest giving you about a third of the weekly Valor).

[chiddie]

Imo the ideal would be something like MoP Valor, with a weekly cap that rolls forward if someone starts late that awards gear between Normal and Heroic raiding for ALL SLOTS (no gatekeeping trinkets/weapons) over the course of 3-4 months for every slot to complete; every activity rewarding valor, some in tiny amounts but still if you want to do 200 PvP pet battles per week, that should be a choice, even better if once you cap on one character you get double gains on alts for the week. Imo the way conquest did it in BfA was perfect; 8 weeks of normal gear then 14-16 weeks of Heroic gear giving you constant progression throughout a tier. No need to invent a new system for every patch, just have the unique content from that current patch be the best way to grind your valor (like MoP did with Timeless Isle quest giving you about a third of the weekly Valor).

You should indeed have, without having to play 24/7, at least the last month of every season where you can faceroll stuff before next season hits and a new zone with stronger mobs comes out.

I mean, when SL S1 started, half on my guild got KSM (and related gear) in one month and a half. More than something was maybe not bis, but when we did the Maw stuff together, the difference in power was embarrassing.

Blizzard could even lock the ow gear to ow only, preventing somehow it to be used in M+ or raids or PvP, I don’t care about that, but we really need something in ow that allows us to be - in ow - as powerful as the triad players IF we put enough effort into that path.

[Voidism]

How exactly is Evoker more of a "hybrid class" as they put it than a shaman, paladin or druid? I see nothing the Evoker has that suggest extra hybridity. In fact, the other classe's DPS specs feel more capable in helping extra than a Devastation Evoker for example. Totems, immunities, movements speeds, stat buffs, heals. Best case scenario, they are equally capable. So, why is Evoker called hybrid and not the other ones? They imply that Evokers should agree to less dps or something due to it.

[Relapses]

We simply want challenging content in ow with a proper progression path and rewards.

This royal "we" you're referring to here is quite a broad statement. You may not want it but I have seen plenty of players unironically claim that single player progression gearing systems up to Mythic level gear are the key to WoW's success... Blizzard apparently just hates the idea of having billions of players and therefore they won't do it.

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How exactly is Evoker more of a "hybrid class" as they put it than a shaman, paladin or druid? I see nothing the Evoker has that suggest extra hybridity. In fact, the other classe's DPS specs feel more capable in helping extra than a Devastation Evoker for example. Totems, immunities, movements speeds, stat buffs, heals. Best case scenario, they are equally capable. So, why is Evoker called hybrid and not the other ones? They imply that Evokers should agree to less dps or something due to it.

Hybrid tax died in Cata. I think they're just using the word to refer to the fact that they can easily off-heal much like most of the other hybrid classes you mentioned.

[Celement]

If you play in a certain way for 3 expansions and all of a sudden you can't do the same thing anymore, you're most likely gonna leave.
A high end player is not affected by a lower end getting some gear. A lower end is affected by not getting said gear.
Most people are actually not high end, but lower end. Alienating the most people is a major design flaw. Lower end peopke will not try harder, they'll just get frustrated and leave.

You say - "wow has always...". Which is exactly the point - most of your playerbase expects things to be this way because it has always been the design. When you decide to change things and tell people that what they used to do is no longer enough, that's bad.

Isn't how a mmo works. You fuck up the mid game hard by letting world quest Larry gear up like that. It's been 16 arguably 17 years accept how things work.