by Magistrate - 8 years ago     show comments

Ion Hazzikostas talked for a bit during BlizzCon about how outdoor endgame content will work in Legion. Their goals were to make content less repetitive while still driven by a strong sense of purpose or narrative, while also letting players choose what content they want to do and rewards they’re interested in.

Outdoor Endgame in Old Expansions

Endgame systems in older expansions

In the past, there has essentially been three types of endgame content models:

1. For Wrath of the Lich King, they designed rep grinds tied to some quests but mostly running dungeons. Players would hit Revered with a certain faction, buy all the enchants and upgrades they needed to stay competitive, and largely never return.
2. For Mists of Pandaria, they created dozens of daily quest hubs, each NPC with several quests each. There was some variation with quest sets from day to day, but players largely repeated the same tasks every day, with the same rewards (gold and reputation). This had the benefit of gated story moments and a strong sense of the faction you benefited, giving a sense of purpose to the tedium.
3. For Warlords of Draenor, they tried using the command table and objective zones to give players more freedom in choosing their adventures. Players chose a given objective from a set of two each day for Apexis and gold rewards, and then could finish the objective in several ways within the specified area, like smashing Goren eggs or hunting Elites and Rarespawns. This system had a different benefit–more freedom in choosing what you wanted to do.

Unfortunately, each system had its flaws. Wrath‘s invalidated content after a certain point (which both Mists and Warlords also suffered from)–once you got the upgrades you needed, there was little point in returning.

Mists was incredibly grindy and repetitive. It also felt highly compulsory–if you missed out on a daily quest on one day, you missed a day of gaining rep.

And Warlords largely lacked purpose and structure. There was little sense of who benefited from slaughtering Arakkoa, and no story content that developed out of achieving these feats aside from satisfying a legendary quest goal.

Endgame Approach in Legion: World Quests

For Legion, the team is attempting to mix the best of both worlds together. Bringing the player choice from Warlords and the sense of story, purpose, and structure from Mists, Legion introduces World Quests.

When players log in at max-level, their Broken Isles map will show a range of quest markers indicating World Quests that can be done that day. You can talk to the emissary in your Class Order Hall to unlock them–if you don’t get that emissary’s quests done that day, you can often come back the next day or several days later and still do them, although they are on a timer which varies by quest and reward.

• World Quests can be seen on your map in each Legion zone
• World Quests can be skipped one day and may still be around the next day or several days later to finish
• World Quests can be given by emissaries in your Class Order Hall–they will give you a set that promotes a certain faction, like the Valkyr or Highmountain Tauren
• Quests will smaller rewards, like Artifact power, may stick around and change after a couple hours
• Quests with more epic rewards or challenges might stick around for several days or a week

Ultimately, World Quests are a mixture of old systems and a natural progression of Garrison Missions, except instead of sending out followers to finish tasks, you go out into the world yourself.

Choosing Relevant Content

• Professions and Crafting: Gatherers may unlock a quest that lets them engage with the world in ways non-crafters cannot to finish a unique task
• World Bosses: They may be rolled into the World Quest system with epic rewards, with a completion timer that lasts a week
• PvP: You can choose locations that involve taking bases and towers, which will involve combat with NPCs and open you up to PvP combat
• Minigames: They can add in games like Gnomebliteration in Uldum or rolling down the Great Wall in Pandaria to mix gameplay up

Furthermore, to keep things relevant, the scaling tech behind flexible questing zones mean that the team can take advantage of the entirety of each zone for max-level content, instead of being confined to a small area like in Mists or Legion. For more on scaling level-up zones, see our recap article.