by JR Cook - 8 years ago     show comments

Curator

Josh Allen aka Community Manager Lore

Panelists

• Cory Stockton, worked on world quest design
• Luis Barriga,worked on class hall campaigns
• Eric Maloof, worked on Demon Hunter intro, order halls, Aszuna

Legion

Early reviews are positive, concurrency is the highest it has been in several years.

Story recap: Gul’dan escaped to Azeroth through the dark portal and brings the burning legion to our doorstep, Illidan has returned. Tensions between horde and alliance are high.

Demon Hunters

Demon Hunter class was highly anticipated so expectations were high. Our last hero class was Death Knight, which came with a custom starting zone, unique appearances, special voice overs. Demon Hunters have lots of aesthetic customization, custom voice lines, new emotes, special animations.

Demon Hunters have two specializations: Havoc DPS and Vengeance Tank. Havoc takes from Illidan, Warcraft III, and Heroes of the Storm. It has high mobility, the  play style is built around metamorphosis. Vengeance play style is built around capturing, causing pain to, and tormenting demons, some of the mechanics are reminiscent of other tank classes.

Artifact Weapons

How do they tie into the story? Some are directly tied to killing demons, weapons from lore, and go back to war of the ancients. How do we make sure the other artifacts feel just as impressive as Ashbringer and Doomhammer? For the lesser known artifacts, ther are quest lines to help you understand the power that weapon brings to the story. The design of these weapons from the art team was amazing, we had to create stories that honored the artwork. We try to achieve the trifecta of art, game play, and design. We’ve had legendary weapons before, but the artifacts bring traits and abilities—gold medal talents you look forward to unlocking that are way more powerful than just hitting max level.

Class Order Halls

More than just a hang out space. We liked a lot of what worked from garrisons, and wanted to take that and carry it forward. We focused on having champions that matter to you instead of a ton of followers. They each have their own stories, and you can take them with you into the world. Each class has their own end game experience. The class hall is far more social than garrisons, you can see other players, NPCs, etc.

Players have communicated the desire for individual class content, which there has been some in the past but not on this scale. Order Halls offer a ton of content for players to be able to do.

World Quest System

The World Quest system is a chance to get players out in the world to do content once they hit max level in a whole new way, an evolution of the daily system we’re used to. It is dynamic and world across the entire continent, since the whole area can scale so they can put it anywhere. scales, can do solo or scale up to raid level and bring it out into an outdoor space. world quests for crafting, pvp, pet battles, solo, groups. the level scaling tech allows to not have to designate special places for max level content. matches well with the non-linear leveling concept. you can choose where you want to go and don’t have to stick to the same zone, can go back and forth.

Companion app for WoW arriving September 6th

A mobile phone app for Wow, separate from the mobile auction house, arrives Tuesday September 6th for iPhone and Android. Players will be able to do missions as well as recruit/modify your champions. You can upgrade or change your Oder Hall through research, and track available world quests—but not complete them— from their phone, granting the ability to plan for what you want to do in-game. Rewards from missions will be waiting in your mailbox when you next log in. The app is free to use, but requires you to have an active subscription to the game.

Character Boosts

We liked the level 90 boosts and have expanded upon this feature. Tutorials have been added to Level 100 boosts and the class trial feature is now available—you can now try all the classes for free without first spending your token, in case you don’t like the class you can switch to a different one. Once you make a decision, you permanently unlock the character with your boost token.

Return to Karazhan

At Gamescom we announced Patch 7.1: Return to Karazhan. In the pre-patch content, Khadgar took us to Karazhan. Now we’ll return  in a five-man dungeon. There will be quest content with Khadgar to explore and learn more about it. Karazhan will be a weekly lockout. Difficulty intended to be slightly more difficult than mythic dungeons and will award generous loot. There will be new plays in the Opera House, and new chess event. The idea is to not make raiding the only end game choice. Karazhan is extra special from the way other raids have been converted into five-mans. Before we may have only changed some art or added new mechanics. This wasn’t enough; Karazhan deserved way more. There will be new areas with new bosses. It is a mix of nostalgia while giving a fresh, new experience worth being offered as new content.

More to come in 7.1

Suramar campaign and a new raid: Trial of Valor so there will be solo content, a raid, and a 5-man in 7.1. Instead of announcing tiers and adhering to that we’ve decided to make content we like and put it in the game. Trial of Valor is a small raid—continuation of content from Stormheim. There will be a story line where you will play through different parts of Illidan’s life in the raid. Some of the better trinkets will come from Trial, to help prepare for the next full raid. Trial of Valor will be released in between The Emerald Nightmare and Nighthold. When you hit 110 you go to Suramar, you meet the Nightborne, who are are felsworn—Gul’dan is using their nightwell the 7.1 campaign is continued in Suramar with the Nightfallen, which are rebels against the Nightborne. We want patches that aren’t just a raid or dungeon, we want to provide content for players with a variety of play styles.

7.1 will be on PTR in the next week or two—not Blizzard Soon™ actual soon!

Q&A

How do you keep the lore and mechanical strength of artifact weapons going forward?

Our philosophy with key features in an expansion, it allows us to be ambitious with design because we’re not planning to take it forward, wasting the cost of maintaining and updating those features. We will keep what players like and go forward, for artifacts abilities we may build it into the baseline of the class. We will find a way to keep the appearance of artifacts for players going forward.

Have you considered ogres as a playable race?

It comes up all the time, we’re still thinking about it.

Will there be treasure hunting in raids like there is in five-man dungeons?

Not yet but could be added!

Regarding phasing and scaling, where will you take it going forward?

We try to using phasing judiciously. It’s used to tell powerful narrative moments, but WoW is an MMO—a social experience. It’s not the final form, it will keep evolving.  What’s referred to as phasing is often sharding, where thousands of copies of the same area are created so areas aren’t swamped. have not applied the scaling retroactively.

Regarding content like Cataclysm will you apply content scaling in those zones so we can revisit Barrens at max level?

It’s still a new feature that we are experimenting with, we like what we see but still need feedback. We have the tech working but there may be issues applying everywhere. As you saw we used this tech for the invasions, you could see a level 12 fighting against a level 100 and not necessarily die instantly.

Have we seen the last of Vol’jin?

No comment.

Designing around double jump, it’s an empowering ability, will it be applied to other classes?

We were looking for ways to convey the abilities of Demon Hunters, such as supernatural agility. Double jump was something we had to design for so it wasn’t recognized as cheating, when first implemented,it would cause disconnects from the game. It would dilute the fantasy by applying to double jump to other classes. At one point, we had it so you could double jump on a mount, we couldn’t keep it, but it was awesome!

Where does the story in Legion go from here?

We  wanted to set up characters to carry the story forward from expansion to expansion instead of having an expac in a wrapper. no end in sight as long as fans want to keep playing

How long the scaling tech was in development?

It came late. We often develop tech for one thing and have a lot of cool Ferrari parts laying around; we end up using them for something else. For example, we took tech from time walking and applied it to the Broken Isles. We liked the idea of having the choice in Wrath of going to Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord with separate quest lines for both Horde and Alliance.

You mentioned an MMO involves cooperative play, any plans to include friends in my party of another class for order hall quests?

They were designed as solo scenarios for specific classes. We try to balance group and solo play.