by Magistrate - 7 years ago     show comments

Below, we’ve summarized and paraphrased the developer discussion with players during this BlizzCon’s World of Warcraft question and answer session.

Art and Design

• Are other racial mounts up for updates sometime soon? A: We will updated racial mounts when it makes sense, since there are many other things to work on at a given time. Legion updated kodos because Tauren use them extensively in Highmountain.
• Will you ever update old armor sets, like vanilla sets? A: Unlikely. We prefer not to go back and redo old content a lot because the players are often split on which was the better version. We tend to prefer the conservative approach so as not to alienate players. We do often take inspiration from old sets and launch similar, updated sets in current content. For instance, the armor tier for 7.2’s Tomb of Sargeras raid is heavily influenced by the tier 6 armor sets from Black Temple.
• What happened to the cosmetic slot items first discussed and shown in 2014, like quivers and paladin tomes? A: They aren’t off the table. Shortly after that panel, we decided on making Artifacts for Legion, and they sort of fit the niche of cosmetic personalization and took most of our effort to create. Going forward, we will continue to look at cosmetic items as a possibility where they make sense.
• What happened to ranged and casting animations after the updated melee ones? A: We’re working on it.

Artifacts

• Arcane Knowledge is good for catching up secondary specs. Investing in another spec as if it was your main should require more time and effort, and switching main specs will require more from players. However, after a couple months there should be no difference between your new main spec and someone who has mained that spec all expansion.
• Arcane Knowledge levels will be purchasable for Order Hall resources in an upcoming patch (with no timer or cooldown).
• Many players love Artifacts. What will happen to them and their abilities in future expansions? A: We’re not sure yet, but will have solutions at some point. At the end of Legion, players who have completed Artifact content within the lifetime of the expansion will unlock their appearances for mogging. We don’t want players to go forever without actually upgrading and changing their weapons, and adding more traits every expansion or patch would be cumbersome.

Balancing

• What is the difference between PvP and PvE balance, and why does one seem to see more work than the other? A: PvE is usually adjusting numbers for DPS or HPS, but PvP tuning is more involved because PvP employs fuller utility more often. Things like PvP-only knobs for skills and the new PvP honor system help us tune one independently of the other. It’s sometimes not just a matter of representation in PvP or PvE–abilities need to be fun to play, not just balanced. It’s an area we are continuing to work on and keep an eye on.

Classes

• Will Gnomes ever be able to be paladins, druids, or shamans? A: Not for now. We feel that certain race and class combinations would spoil race and class identity. Gnomes have two affinities: the tinkerer/mechanical side, and the intellectual, arcane side. We do not feel they currently have a strong spiritual or holy identity like a paladin, druid, or shaman has.
• The new talent swapping system is annoying. A: Some friction in the system is necessary to maintain the importance of player choices. There is some grace already, such as when you enter an instance, random battleground or dungeon, where you’re allowed to change your talents for a time. However, we don’t want to encourage swapping talents between every boss and trash pull too often, as it bloats classes more than intended.
• Why can Forsaken be priests but not paladins? A: We’ll talk about it. Maybe the alternate solution is that they shouldn’t be able to be Holy priests. We don’t want to dilute class/race identity too much.
• Will we ever be able to tame “unicorns” (horses with horns) on our hunters? A: We have no immediate plans for this, but do add new tameable pet families from time to time. We’ll see.

Factions, Guilds, and Servers

• Are there any plans for fixing server populations and faction imbalances? A: We’re still working with Connected Realms to stitch servers with low populations or faction balances on either side together. We don’t want to limit the number of players of a certain faction on a given server. We’re working on both of these issues.
• Will we ever be able to join multiple guilds at once? A: We’re looking at some more grouping options right now.
• Will we ever see guild housing? A: We don’t want to encourage whole guilds to isolate themselves inside instances–they should be out in the world experiencing the game. Additionally, we want to make sure it’s a system that rewards everyone–most guild housing centers around cosmetic things and decorating: who will be able to do this? Only the guild masters? These questions and others are ones we want to resolve.
• Will we ever be able to play with friends from other factions? A: Not really. The duality of the Horde and Alliance friction creates character and game identity, and that conflict is important for the story.
• Why can’t I raid current mythic raids cross-realm? A: You can do older mythic raids cross-realm, but the current restriction is one of the last vestiges that establishes server identity. For cross-realm players, the Trial of Valor raid should be the next level of challenging raid content you look at.

Lore

• What happened to Me’dan? Why is he not showing up as the Guardian in Legion? A: Me’dan as Guardian is no longer canon, but he is still a character that we may use in the future.
• Where is Wrathion? A: Wrathion will be explored in future content. We tried to get Wrathion into Highmountain questing in the beta, but couldn’t due to time constraints. He’s wandering around for now and will return.
• What’s the effective range of the Sunwell? How does it go through time and to different planets? A: The Light is a primordial force not limited by time and space (ed. note: much like demons, probably).
• How far in advance do you plan character arcs? A: It depends. Garrosh’s arc was discussed many years ago and has changed slightly over the years (he was originally going to be more of a hero). Wrathion was more spur of the moment since he started in the Blasted Lands.
• Who do Legion‘s Naga serve, what is their goal, and what are they doing? It seems ambiguous. A: Naga don’t all have the same allegiances (ed. note: such as the Coilscar). What is revealed about their presence in the Tomb of Sargeras may provide insight. They wanted the Tidestone for a reason, but we haven’t revealed it yet.
• Why did you kill Ysera? Doesn’t that conflict with established lore? A: Many heroes made tragic sacrifices in Legion. Ysera was made mortal after the events of the Twilight of the Aspects, and was thus killable. Her spirit lives on in the Emerald Dream, and we may see more of her in the future.
• Who will succeed the Darkspear leader now that Vol’jin is dead? There are no major Darkspear lore characters left that seem to fit. A: The answer will come in time. There’s more to Vol’jin’s story.
• Does Khadgar not have a last name or family? A: That sounds like history that could be explored in a fun series of quests. We’ll look into it.

Miscellaneous

• Why did the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza disappear? A: It was turned off temporarily due to technical issues with Legion‘s new Sharding technology. The event originally awarded a winner on each server, but because of the implementation of Sharding to ease the launch of Legion, zones and servers are not that simple, anymore. It will come back in a future patch (possibly 7.1.5), but it will likely be changed a little, such as awarding 50 or 100 people in an entire region (NA, Europe, etc.) instead of 1 per server.
• Will the WoW Token ever work to provide other services, like faction transfers? A: Yes. In the future, you will be able to redeem it directly into your Battle.net Balance, as well as use it to acquire game time. It was initially going to do this, but we wanted to ensure it worked smoothly first. So, we started with it only working for game time.
• Will crafted gear scale up to compete with new dungeon and raid drops? A: We’re exploring allowing higher Obliterum upgrades, a new type of Obliterum, and some other options. Yes, crafting gear will remain relevant, but we’re not sure how right now.
• Will the main backpack size ever be increased? A: We’re looking at it. Internally, we used to perpetuate a myth that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve, but recently discovered new information. It isn’t necessarily easy, but it’s doable. Additionally, we like to solve problems from many angles. Maybe players shouldn’t feel obligated to fill all of their 142 item slots in their bags. Taking items out of the inventory and putting them in another UI, such as with transmog, tabards, many questing items, toys, pets, and mounts, has, over the years, eliminated the need to increase bag space. Because no matter how much space is offered, players will likely always want more.
• Grinds make it hard to catch up alts. Will rep and similar things ever be made account wide? A: Rep in Legion is more lax than previous expansions. Once World Quests and dungeons are unlocked via rep on one character, the features are available account-wide. Additionally, Legion flying achievements, once completed on one character, is account-wide. There are easing ideas on the table for 7.2, but we don’t want to entirely remove goals to work toward or there’s less to play and do.
• Will we ever see legendary loot spec options? A: We probably won’t develop a legendary loot spec option. We don’t want players to feel forced to play a spec they don’t want to play just to get a legendary for that spec. But we are looking at options of allowing you to focus on a specific legendary item to obtain.
• More legendary items will be added later in the expansion. Right now each spec has 8 legendaries.
• Will we see more solo progression content similar to Withered training? A: It depends. The Withered training was meant as a single-player progression option for players that aren’t into bigger group content. More challenging single-player gameplay will emerge in 7.2, but it won’t be exactly like Withered training. Unfortunately, Withered training didn’t work out well for healers, and tanks were largely able to complete it without much help from their minions.
• Are there any secrets in the game that we still don’t know? A: There are many smaller secrets that probably still haven’t been found, but we don’t have another Kosumuth-level secret still hidden. That may change in a couple months.
• What does the future hold for pet battles? A: We have some things in the works. For now, we only have the words “pet battle dungeon.”
• Will engineers ever be able to craft a submersible mount? A: It’s a good idea, but we have no plans for it right now.
• Will we ever see a third tier of item upgrade beyond Titanforged? A: Unlikely. Titanforged should be exceedingly rare and feel like the best there is. We don’t think there’s a need for another level right now.
• Will players of all levels ever be able to queue together for any dungeon? Will I be able to play my max level character with someone who’s leveling? A: We should be able to do that with holiday dungeons and would like to make more content players of all levels can enjoy together.