Данный сайт активно использует технологию JavaScript.
Пожалуйста, включите JavaScript в вашем браузере.
Live
PTR
The War Within - Creator Summit Group Interview - Michael Bybee and Sean McCann
The War Within
Опубликовано
29.04.2024 в 07:32
Paryah
Blizzard held a Content Creator Summit and we participated in a group interview where a couple of kindly devs addressed questions from Content Creators. The devs for this interview were:
Michael Bybee
: Production Director on World Warcraft
Sean McCann
: Senior Game Designer in charge of Delves
Please note that the questions and responses have been reordered by topic, and edited for clarity and readability.
Release Cadence and Dates
Is there a rough timeframe for Beta and release of the War Within that we can expect?
Michael Bybee
:
I think you can expect what we'll do is we'll see how the Alpha goes, we'll take feedback. Every week we're going to post new content on the Alpha. Then, as we are starting to feel like everything's coming together, we're feeling like it's in a great place to get a cohesive round of feedback, what we'll do is same as we've done in the past, we'll clear characters, we'll boot up the Beta, and we'll do the entire experience again with a broader audience to continue to get feedback. Based on how that goes is when we'll end up shipping the War Within. So no specific feedback on dates today, but honestly the Alpha really matters to us so we're excited to get player's feedback.
Are there any plans to mirror Classic for a release schedule for expansion launch and/or patch launches
Michael Bybee
:
Yeah, totally. We've been doing that in modern for quite a long time. Actually, it's going to be a little bit more structured even in the War Within. That's because of the early access that folks who bought the highest tier preorder were able to get.
We want to make sure that people who bought the preorder get the chance to play through some of the story, but don't get an advantage over other players in terms of the raid. So we're going to have the three day preorder period where folks have access to play through the content, level their character, etc. Then everybody who plays the game will have access for a period of time where the raid won't be available, the Mythic+ season will not have started yet. So you'll be able to play up through Mythic zero. After that we'll launch the season that starts with the raid and Mythic+ and PvP. So it's a little bit structured and disconnected in that way.
We've been doing that for a lot of modern patches as well. In fact, coming up very soon, even though right now we're in 10.2.6. - the patch launched batch back in March, we're about to launch season 4, which includes access to no new raids, but access to the Awakened Raids as well as the new Mythic+ season in Dragonflight. And that is totally disconnected from launching a patch.
Whe three days early access be a on weekend or a normal release Monday-Thursday and people without early access starting on Friday?
Michael Bybee
:
If any of you were familiar with the way that the Diablo 4 team rolled out their early access, it'll be similar. We'll start it near the end of the week in the previous week, give folks through the weekend, and then we'll do our official launch very similar to how we've done them in the past where it'll launch most likely on something like a Tuesday. We don't have any specifics around the exact date, but that's the way that we think about it. There's a lot of reasons for that too in terms of support from our live operations team, making sure that players have a chance to play through during a time when they actually have that, and just generally making sure that the early access feels like a bonus that doesn't diminish the folks who didn't buy early access.
Is heroic week coming back for the start of seasons, giving guilds a week to clear heroic before mythic starts?
Michael Bybee
:
Yes. Actually, between interviews today, Ion sent Sean and I a message to say, "hey, I actually may have inadvertently announced this publicly for the first time today. So you're free to say this." So we got approval. The reality is that makes sense. We like it, we want to keep doing it.
So to be a little bit more specific here, one of the considerations for the War Within is for the first time in World of Warcraft history, we're doing an early access period for folks who were able to purchase the higher end product. They'll get three days early access for that. One of our very, very major goals with allowing this was making sure that it didn't feel like it gave folks an advantage, especially in any power race, etc. So that three day early access will give folks the ability to play through the story content level up, get to max level. but they won't have access to a lot of the mythic zero and other opportunities where they can get sets of gear. So then we'll have a period where we'll actually have access to the Mythic Zero system without the season having gone live and folks will be able to gear up. Then the season will start and then you'll have your heroic week and then you'll actually have the rest of the content unlock.
We'll have a lot more to announce about that a little bit later, but the goal here is to really make it feel like it's not right out of the gate. Everybody rushing, especially against folks who were able to sign up for the early access.
Feedback
Are there any areas that you're particularly keen for feedback on?
Sean McCann
:
Alpha release this week is only going to be tiers 1 and 2. We , how does Brann feel? You're still going to be in the early stages of what can Brann do, he won't be fully talented out. But, what are things that you would like to see him do? Both from combat or from non-combat stuff. There's a fun thing our designer put in for Brann that if you go AFK and there's a wall nearby, when you come back Brann will just be kind of leaning against the wall with a "we're doing this? what's happening here?" . What are some other fun things that we can do to make Brann feel more alive? We want to make sure he feels better than our guardians that you get during quests, follow you around. want to make sure he has a personality. So if there are things that you see that are, "hey, this would be cool to do this," we could definitely try that.
And just the difficulty of a Delve. We do want to kill you in a Delve, but we don't want to kill you at tier 1. We want that difficulty to ramp up. Feedback on the difficulty and all that stuff is fantastic for Delves.
Michael Bybee
:
I think class feedback is also another big one. Going forward, the way we're going to push out class changes, new Hero Talent trees, and updates to the existing ones will be on the Alpha because it's so much more effective where players can play through, see how it actually feels playing their character, and then give us direct feedback on that.
And pacing for the story, I think is another big one that we get out of the Alpha. All of the teams working on this content have been chomping away at it for a while and this is the first time that you can see all the pieces fit together and get feedback from folks off the team. Story pacing is one of the big ones, just understanding how it feels. Does it feel like we're sharing the story too quickly, if things are going too fast or too slow or you're not understanding. Those kinds of things are really great for feedback as well.
Where should we be putting that feedback to ensure it is seen?
Michael Bybee
:
When we send out the Alpha we'll be giving a set of instructions that involve things like the endgame bug reporter, things like posting to the forums where it makes sense. We also check out any of the conversation that's happening on community streaming sites as folks are talking about different things, all of that. You can also just share it directly with our community and PR teams, and they share those directly with the dev team. We actually go through that stuff on a pretty regular basis. Also as we've been talking, even this morning, I was taking notes from the previous session and I sent over a bunch of those questions over to the dev team and, and some of the feedback that we got and the team is already looking at that. So that's, that's just some of the ways basically, anywhere we can get the message out, we'll be paying attention to it and trying to incorporate that.
Delves
How many levels of Delves are there?
Sean McCann
:
We are going to make 11 levels in total.
Fun fact: we did the math to figure out what would be good, we found 11, we were like is 11 weird, we should do 10, and someone was like no we've got to take it to 11. So we said ok, it's 11.
The plan is that around Tier 8 we will say, ok it's just for bragging rights now, a similar idea to Mythic+.
What level do Delve companions go to?
Sean McCann
:
Right now we're imagining Brann is going to go up to level 50. The plan right now is that in pre-season they'll go 1 to 10, and that's were you'll earn all the talents that he might have. Then 10 to 50 when the Season begins. The plan is that his progress is going to be Warbound. So if you get him to 40 on your main and you go on your alt he is 40 - the meme of "stand back, I got this" when you go into a Tier 2 Delve. So that should be fun.
How high does Delve gear go?
Sean McCann
:
Right now the plan is the highest tier will get you Mythic 5. We're going to continue to iterate off of that.
Again, that's the initial plan. We'll see as we're all playing through Alpha and Beta (if that's) even changing or not.
Will there be challenge, achievements or other ways to increase the difficulty for more rewards or push personal skill?
Sean McCann
:
So right now before the season starts, we're only going to have 3 tiers: Tiers 1 and 2 during level up, Tier 3 unlocks at max level. When the season begins, we're going to unlock Tiers 4 to 11. And the idea there is that we will give you some form of Title for getting the Tier 11 Delve.
And there's the 13th Delve - we're still going to figure out how to unlock that, but that's basically the highest, highest challenge that we're going to have. It mainly just entails a one room boss fight. That's the, "I've beaten the hardest difficulty of something in Delves," reward wise. The plan is that Tiers 9, 10, and 11 will give the same rewards as Tier 8. It's just mainly there for bragging rights.
Regarding the gear and rewards. We're definitely looking to see what we can do to make it feel better. We already have some changes internally regarding how that moment feels really good if you don't have any keys and things like that. We are a little worried about the random chance to prop a blue or purple chest. We want to make sure what doesn't end up happening is that you feel like the best way to do a Delve is to grind out as many as humanly possible for a 1% chance for something to spawn. In the end, we are worried that that would just make the system feel super grindy, and you just get upset when it doesn't trigger. We do want it to feel really good though, even if you don't have the keys. And so I think this is great feedback. I could take it back to the rest of the team and see what we can do to kind of help pump that up a bit.
Will Delves scale up health and damage or will there be things like affixes?
Sean McCann
:
There are not going to necessarily be affixes, but we are looking at how to make this more interesting as you go up in levels, how we make it harder. I can spoil this a bit. Some of the treasures that you find have a chance to be a mimic. That might not appear in Tier 1, but, you know, in Tiers 3 and 4 you might have to be careful of that, figure out what the strategy is for that. Some of the map mechanics might be a bit harsher at a higher levels. A lot of it becomes that there are different mechanics that you do have to work with. We want to make sure we walk that balance between, it's harder and understandable versus "I'm at Tier 8 and I'm just overwhelmed with different mechanics that I have to juggle in my head at this point." We are working on that. And hopefully it'll be fun when it gets out to everybody.
We're not going to scale down players for the Delves at launch.
Are there plans for Delve Companions other than Brann?
Sean McCann
:
For companions for season one, it's going to be Brann. Season two will be a different companion (I can't say who right now). But the idea is that each season we rotate out a new companion that has new mechanics and things like that to kind of keep things exciting. Brann will always be there in the hub and so he'll just like tip your hat when you walk by him. That's the current plan.
Are there plans for other customizable mount rewards, other than the flying machine?
Sean McCann
:
Right now for the mount, we are just focusing on having that be our main go-to for getting cool customizations. There's a lot of cool stuff coming in there. I'm super, super jazzed about it.
Is there a limit to how many Delves you can run per week?
Sean McCann
:
We're looking at no limits for the Delves per week. We want to make sure that if your friends all want to run a run, you can run one. We are limiting some of the rewards based on the rare and epic keys that you can get. In terms of, "can I just walk in the door and, and play with my friends?" The answer is absolutely yes. We do want to have it that some of the rare keys are easy to come by and we're still figuring out what the numbers of epic and rare keys are that we want to give out? Yes, no limits, however, there are epic keys to limit the amount of rewards because we want to make sure that the answer isn't just run Delves, ignore everything else, ignore the outdoor world. We want to make sure everything feels like it's cohesive. We don't want it to just become a grind and everyone says, "I hate Delves, I wanted you to love Delves." We're being careful with that. But again, personal experience is, I want to be able to log in and play with my friends no matter what. And so because my friends are very disorganized, I'm the only healer, no one wants to tank. It's a full time job to heal all my friends, I want to be able be able to do that whenever I want to. So that's the goal there.
Are Delves something similar to Pandaria scenarios or more like the Torgast experience?
Sean McCann
:
It's a little bit of A and B and neither of them. I like to think of them as an iteration of a lot of the things that we've learned from various scenarios, from Torgast, from islands, and things like that. So kind of consider it like riffing off of all those systems to kind of say, "hey, here's a new version of all those with, a bit of Brann Bronzebeard on the side to spice it up a bit/"
How frequently will Delves rotate?
Sean McCann
:
We're looking into what feels good right now. Right now, we're ball-parking a day. But we also want to try to experiment with if it's a lot faster, does that feel good or does it feel disorienting? I don't even know what this Delve is anymore. We have some crazy ideas of what happens if it changes every hour. Is that just way too fast so that you don't even feel like you can get a grasp on ot, we waited 5 minutes now it's changed. And so, TL;DR, we're going to experiment with it, see what feels fun, maybe try some wacky things on the Alpha and Beta, and see what sticks with that.
Will Delves feature some level of randomness in their encounters? So they feel more different at later stages?
Sean McCann
:
We are using a spawning system so that the Ruby and Slasher is not always spawned in the same exact place. It might be a different creature, that creature might have different abilities. We have some ways to tune that a bit. There's one really big creature that's always going to be a big problem, but he might not spawn here, he might spawn in a different location. So that way you don't get that kind of autopilot. If I know where everything is along with some small things, it is not really a marketable thing, it's more of just something to keep you more interested as you go moment to moment. Along with Brann as an AI companion doing his thing. We're hoping that combines to have it be a little bit of a fresh experience each time you play.
We're also going to be randomizing the scenarios and Delves at max level. So for some of you that have played already, level(ing) up, it's rescuing a bunch of the Earthen, but there's a chance at max level, it rotates to be work with the Arathi and just burn everything. Here's, here's a torch, burn all the webs, burn all the Nerubians, just like kill it with fire. And so the idea there also has some randomness.
Will there be anything dynamic in the maps and their layouts?
Sean McCann
:
When we say maps? I'm assuming that means like, hey, the map is different this time. The maps are largely static. There is one particular map that I guess I can't talk about yet because we haven't talked about that area. That will have some dynamic parts to it where one wing will be opened with one scenario, another wing will be closed.
A lot of what you'll see is us just kind of experimenting and seeing, hey, what's fun with the Delves? What, what could work really well? And then we have other things that will be dynamic in terms of like some minor things of just like, hey, the spawns will be different when you go. It is not always the same composition of, it's always 2 melee and a ranged there. The treasures that you can find in there will be randomized too. You'll get the spike of this time I got the one minute vulnerability shield right before boss, and this time I got it in a different location, things like that. So there will be some amount of dynamic changing from run to run to kind of make you feel a little fresh. But in terms of the actual geometry changing like we saw in Torgast, that won't be a thing that we're doing.
Are Delves going to be outside of the new continent like the Dragonflight racing?
Sean McCann
:
Not right now. Right now we wanted to make sure that they were focused on the new continent that we're going to. Also just trying to figure out like, "what is a Delve? What makes a Delve fun?" Once we have that foundation set for base, then we can look at, "ok, where do you want to take them next? What makes sense?" It's a little easier to add a Dragonflying race to old places, if we're going to make a new area or retrofit current areas. Delves require art, terrain changes, things like that. But we have talked internally and, you know, like, hey, wouldn't it be cool if we put, you know, a Delve, you know, this place or that place?
Will Delves progression experience be exposed to the Wow API for third party sites to access?
Sean McCann
:
Yeah, we're going to get some data out there so folks can use it. It might not be everything, but there will be some things that you can use.
Warbands
Any plans for making the Warband login background a collectible to collect in game.
Sean McCann
:
That would be cool. Right now, for launch, we are breaking the character screen in a ton of ways to make this work. So I think we're going to start with one that we think looks really cool, now that we've broken everything and fixed it so it works and looks awesome. Then we can look at what the possibilities in the future to expand on that.
Will there be any additions to the WoW phone app for Warbands?
Michael Bybee
:
Warbands? No, we're not planning any additions to the WoW phone app for Warbands.
Can we mix characters on different servers in the same Warband?
Michael Bybee
:
Yeah, that's actually part of the point of it. It's pretty cool the way the Warband system works. You will have a list of all of your characters across all of the realms in your region, and you will pick which characters you want to actually show up in your Warband around the campfire. And those are your top four, but that's a selection all of your characters across all of your realms.
In Warbands, will it be possible to give Soulbound items to my own characters?
Michael Bybee
:
Not exactly, but what we've done is we've added a new designation called Warbound. And also there's a Warbound Until Equipped designation. So once equipped, it still becomes Soulbound and then can't be traded, but the intent is that you'll be able to actually get quite a lot of gear at endgame - maybe not the max level, highest item level gear that you're collecting, but a little bit below that - that you'll be able to collect to share with alts. We're still working on exactly where and when and how much, but that's definitely something that we're going to take a lot of feedback from on the Alpha and really iterate on, because we want Warbands in general to feel super meaningful. Part of that is being able to do content and be able to gear up some of your alts so that you don't have to start from scratch every single time.
Are there any plans for mixing the follower dungeons feature with Warbands resulting in doing dungeons with alts as followers?
Sean McCann
:
That would be awesome. All we could say is nothing for launch right now, but we talk about it a lot. And so that would be pretty cool.
When the Warband system launches we'll be able to collect all types of transmogs with one character. Will this work retroactively with the items we collected before War Within? For example, if I got Tusks of Mannoroth on a mage during Dragonflight, could I pass them to my warrior during the War Within?
Michael Bybee
:
I actually don't know how that works with the existing items in your bags. If you've still got the item, I think it's very likely that it's still going to work once you first log in, or when you go to equip it, because the action in the database will still trigger. But I'm not 100% sure. I think it would suck if it didn't though. So we should just make sure that works.
(later)
I will say there was a question that came up in the earlier section about whether or not if you had a piece of gear in your character's bank when Warbands launched, if you would actually get the transmog for that gear like the Manneroth horns and I did follow up between interviews and the design team confirmed that that it should work that way, that's their intention. And so going forward, if that's not how it works, we'll see that as a bug and we'll get it fixed because really, you shouldn't have to collect things like that again.
With Warbands, is there any chance of any character being able to utilize professions of another character without having to log into each character to perform a task?
Sean McCann
:
You still log into the characters, but we at least have the shared bank now, so that it's a little bit easier to share things back and forth. You don't have to mail . The mail system is going to be devastated when Warbands come out because people are just going to put stuff in the bank. So, it's the closest you'll get to that.
Can we get double click to log in functionality for the Character Screen?
Michael Bybee
:
The double click to log in. Absolutely. I think we should do that. I believe it's in the works. I'm going to talk to the team just to double check on that and make sure. But I think we should absolutely add that. So I'll make sure that we talk to the team and see where that's at on the road map.
Is pose selection for the Character Screen going to be an option in the future?
Michael Bybee
:
I know that's something the team wants to do in terms of just giving you more customization options for the Warband selection screen. It's something we're still talking about though and I'm not exactly sure where we're going to land, so I don't want to commit us to anything. But we do think the idea is cool.
Is there any way to unlock more than four characters to show on the Character Screen?
Sean McCann
:
I don't think at the moment. The way I've been phrasing it is we basically broke the character select screen and then rebuilt it to get it the way it is right now. And so I'd say, for now, probably no, but this is also the start of us doing a lot of crazier things with the character select screen. So if it's a thing that everyone really wants we, we can see what can happen. But for now it's going to be four unless there's something I don't know about. I'm not the Warbands person, I'm the Delves person.
Michael Bybee
:
Part of the consideration is the more characters you put up on that screen, the harder it is for each of those characters to really look cool. And so we think the four characters strikes a balance of you being able to pick four characters that you want to show off and every time you log in, you're like, yeah, that's my crew. And you can see them close enough that you can start to get see details of their armor and all that other stuff. So that's a little bit of the choice that's being made there. But obviously, if everybody's complaining, like man, I just really want to be able to have five. I want my five man group showing up there. I would not be at all surprised if we find a way to make that work.
How much are Warbands going to help with gearing your alts?
Michael Bybee
:
A lot!
Sean McCann
: I was going to say the same thing, a lot. I think one example we have a currency that you can get in Delves or across most of the expansion under coin and Delves has a merchant that will let you buy Warbound gear. I'm really excited because it's going to streamline that gear process a lot for alts. I'm an altoholic and so I think it's just a massive leap up from what we currently have with opening the chest and all those things and mailing it. I joked around before, like the postmaster is in dire straits with Warbounds because everyone, everything is going to be in the bank. So we'll make a quest about that maybe coming down the line. But yeah, it'll help out a bunch.
Michael Bybee
:
I really can't emphasize enough how big of a mental shift this is for the development team and the way that we think about the way that players play World of Warcraft, the way you all play. This is a shift away from very character specific data and character specific thinking towards really incorporating more account-wide, or as much as we can. You probably saw that and felt that a little bit in Dragonflight. But with Warbands, we really have the tools to make that be more widespread. I think you could just generally expect more and more and more stuff in the game to be shared amongst your alts, and that includes making it easier for you to gear up your alts so that you can play where you want to play and with the character you want to play.
On the current Alpha build, a quest needs to be completed twice in order to collect the cloth and plate appearances of the quest reward. Are there plans to open up the "collect everything on everyone" mindset to quest rewards?
Michael Bybee
:
I see what you mean. So you finish a quest, you get options between different options. You pick one, you only get that transmog and you have to redo it again to get the transmog for the others even in a Warband system. Is that the specific issue? If that's it, that sounds to me like that part of the Warband system hasn't been finished yet. It should work in such a way that when you complete that, it completes it for all of the different characters that could get that particular piece. At least that's what makes sense in my mind. That's me saying, I actually don't know, but I'm going to follow up.
Are there any plans for account-bound gold with the Warband system?
Sean McCann
:
For Warband gold, you deposit the gold into the Warband bank, and then you withdraw it, on other characters. So that's the current plan. I'm upset that we didn't call it the Warbank, but, you know, that's their decision. I run the Delves, not the Warband team.
Story
With the focus on a complete story progressing over the next few expansions are there any plans to update and try new methods of in-game story telling devices?
Sean McCann
:
There's no plans right now but we are discussing. Everyone plays the game so we see what parts are confusing, what parts maybe are being lost, and so we do keep an eye on those things. But there's no plans right now that we can talk about.
Can we get any more context on the fate of Dalaran?
Sean McCann
:
Nope. That's something we're saving for launch. I know it's very mysterious what happened on there, but yeah we won't say anything until we launch.
With the story becoming more important, what steps are being taken to get people in-game up to speed on the story so far and familiar with characters.
Sean McCann
:
I think part of that is also how we start with the story. We want to make sure that for folks coming back it's not Allyria: you listen to the audio cast, right? And you read the book, and did you read that one manga that got released in that one area?" We want to make sure we're going in introducing the characters in a way that you can hop on and the people that are familiar with them are able to just go, "ok, I know all this, we can get focused on the story." We are aware that there's a lot of history in WoW. It is a good balance you have to work on between, "yeah, I know, let's keep going," and things like that. There are internal discussions about that. We need to go further, but in terms of publicly, that's what we're aiming at to make sure you're not overwhelmed by people, who is this person, who is that person, stuff like that.
Raids are very important for the story and players can experience that through LFR, but some are rarely able to experience it because they can't go through the raid. Are there any proposals to make raids more focused and inviting for solo players?
Sean McCann
:
I think we're looking at stuff that we can do for that. Both "does the story need to end in the raid?" and "if the story does end in the raid, how do we help out folks with that?" For now, we can say totally noted and we're looking into what we can do for those sorts of things.
The amount of lore you can find hidden around is great. Will that tie into the main story as the expansion goes along or remain as just fun little lore bits?
Sean McCann
:
I think a little bit of A, little bit of B. I think if we ended up having everything you find tied into the main story that ends up making the story actually feel smaller; how is it possible Anduin was everywhere even over here. Versus some things are just meant to build a world, and I think the way we see it is we divide it into two areas: are we building up the main story or are we building up the world? To plug Delves, a lot of what Delves are going to do is try to help build more of the world., so you'll get keys of here's more about the Arathi culture, here's more about the Earthen, things like that.
Can you speak at all about the intentions behind narrative design for this expansion? In Dragonflight it felt like the story largely took a backseat or was hidden in lots of side quests.
Sean McCann
:
I think now that we have this trilogy that we're planning, we have a lot of things that we know we want to hit. We had that for Dragonflight, but Dragonflight also was us saying, hey, we went to the afterlife, we had a lot of big things, we need a moment to chill out a bit. Not everything needs to be, we need to save the world. We can just help a Tuskar kid. I think we had a little bit of a theme of Kalecgos and family. I don't remember, that was kind of a light thing we did... I'm just joking. I helped with Kalecgos, so I know all about that. So that's why we saw that Dragonflight was a little more chilled out and why we see now we're going to gear up again with War Within. We had a pause, now let's keep going. That's at least a little bit of the insight I can give into that stuff.
Classes
For the first public Alpha build are there any new Hero Talent trees debuting?
Michael Bybee
:
Oh yeah, absolutely! There are four. I don't remember exactly all four of them, but the the one I was most excited about was the Voidweaver Shadow Priest.
Fun side fact: my son plays World of Warcraft as well - actually my whole family - my wife, my Dad, my uncle, my son - we have a huge World of Warcraft family, but my son specifically is a Shadow Priest fan and he has been like, "Dad, Dad, when are you going to show the Shadow Priest talents, c'mon Dad, what am I going to do for Shadow Priest?" And I'm actually really excited that with this Alpha build we'll actually have one of the Shadow Priest trees available for him and anybody who is participating in the Alpha to be able to play.
One of the cool things about Voidweaver is that it gives you, contrary to what I said a minute ago, this actually does give you a new button which I think is really cool. It's a Void Pool that essentially you can put underneath monsters and it will do damage to anybody that's in the pool, but it also slows them, and there are other passive abilities that you can build out as part of that Talent Tree. Essentially the theme is that you are opening a portal to the Void and you are sucking in all life. You can incorporate that with your other abilities. I think that's a really cool thing, and frankly, I'm interested to see what he and everyone else thinks about that. Because I thought that was a cool idea.
Is there any concern that classes will become over-bloated with the number of new abilities and Hero Talents being added?
Michael Bybee
:
Actually, I think that's a big part of the design goal with Hero Talents, and where we've gone with Hero Talents is to try to avoid that. So if you think about how we've done rolling out new talents in the past, a lot of times that has ended up with just another layer in the talents system, another row of talents that just typically gives you a whole bunch more buttons. What we were trying to do with the Hero Talents system is, instead of just extending the talent tree, give you a little bit more of, not exactly horizontal progression, but the ability to take the things that are awesome about that class, especially the fantasy of that class, and really expand on it.
It's located in the center of the UI, it's sort of a symbolic location, but also the intent there is to take things you already have. For example, one of the Warrior Hero Talents adds a lot of flavor to existing abilities that you have and really makes those existing spells, existing things that you are doing, feel way more interesting. It's the mountain thing I'm talking about; it adds the lightning effects and it adds the different abilities that you can do, it adds different effects to existing abilities that you have, to make them feel more themed towards that lightning thing/idea. And that's sort of what we are doing with all of the different Hero Talents. Each of them is in a different space. Some of them we are adding new buttons, but for the broad collection of all of them, the intent there is to make it feel more thematically expanded and less just bloat.
And of course we are interested in feedback, we've been taking a lot of feedback from players on this anyway, through the blogs we've been posting. And we'll get feedback from the Alpha including folks on this call who have maybe played and have some thoughts about how it went. We'll take that, we'll iterate on it, the goal would be to get to the end where it doesn't feel bloated, it feels great.
Should we expect to see Class design changes besides Hero Talents in the War Within?
Michael Bybee
:Neither Sean nor I work with the Class Design team super closely, but I do know that they are working on additional changes beyond Hero Talents. The intent is for Hero Talents to be the biggest rollout of changes for Classes with this expansion, but we're always tweaking things and listening to player feedback. We did that throughout all of the Patches in Dragonflight and that's not going to stop just when the expansion comes out. We want to make sure that all of the classes feel good to play, and that may mean making some adjustments along the way. That said, I think that because neither one of us is super close to the Class Design team we don't have specifics.
Is there any chance more specs can move towards support styles like Augmentation Evoker?
Michael Bybee
:
I don't think you all want more support classes. I think that would be fantastic. But when we posted the the Priest Hero Spec we got a lot of feedback that it was not what people were looking for. So we made some adjustments there; really, we listened to feedback. That's the whole reason we're doing the blog posts about the Hero Talents.
Coming out of BlizzCon, it was one of the things the design team said was most important; we had to get these out in front of people because we don't feel like we can develop that without player feedback. We don't like the experience where it feels like you always have to have a particular Class spec of any kind, even a support spec, so we're trying to find ways to balance it out. Making sure the players have options and feel like they can play the Class that they think is interesting is an important value for the team. So it's something we'll keep talking about. But absolutely, keep giving us feedback because we really listen to that stuff.
Are there any plans to allow for more visual customization of classes with glyphs or even quests?
Michael Bybee
:
I don't know of any specific glyphs that we're adding with the War Within right out of the gate. One of the things I think is really noticeable with Dragonflight, and will continue in the War Within, is a commitment from our team to continue to make more ways for players to express themselves with their characters; more customizations, more options, more different ways that you can visually show this is who I am or who I want be today.
So not specific about glyphs, but it is definitely a part of how the team thinks about things. We talk about ways that we can add more customizations all the time. Sometimes they may show up as glyphs or they may show up as other things.
Sean McCann
:
Are we bringing back other solo adventure and quests around certain classes? Not necessarily, but we are excited that again, with Delves being a kind of foundation for what we're doing, it does open the possibility for us to look at what are other cool things that we can do. Like, Bybee mentioned, engine improvements; this is an improvement to the engine where we now have a pretty easy way to do this stuff. And so in the future, when we are looking at, hey, what do you want to do? It's like why not a Delve, why don't we do a spin on a Delve? Why don't we do this? So there's a lot of cool things that we can do once this goes live and we have a good foundation for the system.
Are there any plans to expand on spell effect reskins like the former Covenant Abilities options that were added recently?
Michael Bybee
:
The reason that we revamped the Covenant abilities is because now that Shadowlands is over, the theme of those Covenant abilities doesn't make a lot of sense in a War Within world. We wanted to make some of those abilities stick with Classes, and they became a core part of the kit. We just wanted to make sure that they felt thematically appropriate and not like a holdover from an expansion that a lot of players now playing this game didn't get to experience, and so it wouldn't make sense to them.
If there's a specific reskin that you're looking for, I'd be curious to know about it. Maybe we can take a look at it.
Since Single Minded Fury is remaining an option on the Talent Tree, could Enhance Shamans ever expect to see two-handed options again? Or maybe even Colossus Protection Warriors using a two-hander and shield.
Michael Bybee
:
I think it's a cool idea, but I'm not sure that I am aware that the Class team has made any decisions in that direction. Just expanding a little bit on that, I think one of the goals with Hero Talents in general is to double down on some of the Class Fantasy, and one thing we really want to do with the War Within is make it so that you can play the Class that you think is cool, has the fantasy that you line up with, and not feel like you're ostracized from doing Mythic+ and high-end content, etc. It's one of the big goals. I know that's not answering your question, but it is something that we think about a lot.
Races
Is there a possibility of seeing more Allied Races added to War Within? Maybe Nerubians?
Michael Bybee
:
We don't have any more Allied Races for the War Within to announce at this time, but frankly, the Earthen are cool. Because of the status of this Alpha build, you got to see some of the Earthen, but only the NPC models. I think when you can play as an Earthen Allied Race and really get a sense for it, I think you're going to really enjoy it. We've got a ton of really cool customization and one of my favorite things about the Earthen actually is how much work has gone in from the story, narrative quest design team, everybody to build out a whole background and culture for these Earthen. There have been Earthen in World Warcraft for years. And these Earthen are unique, they have a unique culture. You start to get a sense of that in the Isle of Dorn, the first zone that you quest through in the expansion. But they really have a lot of their own unique personality, they've got different factions within the the zones that are maybe not always in agreement with each other. I think that personally, my plan is to get to max level, unlock Earthen, and then my main for this expansion is going to be an Earthen, probably a warrior, maybe a shaman have not decided.
With cross-faction being included and updated more and more in the game, is there a chance that race restrictions will be lifted? I'd like to be a Vulpera Paladin.
Michael Bybee
:
Yeah, I hear you. I think a Vulpera Paladin would be really cool. You say race restrictions, we say a bunch of extra animation and artwork that we have to do to make that work for a Vulpera Paladin. Unfortunately, especially Paladins and classes that have a lot of extra abilities, it does require work from the team to be able to make that work. Every time we talk about it we feel super passionately about making that. But at this time, we are actually not ready to announce any additional Paladins or other class extensions beyond what you've currently seen.
Any plans to let Evokers have different visage forms? I want to be a panda.
Michael Bybee
:
Unfortunately, the answer is no, we are not currently planning to extend the visage forms for Evokers.
Raids
Is follower raids something you're looking at?
Michael Bybee
:
Let's see how follower dungeons work now. With this specific feature, what we're doing is put it out in Dragonflight at the end of the expansion where normal dungeons aren't getting as much play so that we can get feedback on the system and iterate on it and make sure that it's great. With the War Within we're changing that so that followers are going to be available in the level up dungeons right out of the gate, where many more players will play them, and we'll be able to get more feedback and see how they respond at that point. It also allows us to push stories through dungeons and allow players to play them in full groups or solo. Then, based on how that goes and the kinds of feedback we're getting from players, we may choose to do more with the system or we may just leave it where it is. It really depends on how much players are engaging with it and how much they like what we're doing with followers.
Has there been any consideration for smaller 1 to 2 or 3 boss raids?
Michael Bybee
:
Yes, but that's always been true. Basically, the way that we think about that kind of experience is looking at what's happening in the game, how players are responding to it, what we think we need, especially knowing what's coming down the road map. Those are the kinds of things that we might add if we were feeling like there's a really big, cool experience coming but between now and then we wanna make sure the players have something else that is fun and engaging. So that's when, in the past, when we've added smaller raid experiences. I don't have anything today to announce about future raids and future raid experiences outside of the War Within, but I can say it's a tool in the toolbox that we'll use when we think it's appropriate. That said, I am very excited about the War Within raid. Come on, you get to fight Nerubians in the Nerubian palace. Queen Ansurek is awesome, and the fight at the end of that raid is incredible. I personally am insanely thrilled to be actually visiting the Nerubians this time. So I think that that raid is going to be fantastic. I hope you love it.
What considerations are being given to the difficulty between Mythic, Heroic, Normal, and LFR?
Michael Bybee
:
We talked a lot about those difficulty challenges and I would say the last two bosses in Amirdrassil were on a totally different difficulty level. It's something that we talk about, and we talk about whether or not that met our goals and how we want to adjust that going into the future. We're balancing the accessibility of the experience, where more players can play it and have that experience, with the challenge that we want players to feel and ultimately feel like they overcame. There were a couple of big difficulty spikes when Amirdrassil first came out. We've largely adjusted those so they feel a lot better now than they did when they first launched. But that's the kind of thing that we'll talk about and try to smooth out a little bit more with the War Within.
Can you explain what verticality means in the raid?
Michael Bybee
:
Ion mentioned that in the WoWCast and he was talking specifically about the Queen Ansurek encounter at the end of the raid and how, if you're fighting giant spiders, it makes sense that there is some sort of verticality. So the team is working through some specifics on the mechanics there. I think he intentionally didn't share a lot of details, other than the idea of being able to ascend webbing, to be able to do different parts of the encounter. The team's still working on that, and when we're ready to share it with players we'll absolutely put it out on the Alpha, get a lot of feedback, etc. I know this is something that the team talks about a lot because broadly speaking for World of Warcraft encounters in general, raiding encounters specifically, oftentimes the idea is, can we just have a giant flat arena where we could see all the encounters, telegraph, all the moves, etc. And that's great for understanding what's going on in the fight. But maybe the design team would like to add a little bit more dynamic movement or have things that move up and down, etc. in the fight. And it's something that we've been working on and generally a design goal that we've been working towards over time. It's a very big cop out to say it's going to be totally awesome. I think you will love it. I don't have any specifics to share.
Are there any plans to change the rigid 20% structure of Raids?
Michael Bybee
:
No, we're not planning to make any major structural changes to Mythic raids for the War Within season 1.
Is the team happy with the idea of private auras in mythic raids?
Michael Bybee
:
I think we've been pretty publicly clear on this point, which is to say that the way the functionality is set up, right now, it can make certain aspects of our raid encounters trivial in a way that is not intended by the design team. So we've made some specific changes to limit where some private auras can actually share details with other players. I think we're going to continue to watch the space and pay attention to it. There's a balancing act that we want to be really careful here, where we don't want to completely destroy gameplay that some players find really fun, and is at the highest tier of difficulty. Sometimes it's really required while at the same time, we want to make it so that there's still space for us to design great content that doesn't immediately result in, "well, here's exactly how you solve that with an add on," and then you don't have to think about it again.
Will we continue to see Fated seasons?
Michael Bybee
:
Maybe if you continue to like them, we'll continue to do them. Those are the kinds of things that we really like, that absolutely comes from player feedback. If it's the kind of thing that if everybody hates, and they really just do not want to do that in season 4, you probably won't see it again. But we got a lot of positive feedback from the Shadowlands version and so we're really excited about the Awakened Raids in season 4 and the way the rotation is going to work. I think if players continue to find that to be interesting, we'll continue to do that sort of thing.
One of the things that I think is really exciting is that we're not just , "hey, here's a Fated raid. Good luck, have fun," but we're also introducing other features like the Mists of Pandaria remix feature that's going to be live and active around at the same time. So for folks for whom the Fated Raids aren't so exciting, and maybe they're not into this particular Mythic+ rotation, there's going to be a whole other set of content, including some raids and dungeons, that you'll be able to do from Mists of Pandaria in a whole new way that I think is super exciting.
When we do something like a Fated Raid season, it's not could have done a whole new Raid or we're going to do this Fated Raid season. It's more about we want to make sure that folks have stuff to do in this time frame while we're finishing up the next expansion, here is an option that we think is acceptable. If it's not something that people love at all, then we would find something else, but it probably would not resolve in yet another raid tier in that time frame.
Is the permanent raid spot issue for certain specs and classes due to raid buffs being locked something that's on the radar?
Michael Bybee
:
What you're getting at is the issue of some classes have raid buffs that make them required for this raid and as long as you have one (...) then it's good to go. If you don't have a raid buff, then depending on your DPS, you may not even be allowed. Yes, that's something we talk about. It's something that we're working on, some adjustments for Hero Class talents and class abilities in general. But I don't have anything specific to talk about there yet. It's just something that we know is an issue and we're trying to make improvements on.
Is there any change in relative mythic difficulty, especially with regard to how hard the bosses are week one and how quickly they are nerfed?
Michael Bybee
:
That is one thing we have been talking about a lot. We would like to smooth that out for the War Within. So, hopefully, as we start to see those show up for testing, especially the earlier difficulties, you'll start to see some of those changes. Our overall goal would be that the mythic experience feels a little bit less like a wall and more like a hill that you're climbing and you're getting better at.
Do you have any plans to try smaller or mini raids later on in patches? And if so, maybe some smaller raid size experiments?
Michael Bybee
:
I think anything is possible. The reality is we've actually already done this. We think when we think about the Dawn of the Infinite Mega Dungeon, a lot of the way that we talk about that is as if it was a 5 player raid experience. So that is it, the difficulty of the initial instance was very much on point. I don't know about everybody here who tried that, but for my group, it was really it was a progression experience. We were pushing to get through to the end of that and finally take out the the final boss and it felt good and we'd like to do more of that. Actually, that's one of the reasons that we've shifted the Mythic+ track such that it starts at a where what used to be a higher tier of Mythic+ so that the earlier tiers now Heroic dungeons and the Mythic zero is more in line with a higher difficulty of content without a timer so that guilds or groups who want to do that can actually push into that content. More broadly speaking, I think you can see with things like Plunderstorm, Season of Discovery, the Mists of Pandaria remix, this team is experimenting more than we ever have before. I would not put it past us to do something like that and to continue to push boundaries and what it means to be World of Warcraft content. But I don't have any specific things to say about that today. Just stay tuned. We're trying to do a lot of cool stuff.
Mythic+
You surprise the community with some fun new ideas like Plunderstorm or MoP remix. Are there plans to do something similar for Mythic+ enthusiasts? Some exciting playgrounds or good test or try new ideas?
Michael Bybee
:
One experiment is the revamp to the way the Mythic+ dungeon system is working, which starts with this next season. We're trying that out to get player feedback on it. The big shift there is that we heard from players who were playing high end Mythic+ dungeons, that the lower end ones just started to feel like they weren't meaningful, essentially Mythic 2 through 9 just really felt like small, iterative difficulty spikes, but didn't really feel meaningful.
What we've done is we've reset the system so that Mythic 10 is the beginning of the Mythic system. The really important part about that is there's a whole bunch of players who haven't engaged in Mythic+, partly because the timer feels like a lot of pressure or they want to be able to play more like they do in a raid where you can play with your group, take down a boss, try to come back a little later and take down another boss, have a little bit more accessible approach to it.
The other part of that change is giving players who need a little bit more time or feel a lot of pressure around the time or an opportunity to engage in what we think of as five man raid content. So that's what the other side of that reset was. We are absolutely talking about other ways that we can experiment with the Mythic+ system and with people who like that kind of content, but we're not really ready to talk about any of that today. But stay tuned. I think what you're seeing with Plunderstorm and the Mists of Pandaria remix is just the beginning of what I see is a big change in the way the team works and thinks about the game.
Have you ever considered converting Mythic+ Affixes to have positive effects, along with buffing the baseline difficulty of the Dungeon?
Michael Bybee
:
Yeah, that's actually something that we've talked about. Again, don't have anything specific to announce about it right now, but it's the kind of thing that we talk about, trying to push the boundaries of what this experience is, make it more interesting, etc. Those are the kinds of changes that we talk about.
Sean McCann
:
I can add too, when we're working on delves where you might have seen like some of the treasure chests that you got that give you little buffs, Morgan Day was like, "are you putting in positive affixes?" "No, no, I'm not doing that. Just a little bit." So that's the nice thing about Delves, we can experiment with stuff in there and then that can go to the broader game too. So we're having some fun in there and go, hey, this is a really fun, let's apply it somewhere else.
Are there any new Mythic+ affixes or reworks, including seasonal affixes?
Michael Bybee
:
Outside of the Mythic+ rework that I mentioned earlier. Not exactly. We do look at different affix options and we're talking about that for the War Within. I don't have a specific affix to announce today. I wish I did. Actually, I'm very curious to know exactly where they landed on that. But, we are definitely talking about that and trying to make it a little bit more interesting.
Is there a plan to revisit the Mythic+ system, especially regarding key acquisition, rerolling fishing, picking a key, vendor/tokens. Are there any plans to address affixes both seasonal and weekly?
Michael Bybee
:
That's a whole lot of questions that say, "hey, we want more cool Mythic+ stuff to do. Hey, are you going to make any changes with that?" The short answer is not mechanically for the larger system, but definitely what we like is the idea of rotating dungeons from season to season. We like the idea of continuing to iterate on affixes that are fun and don't make the experience mind numbing or miserable. As we go forward into future Mythic+ seasons, you can continue to see us rotating dungeons in and out, pulling in dungeons from past expansions as well as using dungeons from the current expansion, and then adding affixes along the way to try to make it as interesting as possible. And then listening to feedback about what people do and don't like. A lot of the core mechanics though, things like the tokens, things like the participation of the Great Vault, we feel like a lot of that is really working pretty well right now for most players. So you won't see major changes in that system.
As in all expansions before, will there be a Realm First plus 10 keystone Achievement?
Michael Bybee
:
It probably won't show up in the same exact way because of the Mythic+ structural changes that we're making starting with Season 4 in Dragonflight where everything is shifting. But you can expect to continue to see the great achievements for folks who had hit big milestones for the first time.
Is there anything on Mythic+ Seasonal affixes or are they gone with the rotating dungeons?
Michael Bybee
:
Rotating dungeons is a big part of it, but we are absolutely looking at ways we can add affixes that can mix up the experience a lot. You can expect to see more iterative editions in terms of affixes. We're not going to completely revamp the entire Mythic+ affix pool. But we definitely want to continue to add to that and we see that the mixing up of dungeons has a more impactful experience on how those dungeons actually feel season to season.
PvP
What is the number of people and roles for the Solo Queue RBG setup? Will it be the same as Blitz?
Michael Bybee
:
I'm going to be just completely candid and say that I think myself and Sean are not the best people to answer that question exactly because neither one of us works directly with the PvP team. The understanding is, though, that Blitz was super popular, we think that players really loved it, we think it's a great way to play the game, so definitely bringing that back. Then with the new Battleground that we've added in the War Within, we think the combo of those gives PvP players a lot of new options.
Any news or measures to mitigate the long queues in PvP solo shuffle?
Michael Bybee
:
I don't have anything to announce about that right now. Thanks for the question though. Long queues in PvP solo shuffle. I'm going to ask the team about that.
Can we expect solo PvP to continue as the rated PvP game mode in the War Within? Are there any changes to it?
Michael Bybee
:
Rated Solo Shuffle is absolutely going to be something that you can continue to see. In case it wasn't clear from some of the updates and things that you guys have seen already as part of this event, we are going to be introducing a Battleground Blitz rated mode that will hopefully make it a little bit more interesting. It'll be something you can queue for in addition to the current rated battlegrounds. The new Battleground is intended to also add additional content for core PvP players.
We're really excited that with the War Within, we're actually bringing more core PvP content to players with the new battleground with new rated modes and frankly, with pulling PvP out of the Great Vault so that we can actually do itemization and give you rewards in a way that is a little bit better tailored to how PvP players would prefer to get them. So hopefully, that's, that's a good start. We want to continue to do more for PvP players as we go through the expansion.
I think I saw another question in here about Plunderstorm as well, and I just want to jump in and say, we feel like it was a really awesome experiment. It's a totally new way of playing World of Warcraft. It does have PvP but that's not all of the focus of that experience. There's a whole bunch of other elements in that mode.
Gear
Are there any changes to the loot systems coming in War Within?
Michael Bybee
:
Not really. I think the general sense is the biggest system is just sort of doubling down on the upgrade system, doubling down on the Great Vault, adding Delves into the Great Vault, and then trying to balance the need for folks who maybe aren't as into high level raiding and very difficult content, giving them some ability to continue to progress their characters and feel invested while at the same time still giving rewarding content for the highest end Raiders and Mythic+ players. One of the things you can think about when you think about itemization is the current upgrade system. It has this curve where early on you really, really skyrocket your item level very quickly and then it tapers off over time and flattens out. One of the things that we'd like to do is make it feel a little bit more rewarding, in that long tail taper, for players who are pushing the hardest content. I'm not ready to share the specific details there, but I can say it's a goal that the design team has for the expansion and something we want to continue to work on.
Will Tier pieces drop from Delves or just be available via the Vault and Catalyst?
Sean McCann
:
I don't know necessarily about Tier pieces. I do know that we have plans to have something in the Great Vault, and I know that at the super high level of Delves, we might gear up to Mythic 5? But that's at the super high level, Tier 8, Tier 9, of Delves. I don't know if we've gotten as granular as Tier Sets in Delves yet for our plans.
Michael Bybee
:
For those of you who've seen the WoWCast already, Ion mentioned that one of the goals that will continue in the War Within is making Tier Sets more broadly available for doing a variety of content: showing up in the Vault, allowing players to get access to them, so that's definitely something that we'd want to continue to do. We're still iterating on exactly what the rewards plan for Delves and the rest of the endgame content is. It wouldn't surprise me if that ends up being a pretty good way to build up your gear up to a certain level, including Tier Sets.
Are there going to be any new Legendary items in this expansion?
Michael Bybee
:
I don't think we're ready to talk about Legendaries yet, but thanks for the question.
Are you happy with the way people are gearing and especially how fast they gear correctly?
Michael Bybee
:
I think the best way to answer that question is just to say that I don't think we're ever really happy with the way gearing is working. And that's just because we'll do something that we think is great and we'll get feedback and realize that there are parts that didn't work as well. Then we'll iterate on that and we'll think, ok, this is great, and then we'll get feedback on that and think, ok, well, maybe we try it this way.
The team has got great plans for making sure that the existing upgrade system that we rolled out in Dragonflight continues in the War Within and we want to make it better. We definitely want to make it so people who are playing Delves and playing outdoor content have access to Tier Sets and have access to better gear, while at the same time making sure that people who are playing the higher end content feel like there's real meaning for the work that they're putting in for that, and that their accomplishment matters to them. It's a little bit of a cop out to say that we'll continue to listen to feedback. We're going to continue to iterate on it and we want to continue to make it better. I think the day that we're totally happy with it, though, is the day that maybe the game ends... which I hope never happens because we want to continue to make this thing better and make it great for all of us playing.
Will Tier Gear still focus on specs or will they look at hooks for Hero Talents?
Michael Bybee
:
We are, especially now for Season 1, going to do a totally different set of Tier Gear for every Hero Talent. That said, obviously the Tier abilities, will have to go with them. I mean, the visual look of them. The reality is, we like Tier Sets, we know that you like Tier sets. So we're going to keep doing them.
You can buy PvP transmog sets and weapons from older seasons with Marks of Honor. Any plans to do something similar with PvE sets?
Michael Bybee
:
No, we really like the Great Vault system for that. It feels like the combination of that, plus the ability to get tokens for set pieces really made set pieces more accessible to players. But at the same time, made it feel like you were really achieving something when you got the high end pieces. The it's a very different need that PvP players have for gear, especially when you're competing directly against other players in one-on-one or multi-on-multi combat. That's part of the reason why we're giving PvP players the ability to go back and be more direct about the gear that they pick up. You will not see that in the War Within for PvE content.
Are there any plans to help players that just want to focus on Mythic+ and PvE?
Michael Bybee
:
I think we feel like the the addition of more ways to gear up your character, the upgrade system in general, has made that kind of high end content a lot more accessible broadly speaking. But I think you're right, if you're at the absolute top Tier and you're pushing the high end keys, a lot of that doesn't really work for you, and you feel probably like you have to participate in all of the content in order to stay competitive. I don't have anything specific to talk about there, but it is a problem that we're aware of and it's something that we talk about.
Could we expect to see more flail weapons in the future? Especially two-handed flails?
Michael Bybee
:
I think the art team really, really, really loves working on flails. So I would hope to see more in the future, but I don't have a specific one to talk about now.
Is there any way dinars will make an appearance in non-Fated seasons, giving everyone the chance to work towards very rare loot and target special trinkets?
Michael Bybee
:
At this time, we're not talking about doing anything like that. But if it's something that the community really feels strongly about, we'll definitely bring it up and see what we can do.
Professions
Are there any plans to return to Archeology?
Sean McCann
:
I think we dipped our toes a bit in Archeology that you saw in one of our recent patches. I think we're seeing how well we enjoy that and how well we want to expand upon that. I don't actually know if we are doing anything for base launch, but at least that was us going, "ok, what's the evolution of Archeology if we try this." So we are experimenting a bit with things on there.
I think we saw some good feedback of "hey, we like this, but it wasn't really archaeology that we had before/" And then just kind of see where we go next with it? But I wouldn't expect anything for base launch for the expansion.
With our first look into professions, it looks like Herbalism has a mini-game with a farm in Harrowfall. Will all professions have a secondary form of engagement like that?
Michael Bybee
:
No. The reality is that Herbalism engagement you are talking about made sense in the context of that zone, and it makes sense with the context of what you are trying to do overall in Harrowfall. But rather than try to be prescriptive and say every single profession has to have exactly this thing, we're trying to make a fun experience, what makes sense in that space. Broadly speaking, with professions in the War Within, you can expect it to feel like an extension of Dragonflight. We're going to use the exact same Profession system, we're going to use the Crafting Orders that were added in Dragonflight. We are adding NPC Crafting Orders, which I think will be fun and will allow players to engage with the crafting orders system more readily, rather than try to compete with each other; the top few people are grabbing the crafting orders at the top of the list. But broadly speaking, we are not rolling out a brand new content feature for every single profession this expansion, but that may be something to look at as players give us feedback. We might expand that over time.
Is there a plan to change the work order system so that Public Orders have to have all the materials listed like in DF beta?
Michael Bybee
:
No specific plans around making requirement around the way Public Orders are listed. Part of what we are trying to do instead is make it more accessible broadly. Definately understand the requirement. It doesn't feel good to go in and have a whole bunch of people posting stuff in the Crafting Orders system, basically asking crafters to submit everything. Part of the reason that that happens, we think, is that there's a whole bunch of people who would like to engage in the crafting system who aren't. So sometimes people still provide that service, even when they are being asked to front all the materials. What we think is, providing an outlet for folks who want to engage in the system will actually balance that out a little bit more. But we are going to keep paying attention to this and definitely will make changes to this if we need to over time.
Are there any plans to be able to reset or respec professions?
Michael Bybee
:
I'm actually not sure of any plans for that specifically. If the concern is being able to spend all your time in a profession talent tree and then feel like you made the wrong choice or don't want to do Jewelcrafting anymore, want to go back and do tailoring, and make it a little bit easier to do that, I'm not aware of any specific plans that we're ready to talk about today. But it's definitely something that I'm happy to chat with the team about and see where we're at.
I think there's been definitely a big call out for folks who have invested a lot of time into professions, into the profession's talent, and then decided part way through (...) I want to switch over, that's a punishing choice right now. It's something that we're talking about, but we don't have a big specific announcement to share about how we're going to fix that problem today. I can't say that in the War Within, we are going to see updated recipes and updated talent system. It'll be the same basic system, but new talents for the War Within. We'll have the crafting system, it'll all essentially work like it did in Dragonflight. Unfortunately, that means that right out of the gate for folks who have invested really heavily in the system, it's going to feel like a there will be a barrier to switching and it's something that we're talking about, but we don't have anything specific to address it today.
Are there any plans to allow for public orders to request a specific rank? Some sort of market board for crafting orders would be great.
Michael Bybee
:
That does sound great. I don't have anything that I can think of that would be specifically solving that problem that we're aware of today. It's something I'll talk to the team about. I know the team talks about it. I've been involved in some of those conversations, but I don't know where we've landed in terms of actually executing on that. It's something I'll follow up with.
In Dragonflight Alchemy and Angineering were the only two professions that gave players actual power. Is that something that's going to continue in the War Within?
Michael Bybee
:
Not sure, I entirely agree with that characterization, but it's definitely something that we talk about. In terms of which professions are the most valuable at which points in the experience, depending on where you were in gearing, other professions were incredibly important with helping you get player power. We want to make sure that professions feel meaningful and that investing time in a profession feels meaningful. We also want to make sure that that's not the only or the right way to get all of your gear or consumables. But potions and phials and everything else have been a really important part of raiding for a while, and that's a big part of what it means to be an alchemist. You can expect to continue to see stuff like that.
Events
Are there any plans to continue with updates to holiday events?
Michael Bybee
:
Yes, absolutely. Hopefully you all have enjoyed the holiday updates that we've been doing so far. One unique thing that I can talk about that we've said publicly a little bit, but just to be a little more specific about it is, one of the things that has changed with the World of Warcraft teams since Shadowlands is that we have now something that we call the Live Team, which is a totally separate independent team that works on live content for the game and is dedicated to that and they're not working on the raids or the dungeons or the future expansions at all. They're wholly separated from the rest of the team. And the reason we think that's important is that it allows them to do like holiday updates or the Hearthstone anniversary event or, the Secrets of Azeroth or any of those things that are something that maybe we wouldn't have been able to do before, but it's a cool fun thing that gives you something to do in the game. And so that is a wholly separate team from our Raids and Dungeons and Expansions team. And we're going to continue to do stuff like that. You can expect to see more holiday updates. You can also expect to see more fun content in the game because it's something that we really think is important going forward.
Will the War Within have fewer timed events like Hunts or Iskaara feasts?
Michael Bybee
:
There are events every single zone some of the end game content has events. Some of those events are timed, some of them are not. We definitely hear the feedback about just sitting around waiting for the next thing to show up. At the same time, we want to make sure that there's cool things to do and we want the cool thing in each zone to feel completely different, like it's tied to that zone. I'm particularly excited about the third zone in the expansion. Harrowfall has a really unique event that is tied to the environment and that zone that I'm actually really excited for players to see. But we're not ready to talk about that. It'll show up on the Alpha here pretty soon.
Are there any major or exciting developments for the World Quest system for War Within?
Sean McCann
:
There are. I don't think we can talk about them because I think they're still a work in progress in terms of just some things that we're looking at shifting around for the World Quest. I don't understand it, but there are some plans to kind of refresh World Quests a bit, but we can't talk too much about them right now.
Guilds
What can you tell us about the new features of the guilds?
Michael Bybee
:
Just kind of thinking about it from my own experience and what we're looking at with the game is, as people are playing the game for longer periods of time, and it's been out for 20 years, the boundaries between factions are important in a lot of cases, but they're not the main thing for most players. So guilds are already cross faction and that seems to have worked out really well. My guild that I play in right now has a lot of characters across both Horde and Alliance. There's definitely some restrictions still that are in place, that we talk about whether or not it makes sense to remove one of those restrictions and what does it take to be able to do that? It's the kind of thing that we're talking about all the time. But with that said, I don't have any specific changes to, to announce today about that. Definitely excited to continue to break down barriers though and make it easier for people to play where they want to play.
Have you thought about implementing a guild reward system for WoW, similar to Rumble, where common efforts give a number of rewards?
Michael Bybee
:
That system in Rumble is super cool. Have we decided that we're gonna do that exactly in World of Warcraft? Nothing to announce specifically about that. But what we can say is that we look at stuff like that all the time and one of the big conversations on the team is how do we make doing things with your friends and guildmates a little bit more rewarding. Just feel like you're incentivized for doing the things that you want to do already. What I can also say here, is that when we did this sort of thing for the old guild system, where we added achievements with rewards that you could get, it was really cool, but what it ultimately ended up with is a "must have" for every guild who had those things unlocked. You wanted to be a part of those because they were the "right" guilds and they gave you the the rewards that you wanted. And we want to make it be a thing that doesn't create barriers for people creating new guilds or people joining a small guild with their friends, etc. So it's one of the things that we're talking about all the time.
Mounts and Flying
Are there any changes for collections in general?
Michael Bybee
:
No specific changes to collections to talk about today. We listen to the feedback around mounts and especially older mounts that people are really care a lot about. We've introduced some changes, especially around holiday mounts, making sure that there's an increased drop rate for the first chance of the day, and just giving ways to make that a little bit more player friendly, but at the same time making it meaningful. One of the big challenges with older raid mounts is that for folks who participated in that raid during the time when it was an active tier, it was a really big accomplishment to be able to complete the raid and be able to get that mount. Making that broadly accessible to everybody at the same time, risks diminishing that accomplishment for some players. We really try to strike a balance there. Definitely open to keep talking about it with the community.
Have you thought about adding some leaderboards next to Dragonriding races to see who has the best time for their server?
Michael Bybee
:
Y'know, that's a great idea! I can honestly say it's the first time I've heard that but I love it. There's a pretty passionate group of folks, myself included, who really love those races and I think that sounds like a great way to be able to share that with other players.
There were hints through datamining of ground mounts getting dynamic features. Is this actually coming?
Michael Bybee
:
No, nothing exactly to talk about here. The thing to understand about the dynamic mounts feature, dragon flying in Dragonflight and now dynamic mounts in the War Within, is that it underneath the hood it's a set of new tools that team has, including some physics based movement that we can use for other stuff. Now, we don't have specific things to talk about today about how we're using that. But I can tell you, every time the dev team gets a new set of tools they make folks like Sean make really awesome content with it. So I think you can really expect to see some awesome stuff here at some point in the future. But nothing to announce today.
Could we expect to see a 600, 700, 800 etc. mount collection achievement and mount rewards?
Michael Bybee
:
Not ready to talk about what those will be yet. Those are the kinds of things that we add as they make sense. I think it wouldn't be surprising if they show up in the future, but we're not ready to talk about those now.
Not a question but a comment, Plunderstorm, but make it dragonriding. Mario Kart and Mario Kart Dragonriding is pog.
Michael Bybee
:
Agreed. Absolutely. I don't have a specific surprise feature that we had in our back pocket. But one of the things I will say is that adding Dragonriding to the game, the tech behind Dragonriding actually, allows us to do a whole bunch of really interesting stuff, because now we've got a system that actually incorporates some measure of physics in our movement. So now the team is talking about what other ways we could use that system to make cool content for players. Again, no specific mention, but I would say it's not out of the realm of possibility.
Transmog
Do you have any plans for transmogs like those in the Wizard Tower in War Within?
Sean McCann
:
I don't think any plans that I've heard of.
Any plans to add more spots for saved transmogs?
Michael Bybee
:
Oh, you mean for the sets that you can save sets to change into? I don't think at the moment that we're planning to expand the list of saved spots. Is that something in particular that feels like something we should be looking at?
Could we share transmogs like we share talent builds with codes?
Michael Bybee
:
That sounds cool. We should do that. No specific features to announce about that yet. But that does sound like something that would be really cool to just be able to share those around. And then maybe just riffing off that idea, maybe show you the things that you're missing from a particular code and maybe give you a checklist you can opt into to go try to farm that stuff. That sounds pretty awesome. Great idea.
Can you change transmogs to change the color of your gear sets like in Diablo?
Michael Bybee
:
We're not going to be adding any dye system like the Diablo team has for their armor sets. Having worked on Diablo until last summer, I can tell you that their armor system is a totally different set up than what we've got, from a technology perspective. It's not something that we even have the possibility of doing right now. We might be able to do that in the future, but it's not something where we spent a lot of time thinking how could we give players a dye system for their armor, and there's a lot of reasons for that. At this point nothing to add for that specific functionality or answering that question, which sounds like a giant cop out. But it's a fun idea.
Systems
Can we expect some add-on integrations into the game?
Michael Bybee
:
The add-on question is a rough one because it is so important to a huge portion of our player base. Those add-ons are incredibly powerful and we are impressed by a lot of what the add-on authors are able to do today. But it makes the game less accessible for new players. When you jump in to play the game and you jump into a dungeon and the people in the dungeon are telling you you're not doing very well because your DPS isn't high enough, it doesn't feel very good. We want this game to be someplace that people want to come and join and play, especially bring in new players, bring your friends who haven't had a chance to play or haven't played in a while. So that kind of tension between those two things is something that we talk about a lot. I definitely know that we would like to improve this area, and one of the ways that we could do that is making certain kinds of add-ons more a core part of the experience. But today we aren't announcing any changes there and we're not taking any specific actions there. It's about listening to the community, getting feedback from everybody involved in the add-on conversation, and trying to understand exactly what people are saying, so that we can make the best choice for the most people.
I don't have anything specific to talk about, but what I will say is we are always looking at one of the most popular functions and features that people are using with add-ons, and what might make sense for us to incorporate into the base UI for everybody to enjoy.
Is Dungeon Finder, Timewalking, or anything new coming to Cross-Faction play?
Michael Bybee
:
Nothing specific to announce today. I can say we agree that the barriers between factions have become maybe not as big of a deal for the game nowadays, and you've seen that we've already made some changes to reduce those barriers. We'll continue to look at feedback that we're getting from players and our own personal experience and take opportunities where we can to reduce those barriers.
Sean McCann
:
There will be cross faction Delves. We tested it out the other week and I was like, oh, this is awesome. So, you'll be able to do that.
The new arachnophobia option has opened up the possibility of being able to replace spiders and other creatures. Will there be more options in the future?
Michael Bybee
:
I'm not aware of any other options that we're talking about, but I do think the arachnophobia option is pretty cool. Fun fact though, I'll share an aside related to that you didn't ask for, but I'm going to give it to you anyway. So I happen to be somebody who really enjoys spiders. It's a weird thing that I've always enjoyed even since I was a kid, and folks who've worked with me on the team know that spiders are kind of my jam. You can't see it and I can't really reach it right now, but up on a shelf next to my desk. I actually have a display case filled with spiders in vials. Which is weird, but also a little bit of cool. Even though I love spiders, I think it's really cool that we as a team decided, for those who aren't so much fans of spiders, there's this option. We tried a whole bunch of different stuff and we actually did a lot of user testing to see what worked. And the oops, all crabs option came out of that and we're pretty happy with that
Have you thought about opening a server or map editor like in Warcraft 3, allowing players to make their own Battleground, instance dungeons, or even a server?
Michael Bybee
:
Have we thought about it? Sure. Are we ready to announce specific plans to do that? Definitely not today. We think it would be really cool to give players more ability to create content for other players to play. So it's something that we think about all the time. But there's nothing right now in the War Within that we're ready to talk about there.
What improvements did you make to the engine between Dragonflight and the War Within?
Michael Bybee
:
There are two that immediately come to mind and I think are really important to call out. One is actually the Warbands system, and I know you were talking about "engine" and think a lot of times when folks talk about "engine" they talk about the graphical updates, but there's a whole suite of how the data for the game operates, and Warbands is a huge change to the way that we think about player data. In the past, all of our player data was associated with individual characters, and it was very separated. Each character, in terms of their data, was very separated from each other character, and it was very difficult for us to actually roll-out things like account-wide Achievements, account-wide sharing anything. It required a lot of extra work from folks on the team for every single one of those, and one of the important changes with the War Within is that we are actually changing that data model in a way that a lot of things, and over time, more and more things will default to just being account-wide.
We think about 'you' as you play the game regardless of what character you're on, and a lot of things should be shared. So under the hood that's a substantial change and you'll feel that with certain things about Warbands right out of the gate in terms of the way that you collect transmog, the way that certain items are accessible across your Warbank, the way that your characters share certain achievements and reputation gains. But over time we're going to expand on that, because now that the data model has changed it will be easier and easier for us to be able to approach that. And it's also a philosophy change on the team.
The other change, that I think is probably more around what you were talking about, that I think is really cool, we've made some updates to, this is going to sound a little minor but I think it's really cool, to the way that the ocean works in World of Warcraft. So if you actually go and stand on the beach on the Isle of Dorn and you look at the waves, it's more realistic. We've got textures and other lighting effects and rendering updates that make it look like the ocean is a little bit more, just feels a bit more like a real ocean. Gives you more of that vibe. And I think that's really cool. We make small changes like that all the time to the game, and just pushing the boundaries. That's why when you jump in and play today, the War Within, and you compare it to some of our Classic experiences, it's a huge difference in terms of the way the game looks, and that's just because we've been pushing the boundaries of this game for 20 years.
Any plans to do anything with Garrison tech gameplay in the future?
Sean McCann
:
So that's an interesting question. There is actually Garrison Tech being used in Delves, but not the Garrison tech you think it would be. Right now, all the creatures in Delves are using the same kind of brains that we used in garrisons to have NPCs just do things on their own without us having to manually say do this or do that. So that is tech that we pulled from garrisons into Delves. But the building your own building, that's not currently being used at the moment.
Miscellaneous
With WoW moving to a more seasonal direction, will we see a grind come back to the War Within?
Sean McCann
:
We want to make sure we avoid that. We don't want to do a thing that everyone liked in Dragonflight and went hey that was fun, but that's gone now. We're still making sure that when we are putting content out there, that it feels like you can kind of go at your pace, that you don't feel like, oh I haven't logged in in a few days, I'm now permanently behind on things. So that's at the forefront. We love Dragonflight about that too and we don't want to go back on that.
Are there any plans to make soloing BfA raids easier?
Michael Bybee
:
That is something we are talking about all the time. I think that the goal is that we want to make that more accessible for players, especially players who want to go back and get transmogs with Warbands where it will be easier to collect transmogs across your entire Warband. There are some specific things that we are talking about right now but we are not ready to announce details on it yet. But I would say, just stay tuned.
In Dragonflight we saw a lot of previously unobtainable items making their way back to the game. Are you planning on bringing back more items in the War Within? Like the highly requested Caravan Brutosaur from BFA?
Sean McCann
:
That's a spicy one. That's also unfortunately outside of my purview as the Delves guy. I can say we are always looking at stuff where it makes sense, but unfortunately for the Brutosaur, which I would also like because I missed out on it and I really wish I got the Brutosaur, but yeah unfortunately I don't have anything to say about that.
Dragonflight was the first expansion to not have tradable Open World Epic items. Is this something you're planning on reintroducing?
Michael Bybee
:
I have not heard any specific plans about tradable outdoor collection items. I can't really give you a good answer on that one. Sorry.
Are there plans for Collectors Editions for the three part expansions?
Michael Bybee
:
Come on? It would be heartbreaking if we didn't do that, right? I don't know about all you... you can't see it because there's a green screen behind me right now, but back there right behind Anduin I've got a bookcase that has every single Collector's Edition for the game all lined up and I honestly will cry if we do not have Collector's Editions for all of the World Soul Saga.
Now that you can play across factions and servers, are there any plans to allow players to play cross-region?
Michael Bybee
:
There are not any specific plans that we're working on for cross-region play today.
If you are currently working on Player Housing for War Within, would you tell us, or would you deny it until its release?
Sean McCann
:
Oh, next question.
What was the inspiration behind the gorgeous zone that is Harrowfall?
Sean McCann
:
The goal with the Harrowfall was we wanted to make sure there wasn't cave fatigue. We already saw a little bit of that with Zaralek Caverns, and so we wanted to make sure that if we had an entire expansion underground, how is it not going to be like at week 3 everyone's like "cool, we got it, we're underground." So it started from there, and then evolved to what you see right now, these crazy visuals that we have. But that was originally the goal with that, just to avoid cave fatigue.
Michael Bybee
:
One of the really interesting experiences there is introducing the Arathi. We've talked about the Arathi in Warcraft lore in the past, but a lot of the culture in that zone came from exploring what would happen if there was an extension of the Arathi people that somehow found themselves trapped in this space and their culture evolved to react to the Nerubians and the specific elements in the environment, like the giant crystal overhead, and just really explore it. I think it's super fun, where they ended up with that culture; things like airships underground that I just think is a crazy awesome experience. And the culture overall is really well created. We're excited when players get a chance to play through that zone, see what they think, but personally it's one of my favorites.
Is there a time frame for music, which might help content creators when they are eventually able to make content live?
Michael Bybee
:
The music is unfortunately one of the last things that will come in, and the reason for that is that the music team really, really cares about making sure that the expansion just sounds incredible. So they will use every last minute to make that as awesome as possible, which means that unfortunately for all of us playing on the Beta, we're going to have to wait until near the end before we can hear that.
Is there any chance to expand the void storage with new tabs?
Michael Bybee
:
No,no plans to announce about that at this time. And, and the look on my face you saw when you asked that question is because that's the first time I've heard the words "void storage" in a very long time. I actually now suddenly want to log in and go back and look at my void storage and see what I put there because it's been a little while since I peeked inside.
Are there any additional UI improvements in the works?
Michael Bybee
:
There is a change we're working on that. you're going to see soonish. The thing we're working on is a group manager update that I think is actually really cool. So if you raid or even with dungeon groups, it actually is a little bit cumbersome to manage the groups in the raid. What we're doing is an overhaul of the entire group management system that's gonna make it a little easier for you to manage your raid. A little bit easier for you to see the roles that people are in just to clean up the UI a little bit and give you a little bit more functionality.
Оформить Wowhead
Premium
2$
месяц
[Enjoy an ad-free experience, unlock premium features, & support the site!]
Показать 0 комментариев
Скрыть 0 комментариев
Зарегистрируйтесь, чтобы оставить комментарий
Комментарии на английском языке (57)
Написать комментарий
Вы не авторизованы. Пожалуйста,
авторизуйтесь
или
зарегистрируйтесь
, чтобы оставить комментарий.
Предыдущая новость
Следующая новость