The biggest thing you might not have to worry about, Hazzikostas said, may be professions. The profession system is changing dramatically for BfA, with each expansion having its own, separate skill level tier.
"It’s dividing up expansion crafting," he said. "If you are 800 skill in a profession, you’ll be 100 skill in each expansion's crafting. If you are 650 skill, you’ll be 100 in , 50 out of 100 for Warlords of Draenor, and no Legion, because that’s where you were in those terms."
"I’m excited about the improvements in our gearing systems, the impact of randomness. We went through a lot of iterations on how we were distributing legendaries over the course of Legion, especially in those first months. That left a bitter taste in some players’ mouths, and rightly so. We completely understand."
"Players can get these powerful items, empower them, and which gameplay-affecting powers they want to use or focus on without feeling like they’re just playing the lottery and hoping they get the Pyroblast Bracers or whatever the magical legendary they need to enable the rotation they want to do," Hazzikostas said. "Instead, they can just look at the dungeon journal, look at raid bosses, see where the azerite armor with the powers they want comes from, and focus on getting that and leveling their artifact naturally, in a much more controlled way."
"Then, for players who have purchased BfA, we’re thinking about a week before the expansion drops, you’ll be able to do the battle for Lordaeron scenario, in the same way people were able to do the battle for Broken Shore in advance of the Legion expansion. That will tell that piece of the story.