Developer Q&A feauturing Ion Hazzikostas

Developer Q&A feauturing Ion Hazzikostas

World of Warcraft hosted a live developer chat that took place on Twitch today. If you missed the chat the feed is still available here: World of Warcraft Twitch. For those that only wish for an overview of the chat here are the key features talked about by Ion.

Artifact Appearances

• No new updates on artifact appearances after Legion. You will still be able to unlock all of the appearances later. Mage Tower and Mythic +15 appearances are the exception.
• The same applies to Druid forms.

Legendary Items

• The upgrade system will be the same as previous upgrades.
• The team doesn't want to just automatically upgrade items as they feel its odd to just change items.
• They are keeping an eye on legendary drop rates. There may be room to increase the drop rate on the first few some more.
• The legendary tokens added in Patch 7.3.2 will be what you earn if you have every legendary item for your class. These may have another purpose later on.

Class Balance

• Not much plans for more balancing before Antorus opens.
• Balancing around Tomb won't do much to help balance in Antrous, as there will be new set bonuses and trinkets.
• The team will perform balance passes after Antorus unlocks.
• They believe balance in Tomb is good right now.

Tier Set Bonuses

• The team isn't happy with how the set system is working out.
• Adding a 6th piece to sets gave players room for legendary items, but players can instead use a 4pc bonus, 2pc bonus from another set, and 2 legendary items.
• The team tries to have sets that vary your game-play so that you have something more than  passive modifiers.
• It is probably going too far if you need a specific build and legendary items if you have a certain set.

Mythic Dungeons

• The team is going to do more with Mythic Dungeons in the future.
• Battle Resurrections in Mythic Dungeons are being discussed.
• It would be great if classes could bring unique things.

Mission Rewards

• When the Antrous raid missions become available, you will need those high level followers to access them.
• The team doesn't want the max level missions to feel not rewarding enough, so the hotfix yesterday bumped up the rewards.

Argus Whistle

• The team is working on hotfixing the Argus Whistle to be unlocked account wide.

PvP Season

• The PvP season usually is linked to the opening of new raids.
• If a patch with significant class changes happens to go live near the end of a PvP season, the team doesn't want the last few weeks of the season to be played with different balance changes.
• Patches are becoming more about getting the data onto your computer and less about activating new events.

World Quests

• The team has been trying to make everything account wide. Krokrun and Mac'Aree world quests are the exception.
• There are a lot of conflicts because of the story going on in those zones that would make account wide quests in those areas weird, so most aren't.

Artifact Knowledge

• Artifact Knowledge is still increasing weekly. This will continue until 55, which should be enough to fully unlock the Crucible traits.
• There are no plans to raise the cap beyond 55, as there is no real reason to.

World Bosses

• Nazak may be brought back.

World Bosses

• The bosses are content that the game has passed by. They haven't been updated with new loot for the same reason old Legion raids aren't updated with new loot.

Story

• The story in the last few patches has focused on the united effort against the Legion.
• We will see more of the Sylvanas and Greymane story in the future for sure.

Broken Shore Buildings

• The team has adjusted the amount of resources needed to rebuild the buildings, so the rate buildings are rebuilt is about the same as it always has been.
• The buildings should always remain reasonably functional, they won't make it take months to rebuild the buildings in a future expansion.
• There currently aren't any plans to make the buildings not require reconstruction.

Mythic Mounts

• In Mists of Pandaria, it was the goal to offer equal loot, challenge, and rewards in 10 and 25 player. This is why the 25 player version of raids had to drop two mounts off of the final boss.
• With a single difficulty, the team reverted to the older style of one mount from the final boss.

RNG

• Randomness has always been at the core of World of Warcraft.
• It needs to be carefully managed.
• If you feel like you win/lose or are strong/week because of how the RNG falls it feels unsatisfying.
• Randomness in Legion is in more places but each place has less impact on average.
• For example, years ago the team was much stingier with loot. There weren't as many sources of loot, so it was "raid or die". Even inside raids, less items dropped. These items could be very powerful. Your raid might clear a zone for several months and only see one of that trinket. That is part of why DKP was a system.
• Today it's much easier to get a full set of items. There are more sources and ways to earn loot.
• The team does want to preserve some sense of reward. If you aren't having fun doing content, you should take a break. 
• The team doesn't want you to go back and do old raids only for the hope of a legendary item.
• Progression is one of the main parts of the game. It is less exciting when you are killing a boss on farm over and over and there is zero chance that you could get something that is an upgrade.
• The gap between the lucky and unlucky player today is much smaller
• Making players choose between a legendary item that gives you a 0% DPS increase with utility and one that gives you a 10% DPS increase wasn't a great system. The utility legendary didn't feel great, so legendary items were tuned to reduce the gap between those two types of legendary items.

What are your thoughts?

For myself, I had the most problems with is the legendary item tokens. Their current RNG system doesn't address the problems for players starting the expansion at a late entry point. Honestly, I feel compelled to play the one character that has their BIS items instead of jumping around on various alts. It kinda ruins my site title in that regard as well. The legendary system is rather hateful to have to experience. In reality, it's not a great catch-up mechanic unless you're really far ahead on another character. And Nazrak, he's tied to a Rank 3 recipe and has spawned only once in a year. I hope his re-spawn comes a bit earlier then - "Soon".

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