The dev Q&A just concluded, here’s our summary of all new information that was given during the session:
Allied Races
- Kul Tiran and Zandalari allied races are coming out with 8.1.5 because of story reasons but also because of practical reasons. Originally Kul Tirans weren’t planned as an allied race because they weren’t sure if they would be able to do so. Kul Tirans have been built from the ground up. Creating the Kul Tiran race took just as much effort as all the other allied races combined.
PvP
- The Alliance currently get the ilvl 400 item from the weekly pvp quest for war mode promotion. They do not believe it will stay Alliance only as more and more Alliance players are also opting in to War Mode. The quest helps as an incentive to get people into war mode. However, they do think ilvl 400 might be too high. Next week they might be changing it to ilvl 385 and instead add another reward such as conquest points.
- Regarding PvP vendors – The new system is an attempt to improve on what vendors gave in PvP. In season 2 players have the choice to pick which armor with stats they want. An example was given of azerite gear. When you earn a pvp chest in season 2 you get to choose the chest out of multiple options. They would like to hear: What choices do you feel you are missing in PvP?
Technical Concerns
- Server stability is top priority for the team. Unfortunately for an issue like this the solution isn’t just 1 fix, it requires multiple fixes. In the future they’d like to bring out a devcooler explaining some of the things they have already encountered and fixed and what they are still working on.
- They’re going to see if they can raise the character cap on a realm to the account cap of 50 characters.
Quality of Life Improvements
- In 8.1.5 we’ll be able to transfer war resources from our main characters to alts.
Gear
- The 30 item levels increase is the smallest number of increase they’ve used for a long time. They have this number so it still feels like you’re becoming more powerful from new content loot while minimizing the inflation it brings to character stats.
- The changes to the Azerite system are still fully being discussed, so things can change. However for patch 8.2… The bigger picture thinking that they’re looking at is as follows: They want to move away from unlocking the same traits every time you get a new piece. Instead you’ll earn more powers like legion artifacts had as your Heart of Azeroth levels up.
- Regarding the funneling of Titan Residuum, they’re not likely to add more restrictions if it would hurt the majority of players. Nothing is further planned beyond the hotfix that was released recently.
Mythic+
- They’re going to talk with the team about the rewards that come from mythic+.
- Instead of removing the uniqueness that a class adds to mythic+, such as shroud from rogues, they would rather have other classes add other benefits you would want in your group.
- It’s not likely they’ll add a punishment for leaving a mythic+ run halfway through the dungeon, the punishment is a social one. They won’t be invited back. A system they’d create would likely create more problems.
Game Design
- What are the biggest design challenges the dev team has? Resolving short term vs long term, resolving casual vs hardcore, there are many different types of players that enjoy different aspects of it and have different concerns. The challenge is to offer fun gameplay to all those types of players.
- The team is not done with looking at the GCD (Global Cooldown) changes. A lot of the cooldowns are unsatisfying to press. They’re looking at adding an active component to some cooldowns. Such as Ascendance for resto shamans, when you press it you might emit a burst of healing to make it feel more satisfying.
- There are no major class changes coming in 8.1.5. Complete class overhauls that include rotation changes are more likely to happen in a new expansion. People also have different definitions for “major changes” and miscommunication on that has occurred in the past for classes such as shamans.