On Sunday Zarhym and Celestalon are on to two other podcasts Convert to Raid and Final Boss.tv . And they are interviewed about the Warlords of Draenor Alpha. Check out the transcript from the Convert to Raid interview below. We might have missed some questions/answers but once the VoDs are up we’ll go back to see what is missing.
Convert To Raid:
Q: What is happening with the Alpha right now? How many people etc?
A: Right now it’s internal employee take home alpha. The reason we made the announcement, is that we plan on inviting a small amount of people soon. For that to happen the files need to be uploaded to battle.net. Which means that it could be datamined. So to not cause confusion we announced everything we have, so people know what’s going on.
Q: What does the roll out look as far as timing goes?
A: It’s still To Be Determined. The time frame is still uncertain. Even this week the announcement was delayed due to a problem with the 64bit client.
Q: Open beta, no open beta?
A: I don’t know. Generally it might be more limited than mists.
On time between Blizzcon and these patch notes:
Q: Did you guys encounter some problems? or was this the intended time line?
A: We didn’t want to step on D3 and Hearthstone’s thunder. But also the problems that occur like the client issues and builds that didn’t work. The stability of the builds is often suspect.
A: We have been in Alpha for a while now. It doesn’t mean much to the public but it’s still been a mile stone. All blizzard employees now have access to the Alpha, which in and of itself is a milestone.
Q: What are the benefits of this new file system?
A:I don’t know all the details. But it makes it all better than the old system. Repairs aren’t needed when corrupted data is found. It corrects itself. It reads/loads much faster. We’ll be able to hotfix more quicker, without a client patch. We hope there will be a significant difference in loading speed and patching speed for example.
Q: Any challenges for this particular alpha?
A: The CASC files was a big one. But another was Garrisons as they require a lot of new tech. Garrisons will be getting a series of blogs soon. It means supporting a new instance for everybody. There’s a new AI system that makes it feel alive. NPCs will walk to where they work, they’ll walk around you when they see you so they don’t bump into you. It makes it feel alive. One other technical thing, WoW is a very responsive game and we think we’ve found a way to make it even more responsive. We’re not sure how big of a difference it will make, but it might make a big difference. If it works you might see things like heals take effect quicker and when you cast power word shield it’s really instant and there isn’t a small delay. No promises but we’re excited about the possibility.
Q: When is the blog about garrisons coming?
A: We’ll sit down and talk about it this week. We should have a draft by the end of the week. And the first will then be released within the next 2-3 weeks. It will be a 4 part series. It’s a big feature and it’s super cool so we’ll want to show the players what’s happening.
Q: How do garrisons fit into the raiding scene?
A: It sounds like we have a great blog in store for you! I can’t really go into the specifics now yet.
Q: Are there more blogs coming out?
A: There are many many coming out. It’s hard to keep track of them all as we have a lot of people working on them. But there are a lot of blogs on the way. We’re going to go all out.
Q: We’ve seen some datamining. Are we going to see any changes for Challenge Modes and Scenarios?
A: We’re pretty happy with how they’ve turned out. There will be refinements but overall we’re happy with them.
Q: 17 raid encounters. Sounds like a lot!
A: It’s a split tier like the start of MoP. With different item levels, so that’s why there’s 2 zones in that regard.
Q: What’s up with perks?
A: One of the down sides from auto learning spells is that leveling up doesn’t feel quite as rewarding. So perks are meant to remedy that. They’re also used by us to adjust the class rotations.
Q: What’s up with the vengeance changes?
A: It was great in MoP when it came to defensive values. Offensively though it was problematic. It made tank damage very significant depending on the situation. It lead to encouraging taking more damage. Standing in fire and the works. Funnily enough healers did not enjoy that. It also got to a point where tanks could beat DPS on the meters. Which made DPS upset. The upcoming change will keep the defensive value and will get the name Resolve. As a tank’s damage came mostly from vengeance we’ll be balancing their damage, so that they’re under the dps but still contribute toward the raid dps.
Q: What about the healer mana regen abilities?
A: It was removed, inervate for example had no gameplay value. It was just a button you had to hit every 1-2 mins anyway to replenish some mana. Instead we’ll build it in the healer’s mana regen. We are looking at options for healer active mana regen, but no announcements yet. It’s the first draft of the alpha, there will be a lot of iterating.
Q: You’re removing some hybrid spells from for example shadow priests.
A: During mists, tanks were doing too much damage, dps too much healing and healers too much healing relative to the health bar. THe dps defensive cooldowns were influencing it too much, with the stacking raid cooldowns. It didn’t feel great when an elemental shaman popped healing tide totem, or moonkin … or warlocks were mandatory with healthstones.
Q: So what’s up with the warlocks healthstones and health potions?
A: Healthstones will effectively become a free health potion. You’ll only be able to use 1 charge per fight. You’ll be able to use both a health potion and another throughput (dps) potion per fight.
Q: You’ve wanted to make tanking more interactive. How will you change it when it comes to the tank swapping for example? With where you just keep swapping every x debuffs?
A: We’ll want both tanks actively tanking during encounters. One example from TBC and WotLK was called saberlash. Where the 2nd person on threat or close to the boss also got hit for all the auto attacks. If you look at that sort of mechanic in today’s WoW. Both tanks will have to use active mitigation to survive, they can’t go afk. So we could see this more going forward into WoD. Tanks swaps, stacking debuffs will still exist, just because one exists doesn’t mean it’ll be bad.
Q: Healers freaked out over the patch notes. Is there anything you can adress?
A: Cataclysm healing brings out a lot of nightmares for people. So we understand the reaction. There were good parts and bad parts about cataclysm healing, they’re not linked to each other. We can make healers care about the efficiency of their mana without going oom quickly. We’re significantly increasing baseline mana regen, so that you can still cast some good efficient heals with just that regen alone. The point is not to make healing harder, just less 1 dimensional. It’s essential to us that if you can currently heal any type of current content, you’ll be able to continue doing so with the same amount of success. Thok would never act the way it does now, Durumu’s maze would never do so much damage as it does now. These changes will keep us away from that sort of gameplay.
Q: DK’s army of the dead? Is it gone for good?
A: Blood has it still. But in the patch notes you saw the first ability pruning. There are a few places where the community has said you messed up here. We’re looking at everything still and we’re leaning towards bringing it back. It will be cast instantly and then over 6 seconds the ghouls would spawn.
Q: Why did you remove Symbiosis?
A: We can’t justify keeping it around with the button bloat it causes. We tried redesigning it but it didn’t work out. It wasn’t wroth the trouble it caused to keep around.
Q: Can you talk about how you’ll differentiate the hunter specs?
A: BM felt pretty well kitted. MM and Survival felt blurry. MM will feel like the spec that focusses on cast times and big nukes. SV will work more with multidotting spells and traps.
Q: Is touch of death an execute ability now?
A: That was the original intent of Touch of Death. It still keeps it’s cooldown, but it hits like a truck.
Q: Will we be getting more patch notes on paladins?
A: Some. Ret we think is in a fairly good place design wise. Just a little weak on the numbers place. We’ll be doing a tuning pass on numbers later. The stay of execution healing side will give the huge burst of healing first and then ramps down over the HoT. Protection will get a way for multi-strike to give a defensive value. Shining protector will give all heals you receive a chance to heal you for another 30% of that heal.
Q: For shadowpriests it sounds like you’ll need mastery for single target fights and haste/crit for multi dot fights. Does this mean they’ll need 2 sets of gear?
A: The way we’ll expect it to work for shadow priests you might keep a mastery piece around for single target fights but it should give you more of a choice as to how you can play.
Q: Are rogues also getting more differentiation between specs?
A: Rogues are not in the same place as hunters but we’ll still change them a bit to get variation between the specs. We’ll remove abilities where they don’t make sense for example.
Q: Are there any plans to do anymore with guild rewards?
A: Not right now.
Q: Will readiness effect all of our abilities?
A: No they will not. Readiness will still be meant for long cooldown type abilities.
Q: Will all secondary stats be more useful for everyone?
A: Our goal is to make all secondary stats more closer to each other in value.
Q: Will there be a blog for the update to professions?
A: Yes indeed.
Q: Blizzcon? When are we going to hear about it?
A: Blizzcon 2014… is… something we would very like to do… If there is more information to be shared, it will be.