In the leadup to the Dragonflight release next week a whole bunch of new developer interviews have taken place!
Below is a roundup of new information, of course you can expect spoilers:
Professions (General)
- Archeology would be a great match for Dragonflight and we can look forward to something cool there. They initially just wanted to focus on the primary professions. (SoulSoBreezy)
- Cooking and Fishing don’t have specializations but do have new things to do via the Iskaara Tuskarr renown track (SoulSoBreezy)
- They are hesitant on adding Inscription Glyphs that change spell effects because they want spells to remain recognizable in PvP, but they do hear the want for spell customization (SoulSoBreezy)
- In the next season it is likely there will be new item level upgrade items as well as brand new recipes for new gear (SoulSoBreezy)
- You cannot respec your profession talent trees. Eventually you’ll be able to unlock all profession talents. If you can respec then you can easily get access to every specialization whenever you need it. There would be no choice to make (SoulSoBreezy)
- There are a lot of specialization points you can unlock early on that are not influenced by when you start playing the expansion, so a catchup system should not be needed (SoulSoBreezy)
- They want to add crafting orders for old expansion recipes but they do not have a timeline for this feature (SoulSoBreezy)
- They want to see how crafting orders work out first as a realm wide feature and leave the option open to make them region wide later if they think it would be beneficial (SoulSoBreezy)
- While it’s challenging they want to make it possible for you to be able to switch to a profession you previously knew and relearn profession recipes that you had obtained but now no longer exist in the game (AnnieFuchsia)
Endgame Gearing
- They want professions to be able to provide viable high end gear (SoulSoBreezy)
- High end profession gear will not be purchasable via the Auction House because then anyone can just use gold to buy gear (SoulSoBreezy)
- Crafting Orders are the solution the developers came up with where you have to collect items yourself and then craft Bind on Pickup gear via a crafter (SoulSoBreezy)
- You will be able to earn a Spark of Ingenuity once every 2 weeks. After 5 you will be able to earn a rare drop called Bottled Essence from all types of content to create more Sparks (SoulSoBreezy)
- Items (Primal Infusions) to upgrade crafted gear to Heroic and Mythic item level will drop via Raiding, Mythic+ and Rated PvP (SoulSoBreezy)
- Crafted gear will not be usable to convert to tier gear via the Catalyst (SoulSoBreezy)
- World content players will be able to get 5 Primal Infusions by maxing out renown and killing Raszageth on LFR to still get access to a couple of Heroic item level gear pieces (SoulSoBreezy)
- Sockets & Tertiary stats as options from The Great Vault through tokens would quickly make them become mandatory. They would rather ask what if my character is just done at one point? It will allow you to play alts more (Maximum)
- They’re having debates about catch up mechanics for The Great Vault on alts, to further make it attractive to play alts after you’ve finished gearing one character. A possible example is being able to select multiple gear options from the weekly reward. (Maximum)
- Mythic+ Season 1 will not have uncapped Valor (Maximum)
- The Tier Catalyst serves multiple purposes. It’s bad luck protection for raiders but is the main source of tier gear for non-raiders. (Maximum)
- They are happy with raiders getting access to tier bonuses earlier because the competition for raiders is at the start of the season, whereas for PvPers and Mythic+ers it’s at the end of the season. (Maximum)
Player Customization & Transmog
- They do want professions to provide rare transmog items (SoulSoBreezy)
- “The developers are looking into adding more customizations to other races in the future, TBD when. Boomkins are not forgotten!” (MMO-Champion)
- “There are still plans to allow players to transmog white and gray quality items, but there is still tech work to be done.” (MMO-Champion)
Dragonriding & World Content
- There will be dozens of cutscenes in the encrypted max level campaign quests! (Raider.io)
- “The dragonriding system does use real physics.” (MMO-Champion)
- “The team isn’t sure if they’ll bring existing mounts to the dragonriding system yet, they will see what player feedback is like.”(MMO-Champion)
- “You can go and fully upgrade Dragonriding from the beginning, nothing stopping you from doing that.” (MMO-Champion)
- “Once you’ve played the main campaign on one character, you can play the campaign in any order on an alt if you’d like.” (MMO-Champion)
- There will not be weekly content unlocks at launch (MMO-Champion)
- “The team talks about Timewalking a good bit, and in an expansion with Bronze Dragons there is an opportunity to do some timey-wimey things, but no spoilers!” (MMO-Champion)
Dracthyr Evokers
- There are no plans to show more armor slots in Dracthyr form (Wowhead)
- There are no immediate plans to add more Dracthyr customization options (Preheat)
- Hover is a cornerstone of Evoker gameplay (Preheat)
- Early on they imagined AoE being a strength for Evokers and talents they developed based on that vision strengthened that feeling when playing Evoker further (Preheat)
- Their threat generation is intended, give the tank a chance to get aggro! They will continue discussing the issue (Preheat)
- Due to the mid-range 25-30 yard max range the Evoker has a distinct gameplay style. They don’t intend to change it but will keep an eye on if more tools need to be balanced to let it play well (Preheat)
- Burst AoE Healing, Mobility and preparation for incoming damage are the intended strong points of Preservation (Preheat)
- Burst AoE Damage and Mobility are the intended strong points for Devastation (Preheat)
- Bug fixing for Empower spells is ongoing but they are happy with how Empower spells have turned out (Preheat)
- Echo is intended for lower target count healing, Emerald Blossom is intended for larger amounts of targets but they hope you’ll find situations where you can use both spells (Preheat)
- There are no mechanics that exclude Evokers from being targeted when other ranged classes would be targeted, despite their mid-range (Preheat)
- They would like to introduce a share/import option for Dracthyr customizations (AnnieFuchsia)
Class Tuning & Design
- There will be frequent class tuning that will start with a weekly cadence as we go into the initial Dragonflight launch and then spread out over time (Wowhead)
- They plan to make major changes where needed and it’s likely that those would occur when new seasons begin (Wowhead)
- They talk regularly about healer damage output but also consider what utility they bring and other factors. Ultimately they want healers to spend their time healing and unavoidable damage helps facilitate that (Wowhead)
- Tank threat still has a role to play but they have grown into a very active role in Mythic+ with more responsibilities. As long as tanks are actively engaged with creatures they should be keeping aggro (Wowhead)
- They are satisfied with where classes and specs ended up in terms of whether or not they bring buffs and/or utility to the group (Wowhead)
- There are no immediate plans to changing the GCD on abilities (Wowhead)
- They want to take a more active approach in Class balance, including in situations where community perception might be a big influence (Raider.io)
- “There are other race/class combinations that may be added in the future. Sometimes a story is needed to build it up before it is added. Paladins have a lot of history, so adding more Paladin race/class combinations might need some story first.” (MMO-Champion)
- The Hybrid tax concept hasn’t been tuned around for a long time, it’s gone (Preheat)
- They have considered awarding additional talent points in later patch content but there are issues they would have to solve for the future dev team so there is nothing currently planned (Maximum)
- For now they see addons as a valid solution to adding more talent tree loadouts beyond the ingame cap of 10 (Maximum)
- The lack of a borrowed power system allows them to take a good look at what works well for a class and their talents and what needs to be improved in the basis (Maximum)
- They would like to hear feedback about the current implementation of cooldowns on the GCD (Maximum)
Season 1
- When considering the timing for the season 1 release at the end of the year they looked at what is going to be the best experience for players. They felt that the simultaneous release of both Heroic and Mythic Vault of the Incarnates would be best and they feel comfortable they have the tools needed to hit their tuning targets (Wowhead)
- While there will not be a unique tier armor color reward for Mythic+ in Season 1 they like the idea of adding it in the future so that Mythic+, Raiding and PvP all have such a reward (Wowhead)
- Just as there is no expectation for Mythic raiders or PvPers to clear the hardest content in the first week, there should not be the expectation that Mythic+ players clear the most difficult levels in the first week (Wowhead)
- They’re keeping an eye on Heroic raid tuning, Heroic Sepulcher was a lot harder than they wanted it to be (Wowhead)
- Following Sepulcher of the First Ones they had philosophical discussions. One question was “when is it okay to wipe the raid instantly for a mistake?” and the conclusion was a single player’s mistake should almost never wipe the entire raid group. This conclusion influenced the Vault of the Incarnates and future raids (Raider.io)
- If the simultaneous Heroic + Mythic raid release works well then it’s likely to continue in future releases (Raider.io)
- By changing the distribution of gear rewards in Mythic+ depending on key difficulty they can reward Mythic+ players with more similar gear to Raiders. It does mean that at the lower end of the spectrum players will have a harder time getting access to the same quality gear they have before (Raider.io)
- With the changing dungeon pool with every season they look at the seasonal M+ affix as something to enhance the coordination level required from your group. Thundering gives you control over how much you want to min max the buff versus just getting rid of it to not risk getting stunned (Maximum)
Endgame Content (General)
- There are no plans for a Global Raid Release in Dragonflight. While hundreds of people compete in the RWF it would inconvenience hundreds of thousands of players that don’t participate in it (Raider.io)
- They see SL Season 4 as a successful experiment but would next time want something for outdoor-focused players as well (Raider.io)
- An end of expansion season is unlikely to have raids from other expansions because there’s a difference between learning a whole new old raid versus a couple of old dungeons (AnnieFuchsia)
- They would like to expand on the timewalking raids as a way to revisit old raids (AnnieFuchsia)
- They have no plans to change how the Hall of Fame works (Raider.io)
- They want to make cross-faction guilds possible (Raider.io)
- They have unofficially drawn the line at Mists of Pandaria dungeons as possible M+ candidates because of the visual fidelity of the dungeons that came before it (Raider.io)
- Dungeon Teleport rewards are not account wide because exclusive dungeon rewards have been historically character/class specific. They might revisit this in the future (AnnieFuchsia)
Story & Lore
- The main focus of Dragonflight is not the larger Cosmology but it will delve into the relationship between the Dragonflights and the Titans (Nobbel)
- “Death is still an uncertainty to most citizens of Azeroth, they didn’t come to Shadowlands with us. Not everyone came back from Shadowlands.” (MMO-Champion)
- “We have not have found all of the afterlives yet.” (MMO-Champion)
- “The most interesting villains and characters aren’t necessarily the most powerful. Crafting interesting villains with nuance is a big part of the future of World of Warcraft.” (MMO-Champion)
- “The team leaned hard into local stories for Dragonflight, taking advantage of the huge zones.” (MMO-Champion)
- The timeskip is purely to give the denizens of Azeroth a moment to catch their breath and to let some younger characters grow up (MMO-Champion)
- The Dragons are not mind controlled by the Titans waters but are influenced to be more orderly. Titans do not like Chaos (MMO-Champion)
- There are a lot of scenes not yet datamined surrounding Raszageth (MMO-Champion)
- “In order for Ysera to come out of the Shadowlands, someone has to take her place. Her story will continue when it makes sense to do so.” (MMO-Champion)
- “You might have to wait a little while, but you’ll find out more about the copper coin in the adventure guide.” (MMO-Champion)
- “The expansion should end on a strong note, hopefully we have helped our allies out, achieved some things, and made the Dragon Isles a better place.” (MMO-Champion)
- They want to tell stories that best fit the medium. The game is best served with Gameplay. Books & print are seen as a good way to get in the minds of characters (Nobbel)
- They don’t want to use the books to have major events happen you won’t see ingame like Cairne’s death or the trial of Garrosh (Nobbel)
- The writers think you can still play through old content such as Warcraft 3 and Wrath of the Lich King and take that content as is, without the influence of the Jailer (Nobbel)
- What the writers wanted to do with Shadowlands is that the forces of Death touched Azeroth and affeced its history in different ways than the forces of the Void or Order did throughout Azeroth’s history (Nobbel)
- The Jailer wanted to make Death the dominant force in the cosmos (Nobbel)
- The writers say the First Ones did not lay out an exact path for the Maw Walker but accounted for eventualities by placing the way stones (Nobbel)
- The thing that separates mortals from magical beings is free will (Nobbel)
- The influence of the void as embodied by the Old Gods is not gone from Azeroth (Nobbel)
- They have not forgotten about the Gilneas storyline (Nobbel)
- Centaur are a native race to Azeroth. They were around when there was just the 1 massive continent of Kalimdor. The Maruuk centaur broke away from the other tribes that died off (Nobbel)
- It’s no secret that Ysera will be involved in the story of Dragonflight but she is currently bound to the Shadowlands and more specifically The Winter Queen’s powers (Nobbel)
- The primalists started out with a valid point, which led to further actions that make them the bad guys (Nobbel)
- The timeline for the start of the expansion is as follows: Watcher Koranos lights the beacon of Tyrhold (Announcement Cinematic) -> Dragons go to the Dragon Isles -> Dracthyr Forbidden Reach Intro ->Nozdormu meets Emberthal (Legacy Cinematics) -> Kalecgos and Khadgar meet (Prepatch Event) (Wowhead)
- Shadowlands starts 35 years after the Dark Portal, Dragonflight stats in the year 40 (Wowhead)
Misc
- Philosophically Dragonflight is “the first expansion built from the ground up with ideals like promoting more stuff that’s account-wide and alt-friendly and is really us saying formally “you know what, it’s okay if you ignore large chunks of the game. We’re not going to make you do these things. We’re going to lay them out there for you and make them as appealing as we can, but we trust you to find your own path and your own fun. If that means that you ignore this chunk of content that a portion of our team spent a lot of time crafting, that’s fine. It’s not in anyone’s interest to make you do something that you’re not enjoying every day or week.” (Raider.io)
- If they can make things better partially but not all the way in the short term they will do that. For example the UI revamp. They are not done yet but wanted to put a better than previous UI in players’ hands while they continue building upon it (Raider.io)
- The entirety of Dragonflight was built in a hybrid, primarily work from home, environment. They found holding meetings virtually has provided a number of benefits, so even if they all returned to the office tomorrow they would still hold meetings virtually (Raider.io)
- “The team would like to make it easier to make it easier for players to start with Pet Battles. Nothing specific to announce right now, but there are things they will look into.” (MMO-Champion)
- “There is nothing to announce right now regarding soloing older raid content, but the team wants feedback if something feels broken when it comes to this old content, especially in older expansions.” (MMO-Champion)
- They are very happy with the much more focused Alpha/Beta process (Maximum)
- They have a lot of plans for content in Dragonflight but are not ready to announce anything yet (Maximum)
- They would like to bring the map coordinates system into the base WoW UI so that you don’t have to use addons for that (AnnieFuchsia)
- WoW is not coming to console. The controller support is there for accessibility reasons (AnnieFuchsia)
- They will look at the 2000 pets achievement to make sure it is actually achievable in Dragonflight (AnnieFuchsia)
- They would like to have pet battles be possible to play on the WoW Companion App but there are some technical challenges (AnnieFuchsia)
- They are looking at the size of battlegrounds and the potential of a solo queue for rbgs like with solo shuffle (AnnieFuchsia)
Full Interviews/Sources:
SoulSoBreezy Profession Interview
Wowhead Class Design/Season 1
Raider.io
MMO-Champion
Preheat Evoker Interview
Liquid Maximum Interview
AnnieFuchsia Interview
Nobbel Interview
Wowhead Lore
Wowhead Dragonriding & Endgame