Patch 10.1 Dev Interview/Information Roundup

Along with the announcement of Patch 10.1 some content creatores got a preview with more details as well as some dev interviews have taken place!

Below is a roundup of new information, of course you can expect some spoilers:

World Content

(Season 1) Elemental Storms will stay available so you can keep doing achievements and collecting the items/gear (MrGM)
All new technology has been developed to put the Zaralek Cavern zone under the existing Dragon Isles zones. It’s not instanced (MrGM)
You’ll be able to train your own snail mount for snail racing with the Drogbar (MrGM)
The new Fyrakk Assault event will also take place in the current Dragon Isles zones (MMO-Champion)
Some content unlocks will be back to unlocking on a weekly basis to contextualize the new raid (Wowhead)
The item level rewards of the open world events like the community feast will increase in season 2 so that they stay relevant. (Dratnos)
Zaralek Cavern is slightly larger than Zereth Mortis (Gamespot)

Reputation

You can cave dive with the Niffen to find treasure (sniff ‘n seeking). They’ll use their noses to find them (MrGM)
They have not yet decided on how many renown levels the Niffen will have (MrGM)
The 10.0 reputations will not get new renown levels (Dratnos)

Raiding

One of the 9 bosses is an elementium dragon that was the trial run of Deathwing’s armor. (MrGM)
Normal, Heroic and Mythic difficulties will launch simultaneously again (MMO-Champion)

Mythic+

Their philosophy on what expansion to stop at in terms of dungeons they are looking to add to the M+ dungeon pool (previously MoP) has changed. They feel like the Vortex Pinnacle was a fun dungeon to add and adjust for a Mythic+ season (MrGM)
There will be no seasonal affix and the level 7 affixes will be iterated on (MMO-Champion)
They are taking a close look at Brackenhide Hollow and may even remove some dungeon mechanics that currently exist in M0 dungeons (Wowhead)
They feel that the baseline experience for the new Dragonflight dungeons was a couple of notches too high in terms of complexity for the Mythic+ system (Gamespot)
For the level 7 affixes they’re going to look at how much you can counterplay them rather than just making the healer’s life harder on them (Wowhead)

Gear/Itemisation

Gear upgrading will be streamlined into 1 system with 1 currency (MrGM)
Gear upgrading will require the currency + a modifier item. Which modifier item you get depends on the difficulty of content you do. So if you do more difficult content (any type of content) you’ll be able to upgrade the item higher (Dratnos)
The Revival Catalyst will continue in season 2 (MMO-Champion)
The team is looking to add more determinism and bad luck protection for earning set bonuses and we can expect more information on this soon (MMO-Champion)
Heirloom scaling to level 70 is being added (MMO-Champion)
Tier sets are going to be more powerful than the sets from 10.0 (Dratnos)
They are happy with the items you can craft with professions. You’ll be able to continue upgrading items to the season 2 item levels, in addition to new profession recipes (Dratnos)

Classes

Lore

We will learn a lot about what happened with Neltharion and his influences on the Cavern (MrGM)
Ebyssian, Wrathion and Sabellian will all come with us into the Cavern (MrGM)
The 10.0.7 (encrypted) story chapters will serve as a prologue to 10.1 (MrGM)
Throughout the upcoming patches they plan to continue side stories like with Baine in 10.0.7 (MrGM)
The Blue Dragonflight and Tyr storylines will continue (MMO-Champion)
Aberrus is the place where the Dracthyr were first created (Wowhead)
The Primal Incarnates will remain a major threat going forward and much of DF’s core storyline will revovle around understanding their goals and how to stop them (Gamespot)

Dragonriding

A new dragonriding ability will allow you to regain vigor while slowly flying close to the ground(MrGM)
The new dragonriding customisations might include the previously datamined helms, but the devs were not sure about it (MrGM)

Misc

We are getting Cross Faction guilds with the launch of the patch (MMO-Champion)
There are no new race/class combinations coming with patch 10.1 (MrGM)
There are no new race customizations planned for patch 10.1 (MrGM)
The UI changes will continue with this patch (MMO-Champion)
UI changes will include group management, raid frames, quest tracking and how quests are displayed in the game. Edit mode and personal resource bars are also being updated (Wowhead)
They don’t have plans for cross faction play in the open world but might take a look at it (Gamespot)
They have no plans for cross faction LFR or random dungeon matchmaking (Gamespot)