More interviews have come out for The War Within and datamining has continued as well!
Below is a roundup of new information, of course you can expect some spoilers:
Quests/World content
- You’ll be able to use the LFG tool to find a group for Delves (Warcraft)
- Once the Delve companion is high enough level you can equip them with curios, which are trinket-like effects (Warcraft)
- The secret 13th Delve will unlock in season 1 and will contain a boss encounter (Warcraft)
- The 13th Delve will be as difficult as they can get it, a sort of Mage Tower challenge as it were (Naguura)
- Difficulty tiers 9, 10, 11 will stop giving better loot and are therefor the challenge (Naguura)
- The variation of Delve objectives is unlocked at max level (Warcraft)
- Delve objectives change on a daily cadence (Warcraft)
- The Delve collectables purchasable with a currency can also drop directly in the end of Delve chests (Warcraft)
- Brann is always with you in the Delve even if you have a group of 5 (Naguura)
- Under the hood Delves use a lot of the same tech as Torghast to tune the experience properly depending on group size and role composition (Naguura)
- They’re building new types of zone/world events. Not all of them will be like the Dragonflight world events (Iskaara Cooking/Hunts/etc) (LeystTV)
- One example of a new zone event is putting on a play with a group of people (LeystTV)
- When the Hallowfall crystal changes to shadow it will influence the mobs in the zone. They become a lot more aggressive, they change behavior, they do more damage and things like that (LeystTV)
- They plan to bring the player into the raid during a quest so that the environment can be used outside of the normal raiding context (LeystTV)
Classes/Earthen
- The Earthen will have unique racials, as they are made of stone rather than flesh (T&E)
- When it comes to Hero Talent balance they will do what feels right for the most players. That could mean tuning a hero talent tree differently for 1 spec that uses it than the other. (Naguura)
- They are looking at classes/specs that don’t provide a buff to raid groups. You shouldn’t have to feel like you need to exclude a class because they don’t provide a buff for the group (Naguura)
Dungeons/Mythic+/Raiding
- They’ll be talking about Mythic+ affixes soon but they are not ready to yet (Naguura)
- They are not really happy with high end content becoming about pressing a cooldown to survive a boss mechanic to otherwise go from 100% health straight down to 0. No big changes planned for season 1, but iterative improvements on mechanics (Naguura)
- They like having a Fated/Awakened season at the end of the expansion but they are not ready to commit to always doing it. They are very much listening to the feedback players are giving on the Awakened season (Naguura)
Dynamic Flying/Transportation
- They’re having conversations about potential teleportation/modes of transport so that you don’t have to always fly from the surface zone all the way through the other zones to the bottom zone. (LeystTV)
Lore
- By mapping out a larger story over a trilogy it allows them to plan much more beforehand. Allowing for setting up arcs per expansion, as well as for a larger arc over the trilogy. (T&E)
- They know the ending to the World Soul Saga (T&E)
- They have already mapped out the back bone to the story. Story moments, allies, enemies. (T&E)
- They thought a lot about the controversy of the burning of Teldrassil and do not think crashing Dalaran will be the same. It’s a shared pain among the entire player base (T&E)
- They will make sure that players learn who characters like Xal’atath are. You do not need to play old content to learn who they are (T&E)
- We’ll get the opportunity to learn more about Xal’atath’s motives and if you pay close attention you might see some foreshadowing as well (T&E)
- Maria cannot give a clarification on whether the Amirdrassil ending cinematic means that Azeroth is not a titan (T&E)
Warbands
- You’ll be able to transfer currency over to other characters directly from the currency tab (Warcraft)
Misc
- For Last Titan the artists are working on creating concept art. For Midnight the world builders/artists are already hard at work making new maps (T&E)
- Microsoft has let Blizzard be Blizzard. They are not asking Blizzard to do anything particular when it comes to World of Warcraft (VideoGamesChronicle)
- They talk about the business model of Expansions all the time but for now using expansions to release/sell new content works for them (VideoGamesChronicle)
- They are planning the future of WoW for the next 20-30 years and they will not abandon it as a project that would not make sense. It’s a vibrant game with many players (Bellular)
- It took until mid 2023 to really see the goal of the Live team (former experimental gameplay team) come to life. To make the world feel alive and provide new content for all sorts of WoW players. They work on fun and wacky things (Bellular)
- They’ve learned more is not always better. 10.2.5 did not have the same staying power as 10.1.5 did for example (Bellular)
- They’ve done patches that felt like a disconnected set of additions and a problem of that is discoverability. The team has ideas on how to improve that (Bellular)
- They’re looking at improving both the new player experience as well as returning player experience (Bellular)
Full Interviews/Sources:
Warcraft Warbands Feature Overview
Taliesin & Evitel Narrative Interview Maria Hamilton
Videogameschronicle Interview Holly Longdale
Warcraft Delves Overview
Bellular Holly Longdale Interview
Developer Interview End-Game Content Naguura
Developer Interview LeystTV
Previous Roundups:
The War Within Alpha Interview Roundup Part 1
The War Within Alpha Interview Roundup Part 2