The devs had a live Q&A session on twitch, here’s a summary of the session with Lead Game Designer Ion Hazzikostas and Lead Class Designer Kris Zierhut right before the WoD launch.
- Competing factions like Aldor / Scryer could return in the future if they make sense to add to the game.
- It’s expected that some time in the future (not 7.) ability/item level pruning will have to happen again. This is due to the amount of power increase that’s required in progression.
- There will be a cool visual effect to show you have the legendary ring.
- The limit on wearing crafted gear in WoD allows the developers to make crafted gear more powerful.
- The Vale of Eternal Blossoms will not be restored in the future.
- A hide shoulders feature along with hide helmet and hide cloak will likely not happen as it’s a large part of your character’s silhouette.
- Mythic trash is harder than heroic trash. It’s not in the league of heroic to mythic boss, but it is still harder. This means there will be mythic trash loot!
- The “keys” to skip to the end of the raid that was mentioned at blizzcon 2013 is still in in Blackrock Foundry. After the Iron Maidens there’s an orc blacksmith that will forge the key if you’ve cleared on the difficulty your raid instance is 4 times.
- Secondary Professions will likely not be made account wide. But it is something they could consider.
- There will be a second pass on lower level abilities. Later in the expansion they’ll have more of a chance to fix things that might be broken at the lower level.
- Where it makes sense the graphical quality of old armor/weapon sets will be upgraded in the future. The orc/human guard armors are an example of this.
- Active mana regeneration could potentially return in the future. The danger of it is getting the balance right. If it’s designed around the assumption you always use it in the downtime then that would put an additional burden on the healers.
- A “Heroic” LFR will not be added. It’s seen as a way to see the content in a very accessible way. If you’re looking to progress your character more they’re hoping you’ll go into normal mode. The new group finder can help you find a group for this.
- Gladiator stance was something they wanted like to design as a valid dps option. It satisfies the fantasy of being a gladiator with a 1handed weapon and a shield.
- Questing zones will not automatically be cross-realm at the beginning of the expansion.
- Tenaan Jungle can be split into multiple instances for the same realm to make sure it’s still a good experience.
- Simulationcraft is a useful source of feedback but it’s not a completely correct source. They make different assumptions when simulating the dps. It can still expose errors though.
- Armor/shield clipping in Tauren for example are viewed as bugs, so report them if you come across them.
- Changing skin color in the barber shop is a completely reasonable feature to request.
- The heirloom tab is looked at as a hopefully a warlords patch feature.
- Arms warrior changes were based on WotLK design, to make them feel like Arms did back then. (In reference to Whirlwind)
- World bosses will not be available at launch. Two will become available in the week of december 2nd. One week one will spawn, the next the other.
- Warlords will just unlock at midnight.
- Features for expansions are chosen through giant wishlists, brain sessions, lessons from the previous expansion and other ways. Per expansion it’s looked at what they want to put in the world they’re creating.
- Worgen and goblin models will eventually be updated but they have a lower priority.
- Hybrid healing in PvP is something they’re watching. Possible major changes will come in patch 6.1. Also at level 100 it will be a lot better.
- In WoD we can expect to see “story patches” between raid patches. 6.1 will likely be more focussed on systems updates and moving the story forward and 6.2 will be a major raid update.
- Increasing the friends list capacity on battle.net beyond 100 friends is something they want to do, but there are technical limitations to sort out.
- They have cool plans for class quests in the future, but nothing to share yet.
- There will not be more glyph slots in the future. They need to be a hard choice.
- You don’t want to stack versatility on every character because it’s not as good as other stats from an offensive point of view.
- Fel flame was removed because they wanted lower the amount of mobile damage players had.
- The postmaster returning everything has been fixed, he’s not as overzealous with armor scraps.
- The Stacking The Deck buff rewards gold. This buff is given if you enter a queue with a premade group or if you requeue with a group you met through random group finder.
- Transmogging fist weapons to swords and other 1handers is still not possible due to technical problems under the hood of transmogrification.
- Blood DKs feel like they’re not using their weapon enough right now.
- One of the lessons learned from phasing is they need to use phasing less.
- A revamp for druid forms could happen in the future.
- When designing talents/spells for a class they start from the perspective of the fantasy/lore of that class/spec.
- They don’t want all class/specs to be the exact same on single target dps and aoe dps.
- They still want secondary stats to be different in importance for players. But they don’t want a stat to be terrible for a class/spec.