Today, the WoW Community Council met with World of Warcraft developers Ion Hazzikostas and Jeremy Feasel to talk about development of content in Dragonflight and beyond.
Please feel free to keep the discussion going here, if you have any follow-up questions or comments on what was discussed.
Thank you!
Something that I wanted to comment on but didn’t get to was about Zaralek Caverns. I still think the system could be improved if the changes recently made were rolled back and the encounters were made to be soloable by lowering HP, Damage, and defense and scaling them to however many people hit them. There are also disturbing reports that despite being engaged the rares are still despawning mid fight.
Are there any chances you could actually roll back the changes and implement what the player base collectively wants? Because I’ve seen it a lot from the council and the community that no one really liked the recent changes. It feels like what we wanted was superseded by what the devs wanted.
A follow-up I have on a question asked in this:
Will previous events be brought back into the game? *Examples: Wrathgate Event, Battle for Ahn’Qiraj, Possibly Pre-patch events… etc?
Could utilize the technology introduced in MoP making these scenarios for players to do if missed, or redo for nostalgia purposes.
Edit:
Another follow up question:
Will we see another version of Torghast? Like stated, this system was a lot of fun, sadly it had the negativity due to the obligation to do it.
I enjoy going back to Shadowlands to this day just to participate in some Torghast. It is a fun event in my mind, and would love to see another one introduced.
Great Live Chat as always, sadly couldn’t make it this time due to progress being in the way. In terms of Ingame-Events we haven’t seen any PvP dedicated ones in years.
So my follow-up question here , kinda following Vale’s Route with the Ashenvale one:
Does the team consider bringing back zone-wide PvP Events in the future (f.e. something like Wintergrasp / Ashran or like recently in SoD Battle for Ashenvale) to retail zones?
Author’s Note: PvP Players are kinda forced into instance competitive environments for PvP. While we have something like World Quests that try to fill that void, it is just not the same feeling as having a zone-wide event as World Quests often turn into a PvE experience rather quickly with players avoiding the PvP and focus on alternative PvE Objectives. Also, once they are completed, the Outdoor PvP is entirely gone.
The Narrative Story may conflict here to enable such events (like Ashran / Wintergrasp or Battle for Ashenvale) in retail, with alliance and horde working together recently, but even if they do shouldn’t there still be inner conflicts inside those factions ? After all, the conflict between horde and alliance is deeply rooted into the history and the centerpiece of World of Warcraft.
PvP often times just feels like a shafted experience with not enough dedication from the development side to it - esp. when we’re seeing PvE Solo Content getting so much attention recently (which is great). I think esp. the Battle of Ashenvale in SoD kinda showed with enough dedication and fixing the problems an open world PvP Event can work out fantastically even in retail. Something along the lines of Blood Coins (those coins you collected for the mushan mount on timeless isle) could also create longevity to it, with special rewards totally tied to open world PvP. Having those conflicts in different zones with different objectives going forward would be great (If ppl. want to op-out of such experience, it could be warmode only).
PS: I never had so much fun in PvP as I had in WoD with Ashran. It was such a great PvP Experience.
Yumuros - Thrall EU
Looks like one of the questions I had was touched on in the chat (Trading Post costs). Others that I had that I couldn’t make it to ask were:
Are there any concrete plans on when more race/class combos are coming? Every class except Shaman/Druid/Paladin can now be any race. I’m selfishly looking at Paladin myself. Players have noticed Delas Moonfang from Legion appearing on the PTR. Is this a sign at least Night Elves are getting added soon?
The recent holiday refreshes have added more low rng drops from the dungeon encounters. What’s the design choice to add more or these low drop rate limited items? (EDIT: This one was touched on)
Thank you for the discussion!
Some additional questions I wanted to ask but didn’t get the chance to:
Recent world events have been, due to their nature, at a very low difficulty, will something like the Brawler’s Guild make a return that has some challenging encounters for most players?
Some of the recent world event revamps have been better than others. Headless Horseman for example had a great overhaul whilst Brewfest felt really lacking in comparison. Are the revamps for Brewfest etc considered ‘done’ or will there be more substantial changes coming in the years to come?
Is Open World Timewalking still on the cards?
Is an heirloom system overhaul still being looked at? It’s currently more complex than it ought to be and the level brackets are on the basis of pre-squish and it makes little sense anymore.
Timewalking Dungeons have never been particularly difficult but something changed with the scaling that makes them a complete joke. Whilst easy content is of course fine, is it intended that some of these dungeons just fall over from being looked at?
Thanks for answering my questions on the live chat. Hopefully the dream of more deep dive into specific racial lore on certain holidays as well as more holidays in general is considered, not to mention the potential for class-specific holidays and events which touch more on the class fantasy (might also give a great excuse to bring Class Halls back!) Warrior Pit fighting day when?