Incoming are a few more quotes–thanks to @Etheldald for collecting them on this thread:
Interview with production director John Hight, May 3, 2018:
https://www.pcgamesn.com/world-of-warcraft/wow-battle-for-azeroth-races
At the end of Legion players were arguably closer than ever before as they fought a huge, common threat – why was the decision made to change the pace and pit players against one another?
Well, I think you hit the nail on the head, it was that enemy that actually brought those factions together. It wasn’t as though they were heading to this wonderful kumbaya peace – there were tensions at the beginning of Legion. But the presence of the Legion itself was so potentially devastating for all of Azeroth, the factions just didn’t have time to explore what really happened – whether the Horde really betrayed the Alliance or not. Now that that big enemy has been defeated, I think the Alliance are returning to a point where they can explore that thinking of, ‘We felt betrayed, we lost our king’. And, of course, Anduin is coming into his own as a young man – he certainly misses the presence of his father, but he recognises his responsibility as king, and one of the first things on his mind is to get some redemption for what happened.
What’s the reaction from players been so far?
Well first off, we haven’t told anyone how this expansion’s going to end, so don’t make too many assumptions! It’s fun to speculate but we’re not going to tell you what’s going to happen until the last update to the expansion occurs. We have plenty of interesting and exciting twists and turns in store for you.
But I think in general the reception has been pretty good. It’s funny, we plan out these stories and we bring in the team in groups in the early stages and run them through the story and talk about the features we’d like to do in the expansion so we’re all on the same page. I think the team at first were a little unsure about where we were going. We had a lot of, ‘So it’s going to be Horde vs Alliance again?’. They were concerned that everyone would think that the whole game had become PvP. We had to make it clear that no, it’s really going to be about the conflict itself.
And the fun part is that we’re telling two completely different storylines. In Legion, you had the choice to go to whatever levelling zone you wanted, but whether you were Horde or Alliance you experienced a lot of the same content, and the majority of the content was designed so that it could be played by either faction. But in Battle for Azeroth, there are distinct storylines for the Horde and for the Alliance.
Has it been tricky to convince players that isn’t just a PvP expansion?
I don’t think so. I think the cinematic that the team produced really tells you the potential of what this game could be. When we showed that at Blizzcon and the cheers went up, I think everyone really kind of got it. For me, when I first saw that, even just the storyboards, I thought, ‘Man, now I get it, now I can see what the potential of this story could be’.
But I think overall, it’s been a positive reception. I don’t get a lot by people saying the battle between factions is a bad idea, I think people are fairly excited. It does hark back to the early days of WoW, and even Warcraft itself. A lot of these stories were told through that lens, so I know people are going to be excited when they get to play the game. Even the sceptics are going to find that this was a pretty good creative choice.
You mentioned faction-specific content and how BfA has the most faction-specific content of any expansion. How tricky is it to ensure players on both sides have a positive experience and one that’s equally enjoyable?
We have two members of our design team with a responsibility for the storyline for their particular faction. They sit with each other and communicate with each other on a daily basis. Of course, there’s some degree of one-upmanship that happens within our design team, but I think they’re very conscious of that and want to make sure there’s a steady balance. But we also don’t want to take an idea that’s on the Horde side and just duplicate it for the Alliance side, we want factions to have their own unique flavour, and want our designers to feel they have some agency to craft the stories themselves.
And at the end of the day, we play the game. I think the team has played both Legion and this expansion more than any of the work in the past. A lot of it comes from the way that we’re now building the game. In the past a lot of the stuff would come together fairly late, so we would get to see the work integrated into the game at around the same time that players would when we go to alpha. But now we’re seeing the content way, way in advance of that, and that means there’s plenty of opportunities for us to catch things like the Alliance not having a particularly cool feature, or the pacing being weak on the Horde side. The fact that we can do this earlier on without having to do a lot of rework is important, and that’s been one of the things that’s been great in helping us turn out more content more frequently, and to create more content than we have in the past. We can do more upfront planning than we have before.
Inevitably, there has to be a winner and a loser. How will you ensure that players on the losing side don’t feel hard-done-by?
Well again, we’re not going to tell you how this all ends! There are going to be individual scenarios and battles where there’s a winner and a loser for sure, but those are the battles and not the war. We’re being very careful come the end of this that you’re not going to feel like you’ve chosen the wrong faction and that you’re with the losing side. But there will be times where you certainly have to pick yourself back out of the dust and prepare for the next battle. But that’s part of what’s going to create the tension between your faction and the opposing side.