There was an Ion interview today that was mostly fluff but contained this:
Traits will be fully unlocked and players can choose their talents that best fits their play style.
I thought that was pretty neat, honestly. The idea of having each armor piece allowing you new abilities that come frontloaded is actually not too bad. If they hadn’t tried to tie it to the Azerite system, it’d probably have worked out okay.
Aside from that, I think 8.2 is probably going to be where BfA either gets it together and emerges okay (even if it was great, the initial dismal release can’t be erased) or the devs pull a Tanaan and give up.
Honestly I think there’s so much sheer content announced so far for 8.2 (including fixes) that I don’t see any way it could become a Tanaan 2 other than if they dropped either Mechagon or Nazjatar completely.
Then again I kind of liked Tanaan in some ways. I’d say that Broken Shore/Tomb was a worse patch and was a mid expansion “eh take it” while they worked on Argus. I can’t remember a single good thing about 7.2 other than the class mounts
8.2 wasn’t even on my radar until I found out they’re bringing bodyguards back. I think Quinnlin was talking about it & my ears perked right up. I’m really excited to see what they’re going to do with the whole thing.
I have a lot of hope riding on 8.2, but I’m going to wait for a month or two after it’s released so I can gauge the community’s reaction before I dive back in.
As genuinely cool + exciting as 8.2 looks, I no longer trust Blizzard to release quality content.
No new allied races. Assuming we get 3 full content patches, then this means we’ll probably have only 2 more allied races… sure, it is possible they will release a bunch in the last patch, but it seems unlikely.
Only 2 new heritage armors. Again, at this pace they will not cover all races in this expansion unless 8.3 is absolutely massive. I will almost certainly not get to celebrate draenei heritage in this expansion by covering myself in glowy crystal armor or whatever.
Story. Mechagon and Azshara? I’m sure they’ll be fun, but I really just want the war to end decisively so we can finally put this divisive and miserable scenario to bed. Best case scenario, we get distracted killing naga for a patch and then get a firm, lasting conclusion to the faction conflict in 8.3. Worst case scenario, the whole thing gets derailed, we’re told “oho, it was actually an N’zoth expansion all along!” and the faction war plot carries on into the next expansion
There is some stuff I’m interested in, though…
“Exploration mode” island expeditions. This was mentioned somewhere as a non-timed version of island expeditions, and I’m really interesting in seeing what they do with that. Randomly generated content in WoW is something that I see as really promising, though it was badly mishandled by making it a timer-based affair with no rewards. If we could eventually get slow-paced, non-timed randomly generated scenarios or dungeons with actual gear or cosmetic rewards (THAT AREN’T COMPLETELY RANDOM) that’d be really cool.
New transmog rules. It seems like they’re really changing their attitude on this after years of player feedback, and as goofy as it is that something so minor took so long to implement it will be fun to have more character customization. I just hope that as they look at this they go as far as possible to loosen restrictions. Leather-clad warriors? Mail-clad priests? Nobody will object to it blizz, just make it happen.
The lack of new allied races is a positive for me. They were burning out pretty quickly releasing them one after another (well, I mean they were months almost years apart but outside the sheer waiting they came pretty rapidly)
I’m just glad I don’t have to grind rep for a while
They released 4 after Legion to stretch until the next expac, I’m not too worried.
EDIT: I also doubt they’ll stop doing ARs or heritage armor considering how praised they are. In fact I think they said they won’t stop ARs, just slow down after BFA.
You know, I think there’s some interesting design ideas in mind for the Bodyguards - I know previously we’ve had Bodyguards with rep bars, but I was sort of wondering if it would add or remove from the experience if Blizzard put effort into fleshing out new hero characters for each faction through this system, and giving these bodyguards interesting character arcs and quests.
Think how we got to work with Nazgrim or Admiral Taylor, but allowing it to be optional content. You could even bring in obscure characters that already exist, but we may not know much about
I guess they might do that again. It depends on whether allied races are just a BfA feature, or if we will continue to get more and more of them in the future. We got 4 allied races at the end of Legion as sort of a taste of what was to come in BfA, but if the feature is not gonna continue past BfA I am not sure that they would do that.
I think allied races are the only race-related content we’re likely to see in the future. They’re much easier for Blizzard to churn out than “traditional” races.
Sure, most of them are subrace-y, but if Kul Tirans are any indication we still may get completely new models and brand new animation races under the “Allied Race” title.
EDIT: mostly new, I know they use the Vrykul omnicast.
Well in the sense that allied races are moreso races that join us after [content] and it’s easier for Blizzard because they’re pre-existing models. So they aren’t creating new races whole cloth, like the elves/draenei/worgen/etc. but instead are taking models they’ve already made and are reworking them into player models as they did with the KTs, Zandas, and nightborne.
I guess what I’m confused about is what you’re talking about with the KTs, as as far as I’m aware they are a completely new model that isn’t the Wrath big guy or anything. I was using them as an example of how they are like Nelf/Worgen etc as they made them from the ground up in most ways.
Well, look at it this way: the traditional races were designed for players first, then later became NPCs. The main exception are worgen and goblins, who were NPC races/enemies first, but they still had their player-model made completely separately from the NPC versions, which had the player model retroactively applied.
With allied races, it seems like they are mostly NPC races that are made as NPC races first, then later become player races, so the opposite. The exception here would be void elves, who were completely new even if they’re just retextured blood elves.
Unpopular hot take: I actually don’t think we’ll see a single new allied race outside of BfA, the same way we haven’t gotten a new neutral race since MoP and probably never will again.
I mean, I wish we would, but until they stop reinventing the whole game every expansion, I don’t think we will.
Oh yeah, you’re totally right. I do think this is overall a better way to do races anyway.
Ion actually mentioned in an interview today that they are going to try and stop expansion-only features (the one he mentioned was Artifacts). I think neutral race was never done again because of the low played number of Pandas making them think “neutral race = waste of time” regardless of how good that logic is (it’s not), but the interview was at least a sign they know people are pissed about the reinventing of the wheel.
