wow Bay's BlizzCon Dev Interview with Alex Afrasiabi & Ion Hazzikostas

[Stan 5,240]

Next up is Bay's interview with Ion Hazzikostas and Alex Afrasiabi. Blizzard wants to allow Dark Iron Dwarves to be Death Knights, they're not satisfied with certain utility racials, defensive abilities and more.

• Titanforging isn't going anywhere. The team likes the moment of excitement and potential upgrade. Your guild is stuck on Avatar and there's still incentive to do older bosses / content, because you might get a better version of an item. Azerite armor (Helm / Shoulders / Chest slot) won't be able to warforge/titanforge.
• New Goblin & Worgen models won't be ready for BfA launch, but they're a priority.
• Allied races will have their own emotes.
• Legion Legendaries will taper off in power as you level towards 120. The current system will go away in BfA.
• Enabling flying in Silvermoon is not a priority at the moment.
• Death Knights start at level 55 and Allied races at 20. They'd like to allow Dark Iron Dwarves to be Death Knights, but there are technical difficulties that need to be overcome first.
• The BfA equivalent of the Mission Table / Class Hall system is still being decided.
• Cross-faction raids are not happening. The ultimate division between factions is not meant to be broken in the future.
• No major plans for Wrathion to play an important character in BfA.
• No plans to add PvP elements to Warfronts, it's a PvE experience. The main goal is to bring the good old feeling of faction warfare and RTS into the game.
• Some Artifact traits will be incorporated into specializations or talents. From a design standpoint, they will remove all Artifact traits to see how the class plays without them and add them back where necessary.
• Immunities are prevalent and there's too much homogenization when it comes to defensive abilities. It's something they want to change where it makes sense.
• New Moonkin forms would be nice, but it's something that's hard to balance - introducing a new form vs. keeping the community happy with the old form.
• Raid-wide class buffs are returning to help motivate groups not to stack just the highest DPS classes.
• No plans for fundamental changes to classes in BfA. Some specializations might see a more thorough rework though, but not as drastic as Survival Hunters in Legion.
• They want to make Professions less quest-oriented and allow players to customize their gear and keep crafting relevant.
• Players nowadays pick a race, because they like it, not because of power racials. If that was the other way around, they'd look into it. Utility racials such as Arcane Torrent and Rocket Jump will be redesigned, because they pose a problem in dungeons and PvP.

(Source // Full Transcript)

[Yridaa 490]

34 minutes ago, Stan said:

• New Goblin & Worgen models won't be ready for BfA launch, but they're a priority.

I have to be honest and say that it's very likely we won't have a 12-14 month content drought like SoO and HFC. It makes no sense to say "we don't have enough time to make these new models" if they plan BfA to be released in a year time. It may indeed come a whole lot quicker than initial expectations because of that.

[Nxc 21]

1 hour ago, Yridaa said:

I have to be honest and say that it's very likely we won't have a 12-14 month content drought like SoO and HFC. It makes no sense to say "we don't have enough time to make these new models" if they plan BfA to be released in a year time. It may indeed come a whole lot quicker than initial expectations because of that.

fully agree with you, the first thing i thought when i was reading this was exactly the same

[jinsu2301 273]

2 hours ago, Yridaa said:

I have to be honest and say that it's very likely we won't have a 12-14 month content drought like SoO and HFC.

And I have to be honest and say that's exactly what we will get. So far it has always been at least 11 months between anouncement and release, so the best we can hope for is probably a late-September release, although my bets are on November. 

[Drachar 45]

1 hour ago, jinsu2301 said:

And I have to be honest and say that's exactly what we will get. So far it has always been at least 11 months between anouncement and release, so the best we can hope for is probably a late-September release, although my bets are on November. 

Blizzard have paced content a lot better In Legion then in earlier expansions. While I still expect the Antorous content to last longer then earlier raid tiers in Legion I think we might avoid the extremes. Time will tell I guess.

[Rhondis 148]

There is also the pre-patch for BfA to consider and any other possible content that will be released between Antorus and BfA.