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The Starting Zone PAX East 2018 Interview

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The Starting Zone sat down with Lead Game Producer Daniel Stahl and Lead Encounter Designer Morgan Day to talk about Battle for Azeroth.

The Starting Zone previously interviewed Principal Exterior Level Designer Gary Platner in Episode #249 and before that they did an interview with In-game Cinematic Director Terran Gregory in Episode #239 of their podcast. Their latest interview from PAX East 2018 focuses on Island Expeditions and encounter design in Battle for Azeroth.

Episode #253 Highlights

  • Battle for Azeroth is at its heart about exploration.
  • You will gather War Resources, so that later on in the conflict, you'll open up Warfronts.
  • Island Expeditions focus on dynamic replayability.
  • They plan to have at least five Islands with unique environments and ecologies.
  • Advanced NPCs have personalities. The enemy team may be more passive (runs away from you).
  • Different types of monsters could show up depending on the time of day.
  • Islands will have the Fog of War.
  • The weather system has been updated in Battle for Azeroth.
  • When you're facing off against Advanced NPCs on Normal difficulty, they have more flexibility in what they want to do, as opposed to higher difficulties.
  • Battle for Azeroth will ship with 10 dungeons.
  • Both factions will have access to 3 level-up dungeons.
  • THE MOTHERLODE! is the fourth Horde war campaign dungeon.
  • Tol Dagor is a prison dungeon that will be available to the Alliance as the fourth level-up instance in the expansion.
  • At max level, you will be able to enter all other dungeons.
  • Patch dungeons were successful in Legion and we may see more dungeons added to the game when they make sense.

You can listen to the full episode of the podcast below!

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18 hours ago, Stan said:

Patch dungeons were successful in Legion and we may see more dungeons added to the game when they make sense.

...now as much as I loved Seat keys...

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18 hours ago, Stan said:
  • Battle for Azeroth will ship with 10 dungeons.
  • Both factions will have access to 3 level-up dungeons.
  • THE MOTHERLODE! is the fourth Horde war campaign dungeon.
  • Tol Dagor is a prison dungeon that will be available to the Alliance as the fourth level-up instance in the expansion.
  • At max level, you will be able to enter all other dungeons.

Way to make leveling on dungeons boring... thanks Blizzard. 

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8 minutes ago, Syktris said:

Way to make leveling on dungeons boring... thanks Blizzard. 

I'd guess they did this because you need reputation and quest chains for certain important unlocks. Getting to max level in dungeons only to find out you need to complete many hours worth of quest chains to unlock certain max-level content is something they want to prevent.

 

100% conjecture on my side, I don't know if any of that is true.

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12 minutes ago, Yridaa said:

I'd guess they did this because you need reputation and quest chains for certain important unlocks. Getting to max level in dungeons only to find out you need to complete many hours worth of quest chains to unlock certain max-level content is something they want to prevent.

 

100% conjecture on my side, I don't know if any of that is true.

Actually, it makes sense, it would be nice to avoid all the drama that happened with HTauren and Nightborne, ''oh now I need to do all the quests to gain rep, why Blizzard?''.

I always do Loremaster on my main anyway, oh well. 

 

Edited by Syktris

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9 hours ago, Syktris said:

Actually, it makes sense, it would be nice to avoid all the drama that happened with HTauren and Nightborne, ''oh now I need to do all the quests to gain rep, why Blizzard?''.

I always do Loremaster on my main anyway, oh well. 

 

What drama? For allied races? Anyone who played any of legion should of had those years ago. I have like 11 toons that have it and some of them leveled during antorus.

9 hours ago, Syktris said:

Way to make leveling on dungeons boring... thanks Blizzard. 

They are going to make you experience the content! OMG!

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19 hours ago, Syktris said:

Way to make leveling on dungeons boring... thanks Blizzard. 

dungeons are never the best way to level up anyways and questing is much more fun than brainlessly killing mobs for hours till max level

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