wow R/WoW BlizzCon 2018 Interview

[Stan 5,240]

The WoW subreddit talked to Game Director Ion Hazzikostas at BlizzCon and here's a recap of their interview.

You can check out the full interview here.

Interview Highlights

• The story arc is laid out well in advance (months, even years).
• In Tides of Vengeance, Horde players will embark on a questline to track down Saurfang and Alliance players will uncover his mysterious escape from the Stockades.
• Ion agrees that they need to improve communication, especially the Warfront cycle was poorly communicated, leaving players confused.
• Certain Legion systems (Artifact Power, Artifact Weapons) didn't translate as well as they'd hoped in the Battle for Azeroth iterations.
• With Azerite Armor, they hoped to give players a system of interesting choices, but there weren't enough meaningful choices up front.
• In Tides of Vengeance the Azerite system will be improved upon with a fifth outer ring and the Azerite Armor vendor.
• They consider the current world quests system a big success, but they'd lime to address the repetitiveness of Battle for Azeroth world quests by adding Assaults (Incursions) in Tides of Vengeance.
• Blizzard agrees that there were too many Profession quests in Legion. They're adding new Tools of Trade quests to the game later in BfA.

(Taken from the What's Next panel)

• They will introduce Legendary weapons when it makes sense, but they have to address some issues first. They don't like players with Legendary weapons being more powerful than others, which leads to stacking players with Legendaries and other negative effects.
• It was proposed for guilds to have a new perk -- a fourth & fifth star for Professions that would reduce material requirements even further and Ion really likes the idea.
• The Crucible of Storms will not be available immediately in Tides of Vengeance. There will be a short questline to introduce both factions to the raid.
• Enchanters will have new recipes that will convert Sanguicell into Expulsom for personal use. There will also be a universal recipe that makes the best feasts which uses Sanguicells instead of fish.
• We have no chance to receive Legendaries in Battle for Azeroth from emissaries, so they made them more worthwhile by bumping gold and Artifact Power rewards to make up for it.

[Tupi 30]

 

Quote

They made emissaries more worthwhile by bumping gold and Artifact Power rewards to make up for the chance to receive a Legendary in Legion. 

does this mean legendaries aren't dropping in Legion anymore? it's a very unclear statement. 'Which' set of emissaries are you referencing? Or, did you mean '...Legendary in BfA.'?

 

[dartbodman 64]

16 hours ago, Stan said:

Alliance players will uncover his mysterious escape from the Stockades. 

Such mystery... We just watched Anduin let him out

[dartbodman 64]

9 hours ago, Tupi said:

 

does this mean legendaries aren't dropping in Legion anymore? it's a very unclear statement. 'Which' set of emissaries are you referencing? Or, did you mean '...Legendary in BfA.'?

 

I'm assuming it means Legion had legendaries, BFA has increased gold and AP rewards instead since there are no BFA legendaries to offer.

[Stan 5,240]

5 hours ago, dartbodman said:

I'm assuming it means Legion had legendaries, BFA has increased gold and AP rewards instead since there are no BFA legendaries to offer.

In Legion, players completed emissaries, because there was always a chance to receive a Legendary item. In BfA, there's no chance to receive such items, so they wanted to incentivize world quests and buffed rewards.

[Tupi 30]

ok, then:

They made BfA emissaries more worthwhile by bumping gold and Artifact Power rewards to make up for the chance to receive a Legendary from Legion emissaries.