wow Preach Interview With Lead Game Designer Morgan Day

[Stan 5,240]

Preach sat down with Lead Game Designer Morgan Day to discuss Shadowlands and here is a recap of their interview.

Interview Highlights

Preach talked to Lead Game Designer Morgan Day to discuss Covenant abilities, Castle Nathria, Torghast, and more. Check out our recap below for more information!

Castle Nathria Raid

• They use raid environment for boss fights when it makes sense (like the Maiden of Vigilance hole in Tomb of Sargeras).
• Denathrius is a multiple floor fight (like Blackhand).
• They want to make the Venthyr teleport (Covenant ability) handy during the Denathrius encounter.

Classes

• Shadow Priest is on their radar, but there's no ETA for when the changes are going to arrive. Shadowlands systems (Conduits, Soulbinds, Covenant Abilities) are the current priority.

Covenant Abilities

• They are still working on Conduits, Soulbinds, and Legendary Powers, and nothing is set in stone yet in terms of Covenant abilities.
• They want to use Conduits as turning knobs for Covenant Abilities, so if a Warlock Covenant ability is too much single-target oriented, they might design a Conduit that makes it work for AoE.
• The vast majority of Covenant abilities will be available in Torghast starting tomorrow on a daily rotating basis.
• The Druid Covenant ability (Kindred Spirits) feels limited right now because it has too work with all four specs according to Preach, and Morgan appreciates the feedback and said they can look into these instances.

Dungeons

• Dungeons currently feel really quick on Alpha and Morgan commented that level-up dungeons are intended to be short and we're still currently in early Alpha, so their length is not intentional. The devs have no intention to reduce dungeon length.
• Mists of Tirna Scithe is the next three-boss dungeon that will be available for testing soon (likely starting tomorrow). There will be a maze that leads up to a boss with a similar mechanic.
• The goal with Mythic affixes is to provide evergreen content, but if the player is incapable of completing a Mythic+ run that is 4 keys lower than last week, then, it's a problem that they need to look into.

Global Cooldowns

• No plans to revert GCD in Shadowlands, the devs want to know specific examples of abilities, which should be taken off GCDS, as it's important to identify those outliers.
• They don't want players to push six buttons before they start dealing damage.

Torghast

• With Torghast, they wanted to create a game mode that was never seen before in the game.
• They want to allow people access to Torghast even without keys, but with cosmetic rewards, just for prestige, because we know the Tower and the legendary items grind will be gated behind farming the Maw and keys to gain access.
• One of the core goals of Shadowlands is bringing class fantasy back.
• Torghast is a sandbox that they can experiment with. Some of the Anima Powers could become future legendary powers in the expansion.
• Anima Powers will be primarily class-based as opposed to spec-based.
• Torghast will be available at max level.

Lore

• Characters and their stories we've encountered before will return in Shadowlands.

Systems

• At max level, you are asked to make a choice between the Covenants and soulbind with them.
• In Shadowlands, they are taking a more holistic approach

World First Race

• Preach asked if they want to add more now that World First Races are being watched by thousands, and Morgan replied that Mythic-only phases are cool when they make sense.

Zones

• The inhabitants of Ardenwealds are similar to Azeroth dryads.

Live Stream / VoD

[Chud 8]

"Shadow Priest is on their radar, but there's no ETA for when the changes are going to arrive."

 

Let me take a stab in the dark here. Patch 9.3.

[Migol 433]

Hmm, glad they're able to see the need for "non gated Torghast", but I wish they'd lighten up on the cosmetics only thing.

As I've said before, Mythic+ is the most successful system they've ever made, and a big part of that is the "no limits" aspect.    You can run as many of them as you want and you'll always have a chance at skill/gear appropriate loot at the end.   

[Whiterhino 31]

No plans to revert GCD in Shadowlands, the devs want to know specific examples of abilities, which should be taken off GCDS, as it's important to identify those outliers.

They don't want players to push six buttons before they start dealing damage.

If they played their own game wouldn't they figure this out on their own? 

[Strakith 0]

Was the 2 years of feedback telling you the GCD change was utter garbage not enough?  You literally created this problem, which didn't exist for the first 14 years of the game's life.  I'm not sure what's so complicated about fixing it.  Just undo what you did and then implement another solution to fix cooldown buff stacking that doesn't make the gameplay feel like *filtered*.  I can come up with half a dozen different ways of doing that off the top of my head.  Some of them, like soft shared cooldowns (ie 5-10seconds), would take all of an afternoon to implement.

Edited May 13, 2020 by Strakith