wow Raider.IO War Within Interview With Morgan Day and George Velev: the Origins of Mythic+, Raid Plans and More

[Staff 1,488]

 

Here's another great BlizzCon interview, and just in time for the Race to World First! Raider.IO's Aesyric interviewed Associate Game Director Morgan Day and Game Producer George Velev on many topics including the origins of Mythic+, the simultaneous raid difficulty release timing, the RWF, Timewalking raids, Augmentation, the development pipeline and much more. 

Here's our summary of the most interesting points, but you should definitely head on over to Raider.IO and read the full thing anyway! 

Raiding

• The simultaneous raid difficulty release when a season starts was in part motivated by Mythic+ limits that had to be in place when only Heroic was available the first week, so they're happy with how it's worked out. All players don't have to think about the details of a staggered release and item level/M+ limitations, which is a big positive. They've also gotten better at tuning the raids, which was a major issue during the Vault of the Incarnates RWF. 
• They hope to one day be able to do a full raid without any PTR testing so it's all new and exciting, but it's more of a "dream", as player feedback is a huge part of what the raid tuning is based on. 
• Raid design isn't intended to absolutely always require WeakAuras and addons, but encounters are designed with them in mind. They have increased the use of Private Auras in Amirdrassil to clamp down a little on excessive WeakAura usage. 
• Reviving/remaking old content is definitely something that will go on, and they also mentioned the possibility of additional difficulties for Timewalking raids "making them feel more modern and relevant", although at some point in the future. 

Mythic+

• Mythic+ wasn't originally designed as an evergreen system that would persist after Legion. It was just an experiment that they then decided to make into a core part of the game. 
• There are no new leaver penalties planned for Mythic+.
• The focus of M+ going forward is more on the dungeons and less on the affixes, as the affixes should just be these relatively minor changes that happen from week to week to make things fresh. 
• Throne of the Tides is basically a brand new dungeon considering how much it was changed. 
• No new cosmetics planned for Mythic+, but something they could look at in the future are things like Vicious Mounts, that are rewards for just playing as lot, as opposed to reaching a certain high rating. 
• They don't want Augmentation to feel obligatory in 5 man groups so they will be tuning it further (which has already happened recently once again, with yesterday's tuning pass). 

Don't forget to head on over and check out the full interview, with a lot more detail on each subject and quite a few more questions as well! 

[Prophet001 598]

M+ is an amazing addition as everyone knows. I think it would be really cool if they remade the vanilla dungeons like Deadmines and WC and turned them into M+ runs.