OwnedCore Report #131 - Shadowlands Next Week >Sponsored by Eldorado<

[Kenneth]

Shadowlands is finally upon us. In less than a week the whole world will be diving into Blizzards newest addition to the World of Warcraft franchise. With it comes a new world to explore, more systems to master, and much more. Will the expansion that follows up BFA actually go down as one of the greats? There is only one way to find out. In the mean time there is a lot of WoW related news that has come out this last week so lets break it all down.

Spoilers Ahead

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Chris Kaleiki Leaves Blizzard

The video above is of World of Warcraft game designer Chris Kaleiki explaining his reasoning for leaving Blizzard after 13 years. Here are some of the main points.

[list]Classic reminded him of what the WoW he fell in love with was like. He goes into detail about how the players create their own stories and in one way or another reminds us of the slight sandbox feel Classic has over retail.

"The world is the main character, the player is the story, the community is the content"

[list]The modern game works too much on the extrinsic and not the intrinsic. Progression systems every expansion instead of making core content like guilds and professions great again.

[list]He wants to be apart of the next big virtual world. Recently he has felt like Blizzard will not be on the forefront of the next big virtual world and that is something he want's to be involved in. With that being said he does mention that WoW will persevere and be a top MMORPG for years to come in part due to its insanely strong IP.


System Priorities in Shadowlands

New systems are coming in Shadowlands and it can get quite overwhelming. The video above by Preach goes over which ones you should prioritize to not get yourself overwhelmed in week 1. Preach mentions that a lot of the systems reminds him of TBC where loads of the content is at your discretion and not mandatory.

• Renown

Renown is a weekly cap and even though the expansion comes out the day before a reset you cannot go super sweat and cap renown right before reset and get a full week ahead according to Ion. We don't know exactly how they'll prevent this but we are taking them at their word. What does this mean according to Preach? Don't stress about Renown early on. We'll have a whole week to cap it. Renown plays into your soulbinds and how much power you get from them + world quest rewards. If you remember Valor points Renown is very similar. There are 3 Renown world quests. A campaign quest, weekly quest, and a "calling" which is like a Legion Emissary.

• Legendaries

Find out which legendary you're class needs and use this spreadsheet to figure out how to get it. Some of them do come from reputation. Reputation only requires honor for the recipes so keep that in the back of your mind. Callings do reward reputation.

• Soulbinds

These are the talent tree in your covenant. These are tied to renowns. The most important being conduit slot unlocks. This is weekly capped so also no stress needed.

• Conduits

There is a daily normal dungeon quest and a daily heroic. This offers you a choice of a lot of reputation so this is something you want to get done early. If you need reputation, like mentioned above, this is how you do it.


WoWHead's interview with Ion

Here will be a TLDR version of WoWHead's exclusive interview with Ion Hazzikostas.

How do you plan to handle the balancing of Covenants and Legendaries after launch when players have already invested resources in those decisions.

If something is the best for certain situations by a whole lot, we would bring it down but maybe not quite as much as pure balance would dictate or as we might have done if we had faced the same issue in Beta, so that players aren't regretting their choices or feeling like they should have done something else.

Would you change Covenants more drastically between Patches or Raids?

Yes.

A lot of consumable class utility items were removed like Scrolls and Drums were nerfed. What's the design decision behind that?

Many of those consumables were used to cover up for stacking many of a certain class. Oh cool we have a priest with us today, that means that we're all gonna have a bit of extra health. Some of these things that are otherwise borderline one shots in this high key, we have a bit of an extra cushion against. That's something that has been part of WoW for a long long time and that we'd like to return to. It's class identity.

Have you considered a more Revolving Door type of Class Balancing, as certain specs tend to dominate more often?

Not Deliberately. People have different strengths and weaknesses and there are certain pieces of toolkits that tend to lend themselves particularly to the things that high end Mythic progression groups value, particularly the World First groups where they're doing things undergeared.

With No Flight Master's Whistle in Shadowlands, are there any plans to quickly teleport to your Covenant Sanctum from anywhere?

If you upgrade your Transportation Network to level 3, that actually also adds a portal to Oribos from your sanctum and so at that point, players should feel free to set their hearths in their sanctum and have free access to Oribos and the other zones from that and that becomes a quick shortcut.

• No current plans for catch up for Soul Ash from Torghast.

• Legendary patterns are not always 100% drop chance and depend on how repeatable the content is.

• Conduit Ranks are essentially just Item Level.

• As your PvP Rating increases, the Conduits from the PvP vendor will scale in Item Level as well.

• Only 3 pieces of Loot per boss from Mythic Castle Nathria.

• No plans to bring back Master Loot.