World of Warcraft Announcements at Blizzcon 2015 *Live Updates*

[Smitten]

Day 2

3:30PM

Right now, they aren't planning new roles for any classes. They want to maximise fantasy in Legion, not add more roles.

Legion Challenge dungeons will not be a LFG system, but the Group Finder system or Guilds will be the best way to find a group.

The Keystone will be a great commodity, it will be easy to find a group as people will want to get into it.

There isn't a great way to drop Split Raiding other than mandatory Personal Loot, but it's not a great solution.

Alts should be something you want to play, not something to feed your main.

Nefarian in BWL will be updated to have a class call for the Demon Hunter.

The ability for the World Drop Legendary items to have transformation effects on your character will be interesting for gameplay.

A lot of the UI improvements for nameplates, castbars and more will provide a better experience.

If Blizzard does their job right, people won't notice scaling levels in the Broken Isles.

They still want to work on Class Accessories in the future.

Legion has the most Voice Over of any expansion they've ever done. Practically every World Group in Legion has their own aggro/pissed lines.

Ashbringer is the first Artifact they fleshed out.

3:20PM

The faction language barrier will still exist in Class Halls, though Demon Hunters can speak Demonic to each other - but it's not set in stone.

Blizzard really wants to encourage group finding in the future, and continue to expand as they can.

There likely won't be any Heroes from Draenor in Legion.

There will be more Gilneas in the expansions, Genn Greymane will be a large role, and you'll meet another group of Gilneas who fled separate to the current group in the Alliance.

PvP gear will drop in strongboxes and weekly quests. It will be equivalent to dungeon/world/raids and will be based on your Arena/BG rating.

You'll meet the final boss during the questing/levelling experience.

Flex would be very problematic in Mythic Raiding. 20-man Mythic will be the raid size in Legion, especially with a twelfth class coming into play.

3:10PM

The problem with making old-world mats relevant today, but it would be very hard to implement for a number of reasons.

Blizzard wants to expand on the lore of many of the races in the game. For example, Taurens in Highmountain, Forsakens likely happening. Gnomes will get some love eventually. Gilneans/Worgen play a big part in Legion.

Old Gods will feature in Legion. It's "probably what's under Tirisfal".

There's an argument to be made for multiple-raid tiers in the future.

Reforging will not be back in Legion.

What will happen to Artifacts after Legion is not exactly certain. There's a benefit to having the Artifact weapon system constrained to Legion, as they can go crazy with their power levels and other systems. You will not wield it forever, but it'll be essential during Legion.

They don't want to put in too much "bad luck protection" systems, as it makes it feel less exciting if, for example, you know it will drop after X runs or kills.

Dance Studios are something they'd love to do, but they need to find the time.

Blizzard does not plan to add "Classic" realms. There are a lot of complexities around running those, both hardware and software. It's not a feasible option.

They wanted Artifacts to have deep backstories, so some classes will be locked into playstyles - such as dual wield Frost DK. You can transmog your Artifacts to other weapons.

2:50PM

In Legion, you can tri-spec, and druids can quad-spec, with a UI overhaul.

Multistrike was just a different form of crit, so they didn't see the advantage of having it. Versatility has a defensive component which makes it attractive to PvPers and Tanks, so it is staying.

Blizzard talks about alts a lot internally. They want to avoid account-wide things in a lot of systems, but they want alts to be easier. They want to strike a balance between interesting and engaging the first time, but a daunting grind the second time.

There will be server-participation to beat back the Legion, and they talk about AQ style events, but they need to find the right time and place to implement it.

Karazhan will be a place of tremendous importance in Legion.

One of the artifact quest lines will shed light on what's beneath Tirisfal.

Wrathion is in Legion, he may have some interest in Highmountain - the old home of Neltharion (Deathwing). Just don't expect him to look the way he did before.

There will be events like Battle for Undercity in Legion and beyond.

2:45PM

There's no plans to add more bank space in Legion.

Titan's Grip will be available to Fury Warriors in Legion.

Legion will answer lots of questions about the Burning Legion as a whole and their existence.

There will be one extra character slot in Legion.

There will not be MoP type queued scenarios in Legion, but the scenario system will still be in the game for both groups and solo play.

Classes with mutilple specs will be able to use multiple artifacts, but they don't want it to feel like they have to grind out all of their artifacts. They have a lot of catch up mechanisms for second and third weapons to catch up to your primary weapon, and players who play later in the expansion or take breaks to catch up to other players.



2:40PM

Blizzard still wants to launch expansions more quickly, but they aren't committing to a schedule. They want quality to trump release dates.

Guilds are important to the structure of World of Warcraft, in the future they want the ability to be in multiple guilds - guild of friends, raiders, PvPers, etc, but it's just an idea at the moment.

There will be no new Battleground in Legion, they are focusing on the new Honour/Progression system instead.

There are no plans to update Draenei or Blood Elf starting zones for Legion.

The Dalaran on Broken Isles is upgraded dramatically. Throughout the expansion, you'll find out what's protecting it.

One key part of the Keystone system are standardized Globally for a given week, so you don't need to seek out people with "Optimal" keystones.

2:30PM

When we discover Alleria and Turaylon in Legion, you'll see the game differently.

It's important to sell the fantasy behind the race and classes. Yes, there will sub-races, but they're not sure how.

Blizzard would like to give a way to give cross-server "guilds" in the future, as the current definition of guilds don't really apply today.

Flying achievement won't be fully complete-able at launch.

There will be a cameo for Bolvar Fordragon in Legion, and in the future, they want to revisit him.

Blizzard is interested in class-content, but they're not certain on class-specific cosmetic quests like Green Fire.

They're looking at implemented shared tapped contents in WoW as a whole. They want cooperation to be more organic and less tedious.



1:55PM

The main goal in Legion is to bring excitement back into the World.

Rare World Drops are back, and can drop anywhere in the World.

They want to power to be relevant throughout the expansion

They want them to have Unique Effects, like they had in Classic.






With Transmog, they want to clean out Void Storage, Bank, but keep the collection aspect that many people like.

As soon as an item is bound to you, it's unlocked into your collection. Once you unlock it, you can remove the item. It will be account-wide.

They've added outfits to transmog, so you can swap between them, and link them.

When you log into Legion, every item you own that's bound to you will automatically.

1:45PM

They wanted more Profession things to do in Legion.

Recipe acquisition has changed. You'll be obtaining patterns through quests, storylines and travelling over the world to achieve these things.

In Legion, Mining and Herbalism nodes are shared.

Recipes will now have ranks. 1, 2 and 3 star recipies to make you more efficient at making what you want to make.

There is a new UI for tradeskills, including Favourites, Learned and Unlearned tabs. Unlearned tab will show you where you can find your unlearned professions.

Higher ranks will allow you to create items with fewer mats, etc.

Using the Obliterum forge, you can break down items you've created and use it to create the power of your current items.



They want Crafting gear to be special, not a carbon copy of raid gear.



Major Glyphs are removed in Legion. Darkmoon Cards will still exist for Scribes, Minor Glyphs will be applied directly to spells. You can glyph as many minor glyphs as you want, but only one per spell.

Vantus Rune give encounter-specific buffs that last around a week.



Bacon will be cookable in Legion.

1:42PM

Demonology Warlocks lost their way and fantasy. They should be about summoning Hoards of demons has part of their core rotation, but Metamorphosis is removed.

Guardian Druids should be a giant wall of flesh, fur and bone that you can't get past, but they're currently about dodging. They're now about increased health, armour and survivability.

Shadow Priests felt like the poor cousin of the Aff Lock. They have cool abilities but didn't fit together into a whole. Shadow Priest new resource is Insanity. No more mana or shadow orbs, spells build up insanity. The more you build, the more powerful you get.

They are doing a major Talent Revision. They will be different "Theme" rows, more choices that matter, more spec-specific talents and that results in hundreds of new talents in total in Legion.

Starting tomorrow, there will be a series of blogs for each class detailing their changes.

1:40PM

They wanted to take a hard look at the classes and look at the fantasy they deliver. They must be Immersive - animations, themes. They must be distinct - must have ability or capability that no other class has. They must feel powerful - be able to achieve your goals and have total control of your character.

They want to change things like Death Knight Runes, Fury Warrior Ability Charges and Arcane Mage Mastery.

Death Knights will have one single rune with six charges, instead of multiple runes with 6 total charges.

They wanted to remove stacking buffs/debuffs or turn it into a resource. Arcane Charges are a resource now.

Arcane is a spec with a really strong fantasy, but didn't feel powerful. Their new mastery "Savant" increases the amount of mana they get - increasing mastery allows more high mana cost spells, and increases damage done.

Survival Hunters will be a melee spec, with their beasts fighting side by side with them.

Disc Priests felt like "different flavour" Holy Priests. They will make them different from other healers, Atonement is now their core mechanic, and will be a DPS to heal spec.

Subtlety Rogues has very strong fantasy - ninja, master of shadows. Shadowdance is cool, but they redesigned to be a passive ability to have a 20% chance to enter Stealth and do your opener again. This stealth doesn't break with Damage. Shadowstrike is a new ability that teleports to any enemy and do Ambush level damage to an enemy.

1:35PM

Vengeance

Still heavily in development. Vengeance are "demon inquisitors", by inflicting pain through fire. A lot of protective spells, and they're the tank spec. They have their own Metamorphosis that's different to the Havoc spec - much heavier and "tank like".

1:30PM



The "inner demon" shows with a lot of spells, but with Metamorphosis it really shines and comes out.






1:25PM

The Demon Hunter is a "Dark Hero" - they've sacrificed their souls to fight a threat most people don't even know exists.

Melee class with leather armour. They use the weapons of their enemies against them - warglaives, Fel magic, etc.

Demon Hunters can choose their horns, blindfolds, tattoos and skin textures, on top of regular character customisations.

Demon Hunters have their own Voice Overs, including emotes.

Havoc is the Melee DPS spec with high mobility. Their own resource called Fury, similar to Warrior's Rage - a builder/spender system.





Demon Hunters have Double Jump as well as Glide, both of which can be activated with the Jump Key.

1:15PM

Class Halls:

Also referred to as Order Halls, they're the same thing.

The goals for Class Halls was the location must represent the class strongly, and feel like you're a Warrior, Mage, etc within your space.

Whatever groups they brought together should welcome the greatest breadth of the fantasy in the space. With Warriors as an example, Beserkers, Grizzled Veterans or shining knights are all valid Warrior fantasies and should feel welcome.

The Class Orders are forming to stop the Legion and should reflect that.

Druids are one of the Classes that already had a "Class Hall" - Moonglade, but not perfect.

Since they're going to the Broken Isles where Druidism was born in Azeroth, they had the opportunity to have the Dreamgrove, where the fabric of the Emerald Dream and Azeroth is at its thinnest. It's a Sanctum for Druids only that no other classes are allowed into.



Each Class Hall has a Shrine in which you can place your Artifact to customise it, and will encompass the fantasy of the class. Each Class Hall will have Class Champions that people will recognise from the game, unlike Garrison Followers.

Scouting Maps will be part of the Class Hall to expose new content to you, from beginning questing to deep into max Level content.

There will be Class Specfic content, such as Artifact Lines, intermittent things such as Demon Hunting quests, pickpocketing quests.

Armour Stands to show off Tier sets, Hunter's lodge have access to a Special flight network from Giant Eagles, Druids have access to the Dreamway to reach many Natural places in the world very quickly, Warriors have an arena to spar with other Warriors and NPCs for bragging rights.

There are two major social hubs - Class Halls and Dalaran. Every class will have their own brand of "Death Gate" to get to their Class Halls quickly - for Hunters its a giant Eagle to take you there.

1:10PM

Questlines will give you access to weapon skins and models, and each model has different colours available.

Finish all of the questing zones, earn exalted, etc, will earn different colours and unlocks on your artifact.

Going to locations or slaying a villian which used to have your artifact also give bonuses.

1:05PM

You will be able to unlock every single trait, but it will take awhile. It will likely take months into the expansion to unlock all of them, and even then it'll be growing for the entire expansion.



Relics are special items that drop in Legion that can be socketed into the weapon to increase power.



These relics allow you to change the way you play - more survivability, more AoE, more burst, etc.

Weapons take different types of Relics, which each Weapon can take different types of. Water, fire, holy, fel, etc.

1:00PM

You can earn artifact power from a number of sources:

- Quest Bosses
- Rare spawn
- Rare Drop
- Dungeon Bosses
- Raid Bosses
- Winning BGs
- Winning Arenas

Getting enough Artifact power unlocks Traits.





Day 1

2:00PM

Beta will likely begin being set up in the coming weeks.

1:55PM

They want dungeons to remain relevant for the whole expansion, in terms of difficulty and reward.

They want variation in experience and avoid the "Mechanar problem" - picking the easiest dungeon for the quickest rewards, and avoiding ones you don't like.

Challenge Mode Repurposed:

You'll get a challengers keystone in a means still to be determined, likely through world quests. It will point to a certain dungeon and a power level for the dungeon, and the reward you'll receive.

There will be a timer, a little bit more lenient than silver currently is. If you beat the timer, you'll upgrade the stone and allow you to take on a harder dungeon. If you fail, you'll lose the stone but get your rewards.

The dungeons will scale up, you won't scale down like Warlords.

They want the focus on combat gameplay, not zerg pulling.

Unbounded progression - there is no limit.

New modifiers each week, which affect how the dungeon work.

Example "Raging - when creatures are below 30% HP, enemies deal double damage until they die".

Extra enemies. Corpses exploding. Periodic AoE.

Rewards include loot chests, jackpots for the highest level cleared each week, a genuine alternate path to complement OR replace raiding.

1:50PM

5 Leveling up dungeons. 10 Dungeons in total.- Eye of Azshara
- Neltharion's Lair
- Halls of Valor
- Darkheart Thicket
- Violet Hold

They want to integrate the dungeons into the storyline and zone, unlike recently. The zone questlines will culminate in the dungeon experience.
The dungeons are also flexible, like the quests.

Max Level Dungeons

- Vault of the Wardens
- Black Rook Hold
- Helheim
- Suramar Noble District
- Suramar Catacombs

1:45PM

The Emerald Nightmare:

- 7 Boss Raid
- Accessed through Val'sharah
- It IS the Emerald Dream
- You'll get there by climbing the World Tree to cross to the Emerald Dream.

First raid boss is the Pestilence Wyrm.



Second is Cenarius.



Xavius. In our world, he's a Satyr. In his domain, he takes on his form as whatever he wants. Final boss.



Suramar Palace

- 10 Boss Raid
- Guldan's Base of Operations

It isn't a dark demon raid. It's a majestic Elven city.

Guldan will be final boss.

1:40PM

In this end game world content, they want variety to be king, with things for reputation, PvP, world bosses, professions, PvE, and minigames (think Gnomebliteration in Uldum).

The entire region will have the same events at the same time, so you don't have to server hop to get what you want.

Emmisaries will come to your Class Order Hall, and they'll ask you to do objectives for their faction, but you'll be able to pick the ones you like the most to satisfy their questgivers quest. They aren't daily quests, they'll stick around for awhile, so you don't feel pressured to log on daily.

1:35PM

Endgame in Broken isles

They want to keep freeform gameplay, but imbue with a sense of purpose and storytelling like in Mists of Pandaria.

They also want a sense of structure, but without it feeling compulsory like Mists of Pandaria and Warlords dailies.

Because the Broken Isles scale, they can make use of the whole Broken Isles for end-game gameplay.

They want a system of outdoor world quests that are constantly ongoing and changing throughout the map, with varied reasons and rewards. You can pick what you want to do. They'll appear around the map. They are time-limited from a few hours to an entire week, with varying rewards for difficulties.

1:30PM

Suramar is a Level 110 only zone.

Flexibility allows it to be easier to play with your friends, as you can quest together in the same zones, regardless of what your level is.

It works by scaling the World around you, not scaling you down. It should "all just work". It should feel like the questing experience you're used to.

Quest rewards will scale to your level.

Each zone will have max-level threats that don't scale.

1:25PM:

They were learning a lot about how content scales while developing Warlords and working on Legion, and they wanted to extend it to the Broken Isles as a whole.

You'll be able to level in any zone, at any level, as it all scales to your level.

Four level up zones that scale up.

Your objective in each zone is to recover the Pillar of Creation from each zone - a Titan relic.

You'll have to go to all four to get all the pillars.

1:22PM:

Nightbourne as an offspring of the Night Elves, residents of Suramar.






1:10PM:

Naga will have new in-game models.





1:07PM:

You will be able to see three times as far in-game as previous expansions.

12:56PM:

New Moonkin & Sea Lion models




12:40PM:

Demon Hunter Intro:

Demon Hunter starts at level 98 - and playing through the intro, you'll learn what it truly means to be a Demon Hunter.

It is a story bridge from BC to the Present - What was Illidan Stormrage really doing at the Black Temple when we were raiding him?



Demon Hunters go to Mardum, a former prison world for demons. It was Shattered by Sargeras, the individual who originally imprisoned demons there.









There are more powerful versions of demons we're familiar with, as well as new demons.

You'll be using their devices against them. They have different effects, such as summoning allies, buffs. You'll gain your abilities throughout the levelling experience like Death Knights, but you'll learn the spells by stealing them from more powerful demons.

The Demon Hunter mount will be the Felsaber.


Maiev will imprson you.

Demon Hunter Second Half:

The second half will be in the Vault of the Wardens, and you'll break out. You'll join your faction but remain Illidari.

You'll return to Mardum and establish your Class Order Hall.

You'll quest for your own Artifact Level Warglaives

12:36PM:

It is the first time Blizzard has created a WoW Cinematic that has tied directly into the game, a hand off.

The Broken Shore is Ground Zero for the Legion Invasion. Gameplay will pick up directly after the events of the Cinematic.

The Broken Shore is a 40 person Scenario for Horde and Alliance. 20 Alliance, 20 Horde, working together to fight the Burning Legion.

The Character Boost will be its own "separate adventure".

12:13PM:

You can pre-order at wowlegion.com. Pre-ordering will give you a Level 100 Boost and early access to Demon Hunter.



12:09PM:

World of Warcraft: Legion Cinematic is being shown.

Watch it here (World of Warcraft Announcements at Blizzcon 2015 *Live Updates*)

11:57AM:

Purchasing Overwatch Origins Edition will provide you with a Baby Winston Pet in-game.



11:25AM: Warcraft Movie Trailer is being shown.



11:23AM: Warcraft Movie cast will be talking about the movie.



11:07AM: Brightpaw the Mana Kitty will be this years charity pet - on sale from December 2nd. From Dec 2nd to the 31st, all proceeds will go to Make a Wish Foundation.

[CreativeXtent]

First!


and i am excited!

[Smitten]

Legion Cinematic Trailer

[Smitten]

I also won't be writing about zones or anything in this thread. I'll be doing a full write up later. It's going too quick for me to keep up with and take screenshots/take notes. There will be gameplay features and such though.

[IChangedMyUsername]

11:25AM: Warcraft Movie Trailer is being shown. Watch at the link below.[B]]

Got this link?

[Smitten]

Got this link?

fixed it, got removed from the page for some reason.

[Smitten]

All the Q&A answers up now. Stay tuned for a full write-up on all the announcements and information from Blizzcon in the coming day or so!

[bboystyle82]

I never knew they took out rare world drops....

[Smitten]

I never knew they took out rare world drops....

I think they mean the rare drops with unique on-use/equip effects, such as the ones shown in the picture. Frozen Band, Cloudkeeper Legplates, etc, and not just world epic drops that are like raid gear.