World of Warcraft Post-BlizzCon Q&A - Overview

[Yawnstar]

Blizzard has posted the post-BlizzCon Q&A with Bethany Stout, Ion Hazzikostas, Morgan Day and more

War Within

They're working on a 2024 road map to release in the near future.

3 more updates are coming after Patch 10.2 before War Within.

They wanted to add value to all levels of the expansion packs. They considered many options and one of the things they paid attention to across the industry is early/beta access. The 3 day Early Access is just a head start on leveling up.

They're not trying to do game shrink-flation, WoW expansions are staying WoW expansions - 4 zones, 8 dungeons, new levels, a raid. They want to reduce lulls and gaps in content over the years.

Druids will have Dynamic Flying in Flight Form in 11.0

New spec points are coming to Professions. Inspiration stat is being looked at. Looking at ways of increasing availability of crafting orders, possibly NPCs putting in crafting orders.
Working through the details of how transmog will work with Tier Set Tokens. Plan is to stay soulbound at the moment, but they'll be listening to feedback.

You currently cannot opt out of warbands. Some options might not be available as part of Warbands though.

Members of your Warband will span your Battle.net account. Character Select screen will only show your currently WoW account though. If you're multiboxing, there may be some restrictions on shared Warbound systems such as only one character accessing the bank at a time.

Mythic+ portals will be account-bound in War Within.

There will only be one Warband background screen at launch, but they like the idea of allowing customization down the line.

No current plans to replace the default backpack or its bag tabs. Bag space is a concern, especially with more activities. The answer isn't really more bag space though, it's limiting what you're being asked to hold.

Delve chest keys will be a part of the Delve UI rather than taking bag slots. Another small change in War Within is being able to collapse currency subheaders.
The Trading Post will be moving forward into TWW.

Several things are still server based, not the least of which character names, but their goal is to make it not matter what server you're on in terms of playing with your friends and what you're able to do.

We'll get into some large numbers next expansion, but there's no planned stat squish in TWW - there will almost certainly one in 12.0 / Midnight, though they've gotten pretty good at them now.

Cross-faction Timewalking is being worked on, though they don't want to force cross-faction gameplay into random group finder. The better answer that they're working on is allowing Timewalking to be accessed through the premade group finder instead.

More customization options are always a priority, but nothing explicitly is planned. They'll add more as they're ready and the additions make sense for the game.

Clearing up any misconceptions - there's no time travel in Midnight/The Last Titan. We recently healed the timeways in Dawn of the Infinite and have no reason to revisit that anytime soon. When Metzen said returning to the Old World, he meant seeing how familiar lands have changed and telling new stories within them. They want to ensure that future WoWstorytelling keeps iconic settings relevant - we told the story of Northrend and the Lich King 15 years ago, keeping it stale and unchanging doesn't really benefit the Warcraft universe. So yes, we will be returning to the lands of Silvermoon, Quel'Thalas, and later Northrend - we'll see how they've changed over time, expand, and reimagine them, but there's no time travel, only moving forward. Those older spaces will also be updated to allow dynamic flying, with a seamless transition from EPL to the Ghostlands, etc.

Dynamic flying requires certain animations, and they'd love to eventually allow any mount to dynamically fly, but they're trying to reasonably manage expectations. They hope to get to a point where 100% of them can, but there will be a lot at launch.

Delves currently being designed for players to run them as much as they'd like, with no lockout, but players will collect keys from various activities and weekly quests. These keys will unlock end of run chests, and most of the gear will come from that, though you can continue running delves for Vault completion or farming reputation and other rewards.

It would be cool if Hero Talents could allow Priests to wear Plate armor like Anduin, but would cause massive itemization concerns, so they wanted to avoid those problems. If they made a change like that, they'd want it to be more global than an opt-in hero talent.

Warcraft lore is a big complex space, and they will occasionally miss something, but they do everything in their power to keep all the stories straight and not forget anyone. Terran Gregory has also been charting individual character arcs, keeping track of who is in the foreground central to the story and who is in the background, though it might look something like an Always Sunny whiteboard meme.

No plans to extend the Evoker charge mechanic yet, as they want to keep it unique to Evoker for the time being, but it is something they've been discussing and recognize could be exciting in a lot of other spaces.

Dragonflight

Season 4 is coming which gives them an opportunity to do fun experimental things but there's awesome surprises there too.

Dragonriding makes the questing experience more exciting but there's more nuance to it.

The Archaeology triangulation minigame isn't planned to return, as it was largely considered to be more tedious than fun, but the idea of uncovering pieces of Azeroth's history is something they're always looking to return to - Delves tie into that in a small way. Another fun feature which scratches that itch and dives into the lore of the world is Azerothian Archives, planned for a future Dragonflight update. More info on that coming soon.