The first major patch of the World of Warcraft: Dragonflight expansion, Embers of Neltharion, will be launching tomorrow, May 2nd. Ahead of this, I had the opportunity to participate in a roundtable interview with Game Director Ion Hazzikostas and Lead Quest Designer Josh Augustine. This was a last chance to get in all our burning questions before everything goes live on Tuesday. Additionally, if you missed it, Blizzard also recently put out a Developer Chat, which also covers a lot of interesting topics regarding the 10.1 patch. Without further ado, let’s dive in.
That Sweet Sweet Loot
We all knew that with the new season, the catalyst, which allows us to turn non-tier items into tier, would likely go dormant for a while and then need to be unlocked again. However, we haven’t had any specific information given regarding how this will work, so I wanted to get a clarification on what we can expect here. Hazzikostas confirmed that with the patch, the current catalyst we have been using will go away and will return sometime in June (4-5 weeks after season 2 starts).
He also clarified that “unlike last time around, you don’t have to do anything to earn the charges. [There are] no quests, there’s also no currency, so it’s just every week all of your characters get a charge, can’t miss them, those accumulate, and you can spend them on a character-specific basis.”
All of that sounds wonderful, especially since I am a forgetful sort, and despite opening the vault on multiple characters every week, I’d forget to pick up the catalyst quest way too often.
He also mentioned that for 10.1.5, they are looking at possibly adding a way for players to use the new catalyst to consume season 1 charges and allow players to finish collecting sets that way. He was very clear that if they do this, they don’t want players to have to burn their season 2 charges to get the season 1 transmogs. All of that is fantastic and will be a huge help. He also mentioned they have a blog planned to go over all of their plans for the catalyst, and that should be posted soon.
Similar to changes with the catalyst, there are some changes coming for how sparks work. This is what Hazzokostas had to say regarding sparks:
“Season 2 sparks, it is one every two weeks starting at the start of the season, and that will continue forever. There’s isn’t you hit your cap, and now good luck winning the lottery getting extra ones; it’s just one every two weeks. As far as season 1 sparks go, the quest to earn the original five still exists, but no more bottled essences will drop past that. Season 1 sparks can still be used to craft season 1 gear, which you can then recraft to season 2, or you can just make season 2 gear straight up.”
He also later clarified that the first half of the first season 2 spark will drop with the launch of 10.1, on May 2nd. Overall, this is a positive change to have the sparks be predictable. One of my biggest frustrations in season 1 was that I kept having a feast or famine situation with the sparks, and never on the characters that wanted them on. It also didn’t feel like there was a reliable way for me to pursue getting more for my characters that really needed them.
The Continuing Story of WoW
First, we were allowed to group up with members of the opposite faction to do instanced content. With 10.1, guilds will be able to have members who are the opposite faction than the guild. The trajectory definitely seems to be indicating more and more cooperation between the two factions, and some players have been concerned that there won’t be room for the faction vs faction stories anymore. Augustine pointed out that in the past, it was often a bit weird when we had the two factions work together when they also clearly couldn’t set aside old grudges. He also went on to say:
“But there’s still tons of opportunities to show, not everyone’s onboard with that. Sure, Anduin and Baine can be out there holding hands, but that doesn’t mean that the grizzly war veteran in a cave somewhere is suddenly gonna change his mind. So, I think there’s still lots of opportunities to still tell those stories, even immediately in Dragonflight… it’s just a matter of finding the right context. Dragonflight is this hopeful endeavor, so it felt right to tell this story of the horde and alliance working together, but I can definitely see another potential setting where like Battle for Azeroth, fighting over a scarce resource, that’s an opportunity to explore the factions not working together as well as they are here.”
I was also keen to explore a bit about why we’re seeing Wrathion, Ebyssian, and Sabellian struggling with whispers as we explore the new areas in the cavern. Back in BfA, we had a whole questline where Wrathion had researched ways to resist N’Zoth and had also helped Ebyssian resist as well. I was curious if the reason those two were having trouble was that the previous endeavors only were good against N’Zoth specifically or if there was something else at play.
Unfortunately, Augustine couldn’t go into too much detail in the aspects from BfA because he wasn’t working on that narrative back when we created the cloak. Plus, I suspect, really answering that would likely have been too spoilery. He did go on to explain that “a lot of it is, hoping to show these characters wrestling with the same things that undid Neltharion and turned him into Deathwing. Showing them working against that, and having that tension of can they reach a better outcome or is it destiny that every black dragon that comes down here and struggles through this is destined to fail and succumb to this, or can they find a way to overcome and find a new direction for their flight.”
Thinking about this and the way they’ve been positioning the three of them, it’d really make things come full circle if both Wrathion and Sabellian have a lot of struggles with all of this, and nearly fall, but have Ebyssian be the one to help them find their way through. It’d put both Sabellian and Wrathion in their place a bit, and at the same time, allow Ebyssian to return the favor to Wrathion.
Collection Pursuits
I’m not particularly big into transmoging, I certainly enjoy doing it, but it isn’t something that’s generally I spend much time on. That said, I really liked the Druid Teir set from season 1, and in particular, the LFR set because it is teal. However, since I raid outside of LFR, obtaining the set from there was particularly difficult as it seems there’s always someone who needs the tier pieces. With this in mind, I asked about what they are doing to address this and if they have any ideas on how to balance the different interests regarding LFR tier better. Hazzikostas explained their thinking as follows:
“A small step we’ve taken towards helping with this problem, though I agree not completely alleviating it, is adding the new roll for transmog option which has higher priority over greed rolls. Now, if there are some people there who need the item as an upgrade, your cosmetic need won’t trump their personal power upgrade, but at least it helps people who have higher item level versions of the set and thus aren’t able to need the lower level versions, but will have priority over people who would just vendor or disenchant it as the default. Understandably feeling like ‘Hey I’ve earn this piece, I’ve earned this exact item on a higher difficulty level, I just want the cosmetic and I don’t want to wait until I can solo this three years from now’ it is a very valid viewpoint… nothing to announce right now, obviously, but something we might look into is a of a vendor or some way to just buy the cosmetic appearance of set once you have the higher tier as opposed to having to re-earn the specific drop, something that applies to set armor in particular, but we realize it’s a problem we need to do more to solve.”
Hopefully, the roll for transmog option will check to see if someone has that specific appearance unlocked or not before letting people roll on it, otherwise, this will cause the same issue all over again. Personally, I wish they’d gone with the model that once you unlock the appearance for one difficulty, it’d unlock every appearance for that item on the lower difficulties. That makes sense on a fundamental level. However, I suppose the problem with that is then more geared players will have less reason to do LFR, which could hurt the overall LFR experience. Although, in some cases, it would improve it, as some of the most toxic behavior I’ve seen in LFR comes from players who do raids on other difficulties.
There was also a question regarding mount acquisition and how it seems like the team has moved a bit away from rng and more towards other methods players have more direct control over. Hozzikostas explained that it is a bit of both because exact balances will vary depending on a variety of circumstances, but he continued to say, “We want every mount to represent, ideally, something that you did to get it. Whether it was your commitment to an activity, a test of extreme skill in one area or another, that you saved up a bunch of gold, you got super lucky, and that’s a full ecosystem that we want to maintain. The ones that feel like they are the most reliant on luck, I think, should continue to be in the minority.”
I have to agree with them on this and hope it is something they keep moving forward with. I have low patience for farming out, well anything really, so I prefer when I have a clear path, I can follow to obtain a mount. However, finally getting something I’ve been trying to get for a long time, or getting lucky and getting a rare mount quickly, is also exciting. One of the reasons the Brewfest Kodo is still one of my favorite mounts is that I spent so much time with friends trying to get it, and we eventually got everyone the mount. As long as farming isn’t the main way to get most mounts, having some that are is fine.
Many of the changes coming with 10.1 feel really positive, and although some are clearly solutions in the process rather than a complete solution, knowing that we are actually moving towards more complete solutions is reassuring. Also, while always having something new coming has been exciting, I was a bit worried I’d feel rushed. There have been times in the past when the content pace has been so fast that more casual players like me feel really pushed to get things done. This hasn’t been the case with Dragonflight, and I hope they are able to maintain this pace in a healthy way for everyone working on it.
