Later today, World of Warcraft: The War Within's early access will start, and players who preordered the Epic edition will get to take their first steps into the new expansion. Hopefully, there will be few tech issues to slow players down, and it will, in turn, also lessen the strain on the servers when the full launch arrives on August 26th. In the meantime, I had the opportunity to get some last-minute information from Production Director Michael Bybee and Game Producer George Velev. As we while away the hours until we get to play, let’s take one last look at what we have to look forward to.
Hero Talents
The morning before our interview, Blizzard published a dev blog about Hero Talents, focusing on their “class fantasy” aspect. Rather than offering much in the way of cosmetic customizations, hero talents have mostly seemed to offer power-focused talents that will augment our talent builds. Some of these abilities are cool and have some neat effects, but I have always hoped for something that would affect my character's appearance, even when I’m just standing around. When I asked what the plans for Hero Talents in the future look like, this is what Velev said:
“One of our goals with Hero Talents is to have them feel visually distinct from each other. So, if you are a Dark Rager versus playing a Pact Leader, we want players to know that there’s a Dark Ranger over there casting black arrow and things of that nature. Some are intentionally louder than others; not everyone is going to summon an arcane phoenix like a Sunfury Fire or Arcane mage; some are a bit more demure and sort of subtle.
“That being said, we are treating Hero Talents as an evergreen system, so much like class or spec updates, redesigns, or tuning, Hero Talents are falling into that same bucket. In terms of updates for the future, yeah we’re just getting started with Hero Talents, and I’m personally excited to see how far we go.”
It was great to hear that they plan to keep working on these and that it is possible some more visual customizations will come into play. Of course, another huge area of concern anytime there are choices offered that have power implications, balance between the two always ends up being a concern. The devs have addressed this a bit in the past, but this time, I wanted to get a specific example of what balance done well in terms of Hero Talents would look like.
Velev said, “In terms of what we think is ok, for us talents are at the end of the day have become the solve problem over the course of a season. Players will gravitate to what’s the best from what’s the worst, but as long as there is variation in what you are playing from one boss to another. I’ll use raids as an example; if you are like, ‘Oh this is a really good boss for Elune’s chosen because I want to do lots of moonfires because there’s a lot of spread targets,’ that’s cool. What we want to avoid is having you play Elune’s Chosen for the entire raid.”
This is where I realized there is a disconnect between how I think about Hero Talents and how the devs, and likely high-end players, think about them. In the example of the Druid, being a Druid of the Claw or Keeper of the Grove is a particular thing that exists in the universe. They are a group you are part of or not. Likewise, Chosen of Elune has a very group cohesion sound to it. It’s an identity. This is further reinforced by the various dev blogs discussing the class fantasy in each Hero Talent tree.
So, while mechanically in a game it makes sense to switch between the two options based on what is needed in the fight or dungeon, that runs counter to the fantasy aspect of it all. That’s why I always wished these were more about cosmetics and playing into that class fantasy rather than being related to power. I would love to be a Druid of Claw and have that reflected in my character’s looks, and given the choice, I would never choose to be a Chosen of Elune. As it sounds, though, for raiding and my mythic+ runs, I’ll just need to accept that I’ll likely be switching between the two.
Delves
Even though I raid and do a lot of M+, I’ve been looking forward to delves and what they might offer as another avenue of content. All of the ones I’ve done on the alpha/beta were much less of a time commitment than doing dungeons, and since I don’t have to put together a group for them, they are an excellent option for jumping in real quick and doing something fun. During the recent WoWCast Morgan Day talked a bit regarding Tier 11 for delves and how they are an exciting solo challenge. Due to his phrasing, it sounded a bit as if Tier 11 would be solo only, making it different from the rest of the delve difficulties. However, Bybee confirmed that Tier 11 delves will allow other players to join you if you’d like but that there are special achievements and rewards for doing it solo. He also went on to say:
“The goal of delves from the beginning was that you could do them solo, but that you could bring groups of friends up to and including a full five-man group. There is, I will say, in the thirteenth delve, which is supposed to be the most difficult experience in delves, you can still bring friends is the intent, but there is an achievement that we’re intending to have in there that if you are able to complete that delve solo.
“And of course, when we think about delves, we do think about there are a lot of people who play World of Warcraft that are interested in more of a single-player experience. Or they tend to play that way most of the time. So we wanted delves to be something that you can 100% do by yourself if that’s what you wanted to do, but that’s not the way we intend the whole feature to operate.”
This was a very helpful clarification because although some players will relish the higher difficulty solo, others might prefer to bring a friend or two along. One of my best memories from during the alpha was playing through an underwater delve with a friend and working together to figure out what we needed to do. Having other people I enjoy spending time with there has only enhanced my experience. Of course, I’ll also push the difficulty solo as well, but not forcing that choice was a wise move.
Related:
WoW's The War Within Might Be Enough To Get Me To Play The MMORPG
Mythic+
I’ve enjoyed the rescale of Mythic+ dungeons, where they roughly made each dungeon about ten levels harder than it was previously. For anyone who missed the change, a +5 in Season 4 was about equal to a +15 previously. It felt like it was a bit easier to get up to the +5 keys as a casual, and the difficulty curve overall felt smoother. Within my guild, we have quite a few more people in their KSM this season, and part of that has to do with the rescale. I hope this continues and more people are interested in running mythic+ dungeons in The War Within.
There are also many changes to how Mythic+ works coming with the new expansion, and they’ve gone through many iterations of these changes throughout the alpha/beta cycle.Bybee explained that the tiering system hit al of their goals they set out for it and the feedback they received has helped them make further changes for TWW. Ialso took the opportunity to ask about how Mythic+ will work in season 1, and this is what he had to say:
“So, it’s a little complicated in the way the affixes in mythic+ will now work; but you can basically think of you’ve got your normal dungeon, your heroic which is now like the old mythic 0, you’ve got your mythic 0’s which is like your [old] mythic 10’s, and then you’ve got your mythic 2-10 which are really challenging. hey have the new Xal’atath’s bargen affixes that rotate week by week, and then you have at tier 7 you get extra time if you die added, and then you either get fortified or tyrannical, and then later you get the other one. That whole thing makes the tier 2 through 11 feel like an increasing difficulty, but mixes things up week by week.
“Then there’s yet another tier now with 12 and beyond where we’ve just said, ‘OK anyone doing these tiers are just push push push push; it needs to be consistent, it can be ok to have a set meta for classes that you are bringing for this, and the goal there is you’re trying to push content there as much is possible. It has really added so much more texture to the entire experience of doing mythic+. I’m personally incredibly excited about it, and I’m getting my portals, I’m going to be trying to push all the way to 3000 rating, i’m jazzed.”
All of the changes to mythic+ changes that are coming seem incredibly complex, but they should make the overall experience more fun for players. This will likely be similar to the new gear upgrading system, which felt complex to begin with but will become second nature once we get in and use it.
Getting KSM is one of the big draws to Mythic+ for many players since it always rewards a mount. With the changes to how fortified and tyrannical work in The War Within, I was curious if the target difficulty of completing KSM will also change. In Dragonflight Season 4, KSM-focused players needed +5 in each dungeon on both tyrannical and fortified. There was some wiggle room in that, but that was the general rule. They weren’t able to ask for sure during the interview, but I did get a follow-up message explaining how it will work.
"With the simplification of mythic+ rating from fortified and tyrannical to a single score, this reward is being nudged up to require an average keystone level of +6:
- For Keystone Conqueror, you would roughly need a 50/50 split of +3 and +4 timed keys.
- For Keystone Master, you would roughly need a 50/50 split of +6 and +7 timed keys.
- For Keystone Hero, you need all dungeons at +10 on time."
I’m glad to see the needed thresholds aren’t going up too much, and the difficulty of getting each should be around the same as it is currently. Of course, that also depends on the tuning of the dungeons and various mechanics in each. The first season in a new expansion always tends to be a bit of a wild ride, but I still look forward to it.
Overall, I can’t wait to jump into everything later today; playing in alpha/beta isn’t the same. I’m a little stressed because having less than a month for my guild to get raid-ready is a bit daunting, but I’m mostly excited. Hopefully, everything goes reasonably smoothly. At least there should be no waiting for boats that don’t show up this time.
