Today marks a new World of Warcraft Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas and Josh Allen. We've been listening and have the complete wrap report.
Q: Artifact appearances
A: There aren't any new updates on artifact appearances after Legion. You can still unlock them later except for a couple that are Legion-only.
Q: Upgrading legendaries & drop rates
The legendary upgrade system will generally remain the same. We don't want to automatically upgrade items. It just feels odd. We're keeping an eye on legendary drop rates and there may be an increase in drops. Legendary tokens will be what you earn once you've got all of a spec's legendaries. Then the tokens can be shared with alts.
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Q: Class balance
There aren't any plans to do a balance pass before Antorus but there will be one after it unlocks. Tomb balance is pretty good right now.
Q: Tier sets
We're not super happy with the tier set system and how it's working out. We try to have a variety in gameplay so that you get something more than all passives. It's probably going a bit too far if you need a specific build and legendary if you have a certain set.
Q: Mythic dungeons
We're going to do more with Mythic dungeons in the future after watching the Mythic + Dungeon Invitational. We're talking about battle resurrections for instance. We want classes to bring unique things rather than the team copying someone else's ability and giving to another class and having it then be considered "second rate".
Q: Mission rewards from the table
Followers will need to be 950 but the missions will have 'bumped rewards'.
Q: Account-wide Argus whistle
It should be that way. We're working on making that happen and that it will unlock account wide. It will be out in a day or two.
Q: PvP seasons
They will be linked to new raid zones so when the dungeons / raids / PvP seasons begin, it keeps things balanced gear-wise. We're getting away from patches being tied to certain kinds of content, however.
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Q: Account wide Argus World Quests
In Krokuun & MacAree, those quests are tied to the storyline. So you have to pass through that "restriction" to open world quests for any character. Doing the story quests should still be an efficient way to gain AP.
Q: Artifact Knowledge Cap
It's going up every week right now. It's a more streamlined experience. That continues to Knowledge 55. We don't see a need to raise it beyond that. It's not the most elegant thing in the world to see numbers in the billions to level an artifact.
Q: World bosses on Broken Isles
We've changed it to make them spawn less randomly and more fixed (like Na'zak the Fiend) in order to get certain crafting recipes. The sense of some things that are in demand and harder to get. You get economic power if you're the one that has something.
Those world bosses were designed to accompany the raid content a year ago. It's not necessary to go back every week since the iLevel of the rewards is set to a year ago. They're a bit outdated and that's fine.
Q: Sylvanas / Greymane Story
This is something that's amply set up in Legion. It's not a plot thread we're going to abandon. We'll return to them as it makes sense. The focus of the story right now is to battle the Legion, not to explore tensions between the Horde & Alliance.
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Q: Broken Shore buildings
At this point, the contributions required and speed of building has been reduced. Systems are tied into the buildings including achievements. We won't take that content out. Think back to Argent Tournament or Halaa in old Nagrand.
Q: RNG
Randomness that's always been at the core of WoW. It's the core of any RPG system. There's excitement in unpredictability. It's unsatisfying to feel weak due to a flip of a coin. It's in more places in Legion but we've tried to make those choices less painful. It's easier to get epic items of good quality from many sources with a variety of locations. But we do want to preserve some sense of the chase and reward but not in a manipulative way. You should take a break. We don't want you doing content that you enjoy with no hope of a legendary. Progression is one of the main parts of the game.
We regret that that randomness has too much power -- legendaries are probably that system. Something with utility instead of, for instance a DPS boost, doesn't feel like a good choice. But we can't go back and change systems that are already in place. "Randomness misapplied" though some legendary items have been tuned to close the gap between the two systems.
Q: Netherlight Crucible
It's already account-wide, but AK is the catch up for the Crucible.
Q: Connecting servers
We know that WoW is more fun with a lot of other players. Player gravitate to popular servers. Some realms are struggling. We've connected some Brazilian servers to address some issues and to test out the new infrastructure. We're assessing which realms worldwide are best for connection and something's coming soon.
Q: Spec-specific weapons
Again the answer is Artifact Knowledge. We're pretty satisfied with how Knowledge is playing out.
Q: Class tuning
We use a combination of external and simulationcraft type data and our own data to help tune classes. It paints a full picture. If the community thinks your build is weak, it negatively impacts your experience. So sometimes external data is more important than our own.
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Q: Argus flying
Not on Argus. Sorry. It's a product of the environment.
Q: Active mitigation
Guardians with nearly 100% uptime vs Protection Paladins struggle. Playing a tank effectively is one of the most difficult things in the game. The nuance isn't mitigation, but the talent to play a tank. We're always talking about how to make it more balanced.
Q: Legion pruning
We'd like to bring back more utility for the most part. Some of those add flavor and differentiation and we may bring more back.
Q: Prestige / Cumulative Honor
The rationale is that PvP especially is more character specific as it reflects what you can do with that class and spec exactly.
