Dev Interviews - Haranir Racials, No TWW Season 4, and More

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Dev Interviews - MrGM
MrGM talked to Paul Kubit & Jade Martin. We've skipped recapping a good number of things that were covered in other interviews, so be sure to listen to the whole thing if you want to hear it all.



Demon Hunters
  • Teasing the new Demon Hunter spec was intentional and fun to watch. Sometimes people will bring up things that the developers hadn't thought of.
  • Devourer spec will be available in the pre-patch and will not require questing or unlocking; players can directly switch into it.
  • Devourers will continue to wield glaives, and developers are exploring the possibility of intelligence glaives for them. These would swap to Agility for the other specs.
  • For Devourers, glaives will be sheathed on the back. There are a lot of scythe visuals in their effects.

Haranir Racials
  • AoE active ability to summon enveloping roots that heal allies and damage enemies in a targeted area.
  • Innate critical strike damage and healing.
  • Increased damage to and reduced damage from aberrations and elementals.
  • Fast travel between world tree roots, with some points requiring discovery and unlocking

Harandar
  • Harandar is within Azeroth, but not in a particular place. Connected to the roots of the world trees.
  • TBD about the starting level, but it'll be similar to the other Allied Races.
  • Their starting experience will give you some more of their story.

Dungeons, Raids, and Class Design
  • Completing the first two raids will not be a requirement to enter later ones, though the associated campaign quests will be linear.
  • TBD if we'll see the return of Heroic Week for Season 1 of Midnight.
  • Blog posts are planned to be posted soon to discuss class and design philosophies for Midnight. Everyone will have something to look forward to, the team is trying to make sure that they don't leave anyone out.

PvP
  • Training Grounds is a PvP mode where you can play alongside human competitors against AI opponents in the battlegrounds that you know and love, including Arathi Basin, Silvershard Mines, and Ruins of Gilneas.
  • Slayer's Rise is the new Epic Battleground and it may be one of the best battlegrounds in WoW.

Misc
  • Bronze Dragonflight will let you go back to the old version of Eversong and Ghostlands.
  • Darkspear Trolls will unlock new cosmetic options, including Ammani hairstyles, upon completing the Zul'Aman campaign.


Dev Interviews - Psybear_tv
Psybear_tv talked to Ion Hazzikostas and Maria Hamilton. We've skipped recapping a good number of things that were covered in other interviews, so be sure to listen to the whole thing if you want to hear it all.


Story
  • We'll see Sylvanas at some point and Thrall later in the expansion
  • We won't see Naga anytime soon.
  • Valeera will have some story that you'll learn as you spend time with her. She'll also hopefully be better at not pulling things and standing in things.

UI Improvements
  • The team is planning improvements to the UI to better communicate information, such as the nameplate updates.
  • If there is a spell that is critical to interrupt, the nameplate will have a larger and flashier cast bar.
  • A lot of the discussion around addons and evolving the game is around no longer relying on the crutch of addons, as the game doesn't give you enough information.

Delves, Dungeons, and Raids
  • The team is still working on Delve tuning. Getting punched harder being the only difficulty increase isn't great, but they aren't looking at add adding new mechanics. There are other knobs, such as spell cast times, cooldowns, and other things that can be tweaked to provide challenge without just scaling damage done. The team has looked at some similar changes for Mythic+
  • Ideally, progression should be a smooth experience for all skill levels. You shouldn't be in a position where you beat a boss and the next one feels impossible.
  • No current plans for solo queue for Mythic+, but the team does want to make finding groups better.
  • There are several different tiers of guilds playing Mythic raids, with different levels of skill, coordination, time and investment. They all want a challenging progression experience.
  • With so much variance in skill, how can they make content for all of those groups simultaneously?
  • Progressive difficulty with the last few bosses being tuned for the top guilds in the world (for the first few weeks of a patch) is okay. Only a handful of guilds will even see them in the first few weeks.
  • The next wave arrives, does their 50-60 pull experience, and defeats the bosses. The next group comes along and does the same after a nerf. This gives every group some progression without bosses being impossible forever.
  • Tuning for 10 player Mythic raids would be very tough.

Content
  • There will not be a Season 4 for The War Within.
  • The team wants to make use of 20 years of content, while being mindful of the experience for new players who might encounter content like Torghast without context.
  • Doing something like what was done with Horrific Visions would be a good way to bring back things like Torghast.

Hero Talents
  • The goal was to add an extra dimension of fantasy and customization without adding too much complexity.
  • The team aims to add new goals and power without overwhelming players, keeping in mind the game's existing complexity and high skill ceiling

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