Developer Interviews - Patch 9.2 Final Major Patch of Shadowlands
Game Rant spoke with lead narrative designer Steve Danuser and lead game designer Morgan Day about Patch 9.2.
- Dealing with Anduin is the only way players will be able to confront the Jailer.
- Uther may be able to guide Sylvanas through those treacherous waters of having a soul returned to the body after death
- Tyrande and Sylvanas are on a collision course and there will be heavy interaction between those characters, and that is pivotal to the final conclusion of Shadowlands.
- The Shadowlands story arc was planned to have three acts, so Patch 9.2 will be the finale of Shadowlands. There could be a Patch 9.3, but it's unlikely.
- There is room for sweeping, cosmic narratives and small, personal stories alike.
- The team recognizes that players want to see the small things that flesh out the world as well as a cosmic story.
inven spoke with lead narrative designer Steve Danuser and lead game designer Morgan Day about Patch 9.2.
- The new raid has 11 bosses, with Anduin being the 8th boss.
- The first week of the new raid will take us up to Anduin, allowing us to take a closer look at his story.
- The Jailer will be the final boss of the new raid.
NGA spoke with John Hight, the executive producer of World of Warcraft, and the chief designer Jeremy Feasel.
- This patch will explain all of the Shadowlands story lines and this is actually the ending of a series of story lines starting from Warcraft 3.
- There will be more catch up mechanisms added.
- This new zone will be very large.
- The Jailer fight will be in a very dynamic room, with pillars and fog, and may be the craziest boss the team has done.
- Players will need to unlock the capability to equip two legendary items.
GamerBraves spoke with lead narrative designer Steve Danuser and lead game designer Morgan Day about Patch 9.2.
- Zereth Mortis was an opportunity for the team to show a whole new level of Warcraft cosmology, about this mystical and ‘higher form of magic’ place that we hadn’t seen before.
- There will be opportunities for you to get gear to get you to where you can feel successful playing through the Zereth Mortis story content.
- Tier sets are a combination of class fantasy and the aesthetics from the zone, creatures, and ecology of Zereth Mortis.
- Tier sets will be available through the raids and Great Vault.
- After Patch 9.2 releases, you'll unlock the Forge of Creation, and earn a new currency. This currency, along with an item from PVP or dungeons, can be transformed into a tier set piece.
- The Forge of Creation is supposed to work like a bad luck protection, or for people wanting to make new characters, or as a catch-up method if you’ve started late.
- Zereth Mortis and its creatures, the Automa, speak with a runic pattern called the Cyphers. Players will not know it all at once, but will learn it over time.
- After defeating the first boss in the Sepulcher, you need to take a flight path to the next boss in the instance. As you travel, you get to see all the epic scenery, huge structures in the raid, and get the sense of scale and fantasy.
- One wing of the raid is constantly creating new things and prototyping creatures, and one of the bosses in that wing is a prototype of the Pantheon of Death.
- In previous raids, everything led up to a moment with the final boss. This time we have a big story moment with both Anduin and the Jailer.
- There are many facets of the Warcraft universe still waiting for us to explore in both the cosmic sense of Eternity’s End, and the more grounded events in Azeroth featuring characters we know and love, with many areas yet in Azeroth to be discovered.
- The new PvP brawl is the Solo Shuffle. It'll take 6 players and have them fight in 3v3 arena matches in every possible combination you could form with those players. The one with the best rating at the end wins.
Millenium spoke with Ion Hazzikostas and Sara Wons.
- Zereth Mortis exists for the sole purpose of creating "the Afterlife", all of it. Shadowlands was fashioned there along with many things of the strength of Death that we have yet to discover.
- Zereth Mortis is our first in-depth look at the Founders, the cosmos and cosmology, of that balance of power that governs the entire universe.
- Zereth Mortis has no day / night cycle since it is neither a star nor a planet but an "area" located in the heart of the ether of the universe itself.
- The PTR is coming in the next few weeks barring any technical challenges with the rollout.
- In the end you will have the flight in Zereth Mortis thanks to the decryption system.
- With Kel'thuzad in Mythic Mode, players came up with a strategy that the development team did not anticipate.
- For Kel'Thuzad and the Scribe of Doom, the two underwent successive nerfs in order to allow the "middle guilds", to defeat these bosses in the weeks and months that follow.
- Anduin will be a very, very complex boss.
- The team will not add new levels of Renown.
- Players will have access to new level tiers for legendary items that require materials that come from Zereth Mortis directly.
- You'll be able to equip two legendary items at once, one regular legendary and one Covenant legendary.
- The team wants to move to a world where players have new content to consume more frequently.
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