FAQ
Posted: 24 Feb 2014, 13:01
Will each Warlord have its own raid?
Sometimes, there will be 2 Warlords in one tier. Ner'zhul will be fought in a dungeon, the Shadowmoon Burial Grounds (level 100). There's no formula, what is sure is that Blackhand will be the final boss of Patch 6.0, as the end boss of the Blackrock Foundry.
There's an updated loot system in Warlords of Draenor. Why make it so flexible? Is it to adapt it to flexible raids?
It's an essential change. It was one of the big challenges to allow us to adapt flexible raids to other difficulties (normal and heroic). Personal loot is a good option for LFR or pick up groups but it doesn't work as well when you play with friends and your guild, it's essential to be able to give loot the raid member who needs it. It's a social aspect of the game that we don't want to ignore.
The only problem was the number of loot. If we had chosen a fixed number of items, we would have had problems with the number of players. We instead agreed on a system where the amount of items depends on the size of the raid and the players elligible for loot. For example, a 10 player raid will receive 2 loot when a 20 player raid will receive 4. If 18 of these players already received an item from this boss earlier this week, which means that only 2 people are elligible, you could have 0 items.
Are Garrison planned on the long term or is this more of a Warlords of Draenor specific feature?
Garrisons are tied to Warlords of Draenor, they are bases that each player builds to help in the fight against the Iron Horde, the goal is to have players build an army.
However, the technology we used to create Garrisons will most likely be reused in the future.
You plan to increase the difficulty of Heroic dungeons in Warlords of Draenor. Will it be the same as WotLK/MoP or more in line with Cataclysm?
In between. You can probably say the difficulty will be equal to the easy heroic dungeons in Cataclysm such as Vortex Pinnacle and the Lost City of Tol'vir. On the other hand, Stonecore or Grim Batol were heroic dungeons that were too hard for most players (in PUG)
The big difference in Warlords of Draenor is that you will also have a normal difficulty for level 100 dungeons, it should be easier for players who just want to join a dungeon through the LFD tool.
Players will only need normal dungeon loot to be able to join the LFR queue. Heroic dungeons will allow raids who want to go in normal raids to gear themselves up.
Is LFR going to negatively impact heroic instances if you can find better gear there?
At the beginning of the expansion, LFR won't be available and will only open wing after wing. Heroic dungeons will be available immediately and will offer the best way to gear up for raids.
Additionally, we're adding an interesting reward to challenge mode daily quests: an epic item of LFR quality. Regardless of the medal you get (bronze minimum), the daily quest will get you epic loot! Of course, Silver and Gold medals will still award cosmetic rewards.
Is Ashran (the PvP Zone) going to be cross-realm? cross-battle.net?
The current plan is to have it available on each server individually, but we could make it cross-realm to fix balance issues between factions. We do not want to reiterate the Wintergrasp scenario with the Tenacity buff.
Is Ashran a level 100 zone?
Yes, it's an "end game" PvP zone.
Is there anything you can tell us about Patch 6.0? Will there be a scenario or a world event?
As usual Patch 6.0 will introduce most new features from Warlords of Draenor: new models, item squish, new raid modes. Only Draenor will not be available yet.
The patch will also include an event in-game, but I can't say anything about it yet.
The new character models are really awesome, but racial mounts are starting to look old next to them. Do you have any plan to update them as well?
We continuously try to upgrade every aspect of the game, for example with the spells upgrades we did. The fireball from a Mage looks a lot nicer than 7 years ago, but we can't do everything at once.
The new mounts released over the past few years are a lot more detailed, and I can understand that it will be weird to use racial/faction mount with the new models. This is something we might work on in the future.
Do you plan to add "bonus" bosses to Mythic raids like you did with Ra-Den in the Heroic Throne of Thunders?
Potentially. Like we did in the past with Heroic bosses, some of them might have an extra phase, for example Garrosh in Stormwind. We also like to have optional bosses like Algalon, Sinestra, or Ra-Den but only when it feels appropriate.
We're obviously open to continue doing this with Mythic modes, and I can already tell you that when of the boss of the raids available in Patch 6.0 will have an important difference in Mythic mode. A nice surprise is waiting for you.
A lot of players complain about the reduction of spells and abilities to play a class. Do you plan to keep reducing them further?
We indeed removed skills and abilities that didn't feel essential to the game, a lot of DPS classes ended up combining them in a macro to launch them simultaneously. A Warrior for example would create a macro with Recklessness and Skull Banner, this is why Skull Banner was removed and some of its effects added to Recklessness.
We removed about 20% of class skills and abilities, even if we will probably have to add a couple more. Players will probably ask for it during beta.
In the end, we want to reduce the amount of buttons required to play and make the game easier for players who come back. The goal is to make the game understandable for every player, each button must have a very clear goal.
Developers had fun with Karazhan in the past few builds, do you plan to reuse it in the expansion?
Karazhan is a place with a lot of nostalgia and fun memories. We could revisit Karazhan at some point.
We originally planned that Karazhan would play a role in the event that would precede the release of Warlords of Draenor, we thought of a phased scenario taking place in Karazhan. The place has links to the destruction of the Dark Portal and you would have been sent there to investigate on the subject. Finally, we decided against it and developers then had fun with the dataminers from MMO-Champion.
Sorry but I have to ask ... when does the beta of Warlords of Draenor start?
Soon™. You have to ask me this question, I have to give you this answer.
Sometimes, there will be 2 Warlords in one tier. Ner'zhul will be fought in a dungeon, the Shadowmoon Burial Grounds (level 100). There's no formula, what is sure is that Blackhand will be the final boss of Patch 6.0, as the end boss of the Blackrock Foundry.
There's an updated loot system in Warlords of Draenor. Why make it so flexible? Is it to adapt it to flexible raids?
It's an essential change. It was one of the big challenges to allow us to adapt flexible raids to other difficulties (normal and heroic). Personal loot is a good option for LFR or pick up groups but it doesn't work as well when you play with friends and your guild, it's essential to be able to give loot the raid member who needs it. It's a social aspect of the game that we don't want to ignore.
The only problem was the number of loot. If we had chosen a fixed number of items, we would have had problems with the number of players. We instead agreed on a system where the amount of items depends on the size of the raid and the players elligible for loot. For example, a 10 player raid will receive 2 loot when a 20 player raid will receive 4. If 18 of these players already received an item from this boss earlier this week, which means that only 2 people are elligible, you could have 0 items.
Are Garrison planned on the long term or is this more of a Warlords of Draenor specific feature?
Garrisons are tied to Warlords of Draenor, they are bases that each player builds to help in the fight against the Iron Horde, the goal is to have players build an army.
However, the technology we used to create Garrisons will most likely be reused in the future.
You plan to increase the difficulty of Heroic dungeons in Warlords of Draenor. Will it be the same as WotLK/MoP or more in line with Cataclysm?
In between. You can probably say the difficulty will be equal to the easy heroic dungeons in Cataclysm such as Vortex Pinnacle and the Lost City of Tol'vir. On the other hand, Stonecore or Grim Batol were heroic dungeons that were too hard for most players (in PUG)
The big difference in Warlords of Draenor is that you will also have a normal difficulty for level 100 dungeons, it should be easier for players who just want to join a dungeon through the LFD tool.
Players will only need normal dungeon loot to be able to join the LFR queue. Heroic dungeons will allow raids who want to go in normal raids to gear themselves up.
Is LFR going to negatively impact heroic instances if you can find better gear there?
At the beginning of the expansion, LFR won't be available and will only open wing after wing. Heroic dungeons will be available immediately and will offer the best way to gear up for raids.
Additionally, we're adding an interesting reward to challenge mode daily quests: an epic item of LFR quality. Regardless of the medal you get (bronze minimum), the daily quest will get you epic loot! Of course, Silver and Gold medals will still award cosmetic rewards.
Is Ashran (the PvP Zone) going to be cross-realm? cross-battle.net?
The current plan is to have it available on each server individually, but we could make it cross-realm to fix balance issues between factions. We do not want to reiterate the Wintergrasp scenario with the Tenacity buff.
Is Ashran a level 100 zone?
Yes, it's an "end game" PvP zone.
Is there anything you can tell us about Patch 6.0? Will there be a scenario or a world event?
As usual Patch 6.0 will introduce most new features from Warlords of Draenor: new models, item squish, new raid modes. Only Draenor will not be available yet.
The patch will also include an event in-game, but I can't say anything about it yet.
The new character models are really awesome, but racial mounts are starting to look old next to them. Do you have any plan to update them as well?
We continuously try to upgrade every aspect of the game, for example with the spells upgrades we did. The fireball from a Mage looks a lot nicer than 7 years ago, but we can't do everything at once.
The new mounts released over the past few years are a lot more detailed, and I can understand that it will be weird to use racial/faction mount with the new models. This is something we might work on in the future.
Do you plan to add "bonus" bosses to Mythic raids like you did with Ra-Den in the Heroic Throne of Thunders?
Potentially. Like we did in the past with Heroic bosses, some of them might have an extra phase, for example Garrosh in Stormwind. We also like to have optional bosses like Algalon, Sinestra, or Ra-Den but only when it feels appropriate.
We're obviously open to continue doing this with Mythic modes, and I can already tell you that when of the boss of the raids available in Patch 6.0 will have an important difference in Mythic mode. A nice surprise is waiting for you.
A lot of players complain about the reduction of spells and abilities to play a class. Do you plan to keep reducing them further?
We indeed removed skills and abilities that didn't feel essential to the game, a lot of DPS classes ended up combining them in a macro to launch them simultaneously. A Warrior for example would create a macro with Recklessness and Skull Banner, this is why Skull Banner was removed and some of its effects added to Recklessness.
We removed about 20% of class skills and abilities, even if we will probably have to add a couple more. Players will probably ask for it during beta.
In the end, we want to reduce the amount of buttons required to play and make the game easier for players who come back. The goal is to make the game understandable for every player, each button must have a very clear goal.
Developers had fun with Karazhan in the past few builds, do you plan to reuse it in the expansion?
Karazhan is a place with a lot of nostalgia and fun memories. We could revisit Karazhan at some point.
We originally planned that Karazhan would play a role in the event that would precede the release of Warlords of Draenor, we thought of a phased scenario taking place in Karazhan. The place has links to the destruction of the Dark Portal and you would have been sent there to investigate on the subject. Finally, we decided against it and developers then had fun with the dataminers from MMO-Champion.
Sorry but I have to ask ... when does the beta of Warlords of Draenor start?
Soon™. You have to ask me this question, I have to give you this answer.