Forum:BlizzCon 2023 Q&A

Forums: Village pump → BlizzCon 2023 Q&A

A selection of badges from BlizzCon 2007-2019

Hey everybody, Kaydeethree here! I'll be representing Warcraft Wiki at BlizzCon for the thirteenth time! I'll have some Q&A time with the devs, so here's your chance to get some questions answered. No holds barred, please ask whatever.

Thanks, and thank you for joining us over here at the Warcraft Wiki! --Kaydeethree (talk) 01:15, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Post your questions here

As of 10 AM PDT on Saturday November 4, questions are closed. Thank you for your interest! --Kaydeethree (talk) 16:59, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

• Can I get a pony? --Kaydeethree (talk) 01:15, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
• When can I get my hands on  [Blub]? --Druid (talk) 01:59, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
  • For that matter, when or will any of the unique Classic mounts and pets come to Retail? That  [Festering Emerald Drake] would've been a great addition to Retail. — SurafbrovWarcraft Wiki administrator T / C 11:57, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
• What influence will Microsoft's purchase of Activision-Blizzard have on the IP? Any chance of a Warcraft IV, or similar? Pretty please? Hawki (talk) 22:27, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
• During the announcement of Dragonfligh Blizzard mentioned Proto Trolls, so are they still planning to add them? --Void Coconut Crab (talk) 18:02, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
• Many servers have suffered from player drain in favor of moving to larger servers, so small servers have only gotten smaller. Is there any chance of us seeing more server combinations in the future? Some servers host only 3-4 thousand active players now. User:ConmanW 12:02, October 27 2023 (PST)
• There's lots of talking about a new world revamp, etc etc, not asking that: I'm still thinking about the time developers tried to work on Ghostlands to make them flyable and add Blood Elves areas to mainland Eastern Kingdoms: is it *totally* out of question? Eraclito (talk) 19:57, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
• Is there a policy for Level squish/ item level squish? How do you see a long-term solution to issues which caused to WoW team to do the squishes few times already.(Yuvalal (talk) 10:12, 2 November 2023 (UTC))
• Regarding traditional player flight in patch 10.2: What exactly was meant by "many Dragon Isles zones" in the blue post? Why not all DF zones? --Alayea (talk) 21:46, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
  • I also want to add that it's great that more accessibility options are being added, however sometimes the issue(s) such as motion sickness just cannot be overcome even with said options. Which is why I find it disheartening to be restricted from using the regular player flight that's been available since 2007. --Alayea (talk) 21:46, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
• With addition of War Bands, about if anything is being done with the Guild systems? They havent touched since they were nerfed, and WoW Community's are just sorta there. When will Guilds be more that just a tool for the GM and friends? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by KellorionMG96 (talk · contr).
• Any news on Gnomes finally getting a home of their own since the elves are getting a new tree? I feel like gnomes have never been in the spotlight. --Dathguy (talk) 01:18, 04 November 2023 (EDT)
• Where is Amirdrassil going to emerge when it crosses over from the Emerald Dream to Azeroth? A lot of night elf roleplayers I know are unhappy about it apparently being slated for the Dragon Isles, which the night elves have no connection to, rather than Kalimdor, their ancestral homeland. - Linneris (talk) 11:00, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
• Can it be made possible to level a character through a whole expansion and then face the end boss for a feeling of completion please? (As suggested by Taliesin and Evitel) Abeille
• Are you going to extend the NPC dungeons to other expansions please? Could it be extended to raids too so that casual players that don’t enjoy grouping up can see the story in game? Abeille

Customization

• We now have playable Darkfallen and playable Eredar, is there any chance we can get playable fel orcs given we see some as part of the horde in the blasted lands in cataclysm? User:ConmanW 9:50, October 21 2023 (PST)
• Lately lots of removed gear has been re-added to the game. Why my T8-25m-transmog-wearing Mage is still missing boots? I used to ask ten years ago on Twitter and got scolded answered "stop asking, we're working on it". Eraclito (talk) 21:18, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
• Can we expect to get new "skin races" already affiliated to a faction in a near future (Frostborn dwarves for the Alliance, Dragonmaw orcs + Forest trolls + Fel/Chaos Orcs for the Horde? Can we expect to get old races already affiliated to a faction as playable race (Broken + Jinyu for the Alliance, Ogres + Mok'Nathal + Forest trolls + Taunka + Gilgoblins - Unshackled - for the Horde)? Can we expect to get old races in a faction with a common theme to this faction (Rajani mogu with titan races: Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes and their titan legacy for the Alliance, Sethrak with the Zandalari trolls who believe in the loas for the Horde, Tuskarr as neutral race for both side, Saberon with the Mag'har orcs coming from Draenor (WoD) for the Horde)? Keranoto (talk) 22:09, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
• Are there any plans to let dracthyr mog other pieces of armor than shoulders, helms and belts? -- MyMindWontQuiet (talk) 22:14, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Are there any plans to allow dracthyr to adopt other visage form races or play as different classes (like how different weyrns have warriors, mages, etc)? -- MyMindWontQuiet (talk) 22:14, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Are there any plans to either bring back the Glyph system or a Collection-like system for spell effects? There are lots of awesome spellkits made each patch and it'd be great to be able to customize your spells kind of like felfire for warlocks. -- MyMindWontQuiet (talk) 22:14, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• WIll Dracthyr get new visage forms, like a Titan forged on even just regular Azerothian species? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by KellorionMG96 (talk · contr).

Lore

• How are Emerald Dream and Ardenweald connected? Is there a portal between them, or does one have to pass through reality/Azeroth to reach the other? As we can see some characters from Ardenweawld in Emerald Dream. (Yuvalal (talk) 14:26, 21 October 2023 (UTC))
• What happened to the landmass that we will be at the emerald dream? we can't see Azeroth, we can't see it sunken at Dragon Isles where it is. (Yuvalal (talk) 14:26, 21 October 2023 (UTC))

Might be answered soon. -- MyMindWontQuiet (talk) 22:05, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

At this moment there is no sunk landmass underwater. This is what i am talking about. If the landmass will appear from emerald dream so what happened to that landmass before ? it was never there ? (Yuvalal (talk) 14:23, 3 November 2023 (UTC))

• How does the Horde feel about the Horde Council? Are they happy and content? Do some members of the Horde such as the Stonemaul Ogres or Taunka resent not having a seat on the council when newcomers like the vulpera do? Will Scalecommander Cindrethresh sit on the Horde Council to represent the dracthyr of the Dark Talons or is she just content with leading her people?--X59 (talk) 19:09, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
• Is Danath Trollbane officially the Crowned King of Stromgarde? Or does he have another position as leader of the restored kingdom? Wards (talk) 11:53, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
• All this time since the defeat of Sarkareth, Fyrakk was still in Zaralek Cavern and we just didn't bother him? (Yuvalal (talk) 18:01, 25 October 2023 (UTC))

We know that's not the case, he showed up burning multiple zones after he leaves Zaralek Cavern, and in 10.1.7 he is in Lunedane corrupting Larodar. -- MyMindWontQuiet (talk) 22:05, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

• Before leaving the Shadowlands, Lor'themar said he wanted to pay Kael'thas a visit. Is that a reunion the players might someday be privy to, whether in flashback or short story form? Falsetto (talk) 21:51, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
• Before the Sundering, Iridikron's lair was known as Harrowsdeep and was located under the "Stormscale Mountains", and Fyrakk's lair was known as "the Caldera". What modern locations do these correspond to? -- MyMindWontQuiet (talk) 22:05, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Are the other dragon "body types" (velocidrake, wylderdrake) dragons that have evolved differnetly or perhaps adapted to their environment? Or did they evolve separately from dragons, descending from proto-drakes instead? -- MyMindWontQuiet (talk) 22:08, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Could you clarify the origin of centaur? The artbook described the "original" centaur as being native to Kalimdor, and the Vanilla centaur as a "reincarnation" of that race, but how could Zaetar and Theradras birth a race that already existed? Or did those original centaur also have similar origins of descending from children of Cenarius/elementals? -- MyMindWontQuiet (talk) 22:18, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• As underground rat people using candles (well, crystals), are niffen related to kobold or troggs? -- MyMindWontQuiet (talk) 22:21, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• If the Dragon Isles have always been known as "isles", and had an embassy on their "shores" and such, how did the maruuk centaur migrate from mainland Kalimdor to the isles? Were the waters shallow, or did they perhaps recede, allowing crossing? Or were they magically helped, perhaos by Ohn'Ahra? -- MyMindWontQuiet (talk) 22:23, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• We know both the Nexus and the Azure Archives both predate the Sundering, but what is the relationship between the other flights' structures, for example the Caverns of Time vs the Bronze Temple, or the Northrend dragonshrines? Were they contemporary with the Dragon Isle structures or or did they replace them?
• Since we see Smolderon in the Amirdrassil raid, what is the current status & allegiance of the remaining elemental lords and their elemental planes? Are they allied with the Primalists? Why exactly does Smolderon want to burn the Emerald Dream? What is the Earthen Ring's opinion on Smolderon now, given their history in the Legion Campaign? Mordecay (talk) 08:22, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

• Yeah, you'd think a plot revolving around elemental forces would in some way incorporate the Elemental Lords, even if just to check on them and say "Hey, do you know anything about what is going on?". The last time we saw Neptulon was some world quest in Nazjatar. Have the Shamans been in contact with all the Elemental Lords? Was Smolderon's deal with Fyrakk in any way premeditated? Is there another likely successor for the Fire Lord after Smolderon? Also, what has the Cenarion Circle been up to during this conflict? Did the Primalists infiltrate it? -- SirWeltschmerz (talk) 22:11, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

• Does the lore of the demons/Burning Legion from Azewrath apply to the main-universe Burning Legion, like it did in Warlords of Draenor? Mordecay (talk) 08:22, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
• Are Primalists considered a dark shaman? or are the elements freely accepting their call? (Yuvalal (talk) 19:50, 2 November 2023 (UTC))
• Please ask if we'll ever get an update concerning Gilneas? It's one of the only playable races whose entire story has been so stuck in limbo we have no idea what's going on anymore. Especially now that there's three expansions announced in a row; will there ever be any resolution? It almost feels like they were forgotten. --Berenal (talk) 20:02, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
• will you develop the story of the dracthyr more please? Sarkareth and Viridia really tugged at my heartstrings. They deserved more development. How do the evoker’s healing abilities to do with time and the Emerald Dream LORE wise. Please explore their personalities more. I hope they’ll take a more active role storywise. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ‎CatandDragonFanatic (talk · contr).
• Will you develop the story behind a monk’s healing abilities please? Like the dracthyr, they have a heck of a lot of potential, especially with elves, trolls and draenei. Please do it. How is the power accessed? What are it’s pros and cons? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ‎CatandDragonFanatic (talk · contr).

UI

• Can we get a search option at the reputation and Currency tabs? (Yuvalal (talk) 14:31, 21 October 2023 (UTC))
• Will there be better support for those using addons such as ClassicUI and Classic Frames to restore the player UI as it existed prior to Battle for Azeroth and Dragonflight, respectively? --Alayea (talk) 00:17, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
• Taint issues have been a large problem in this expansion for addons in general, issues that addon authors can't do anything about on their end. A good example of this was when the kick macro exploit was hotfixed, but the resulting side-effect has error messages popping out for random addons that are completely blameless. Is there any chance of this being addressed during DF, or will it have to wait until the next expansion? --Alayea (talk) 20:40, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
• Why is there still no fixed-resolution option for the game client window for those of us who play in Windowed Mode? I lost count long ago the number of times I went to click something and accidentally resized the window instead. (And to add: Locking the mouse cursor to the game client window is not a satisfactory option.) --Alayea (talk) 20:40, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
• Could the "Log Out" and "Exit Game" buttons from the Main Menu be further separated from each other? --Alayea (talk) 19:08, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

https://x.com/BeccaMaroney/status/1570491300688072705?s=20 this is a link to a post on player portraits. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ‎CatandDragonFanatic (talk · contr).

Other

• Probably an outreach depending on the interviewee; is the Azeroth Music record label, a division of Blizzard Entertainment, still a thing? Recent digital-only soundtrack releases aren't clear whether they're part of this record label such as Diablo IV, Shadowlands, and Dragonflight. — SurafbrovWarcraft Wiki administrator T / C 08:57, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
• With the approach to digital-only soundtracks, owners of the Collector's Edition of Shadowlands and Battle for Azeroth can no longer enter the codes to re-download their soundtracks as the websites were taken down. Would it be possible to bring these back or allow us to add the code to our accounts along with the downloads for the digital soundtrack so it is always available on our Battle.net account? — SurafbrovWarcraft Wiki administrator T / C 09:00, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
• Would we ever get physical releases of soundtracks again? — SurafbrovWarcraft Wiki administrator T / C 09:05, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Some news on this: https://www.wowhead.com/news/new-illidan-and-classic-vinyl-lps-blizzcon-2023-exclusive-from-iam8bit-available-335820, but only Classic and TBC so far. SirWeltschmerz (talk) 17:46, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Looks like vinyl which they've been continuing that for sometime. Not CD soundtracks. — SurafbrovWarcraft Wiki administrator T / C 23:54, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

• Will Warbands also share things like Mage Tower old skins from Legion if u completed it that time betwen characters ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Suxztame (talk · contr).

  mage tower appearances are already shared. for example, if you unlocked the balance druid mage tower appearance, other druids on your account also have access to it. same for shapeshift forms.

  ... unless you meant sharing between characters of different classes, in which case disregard my response --Eithris (talk) 15:01, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

  • yes i meant sharing betwen characters, for example i did it on Legion on my DK and my question is will Warbound share it for example shapeshift forms for Druid ? etc. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Suxztame (talk · contr).

• If you aren’t already considering doing a TV series on Warcraft, please please do so. It would be marvellous, especially if it’s hyperrealistic. I love the hyperrealistic cinematics and I absolutely wish for more of such. People could be a lot more interested in it, than reading a book. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ‎CatandDragonFanatic (talk · contr).

https://x.com/BeccaMaroney/status/1601183197974274048?s=20 this is a link to a post regarding the fact that certain helms make nightborne eyebrows disappear, which is very annoying. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ‎CatandDragonFanatic (talk · contr).

Interview notes

The sections below are my notes of the three interview sessions I took part in on Friday. I'll come back with additional notes later. Please don't substantively edit the contents, but feel free to clean up formatting. Thanks! --Kaydeethree (talk) 00:58, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Warcraft Q&A - Friday

Hi all, here's my notes from the 3PM Friday Warcraft group Q&A:

Morgan Day and ...

Why hero talents?

Adding 10 points tends to break the talent tree as has been shown in the past. Easier to adjust knobs if they're separate systems. Also, all 10 points will be the same once you hit 80 for the rest of the expansion, so it's easier to have a whole kit at the end.

You'd mentioned evergreen, how much is this going to continue going forward?

Dunno how mutable/changeable that these will be in future expansions, but that is something we're looking forward to

Any classic+ concepts like mage healing/warlock tanking in mainline?

No, nothing planned

Button bloat?

Hero talents may add more. They're cognizant of the issue and intend to only buttons if they're really impactful, but replacements otherwise, and stuff to play with the core fantasy within the existing kit.

With War Within being announced within a saga of three, will things like Hero Talents just be with War Within or evergreen?

It'll be evergreen, maybe not forever, at least for a few expansions. Same with warbands/delves/etc…

How will warbands work with renown tracks/account-wide reps?

Currently, account-wide reps are only for War Within. Still deciding what happens for past expansion. The goal is they don't want you to feel like you're at a disadvantage if you don't have alts.

The gap between expansions? It seems to be shorter.

Can't speak to announce dates, but the team's been happy with content cadence of late but will hope to continue.

The schedule thing for DF has been well-received, but that's from the community team. Ideally it continues, people seem to like it.

What about 10.3?

No, but there's more story to tell between 10.2 and War Within.

Warbands shared bank. Soulbound items?

New item type - "Warbound" that can be shared across the warband. Soulbound items will still be locked to the character. Not to say that there can't be a warbound item that also drops out of a mythic raid that looks different.

Class customization. Tauren demon hunters?

In an ideal world it'd be great to see all classes on all races. But def top of mind. The goal of class/race combinations is to let people express themselves, and adding more classes is coming, but nothing to announce.

PvP?

New battleground in War Within, taking place in the Ringing Deeps. Hybrid on existing map types, more info tomorrow.

What about PvP titles/ranks in Warbands?

Philosophically really hard challenges are still character-tied, so things like Famed Gladiator.

Class-race options?

Earthen can be all classes but druids, demon hunters, evokers. Also 20-25% bigger than other playable dwarves. First time Horde have a dwarf.

WoW on console?

Nothing to announce today. Teams have been working really hard to expand accessibility options. Many people, including those on the team, are playing on controllers.

Warbands and material sharing?

Gold will be shared and there'll a warbands bank for materials. The currency tab can be shared between characters. There may be a lossy conversion between characters the way it is now. The fastest way to earn currencies is to play on the character, not to just have the highest ilvl player funnel stuff to other alts. You can also craft out of the warband reagent bank like the normal reagent bank.

With dynamic flight coming forward, what's happening with the DF talents?

DF talents will stay in the dragon isles. But in War Within, you'll be as effective on new characters as on characters that played in DF. No news on new WW dynamic flights talents.

Reward structure. Are item upgrades like DF season2/3 going to carry forward?

Yes, it's been pretty successful. Will carry forward into War Within. Delves will be a great open world source of upgrade currency.

How's the team feeling about very rare items from raids?

It's been interesting to have that chase reward, but team has been experimenting of the degree of how impactful those items are. The goal of having a long-tail item to chase has been successful.

Delves cross-faction?

Yes.

How about other cross-faction content?

Dunno. Cannot queue into delves as they can be soloed. The target audience of people who want to have delves are people who have their group and want to play with them. No plan for queues at launch currently.

Cross-realm guilds are coming in war within. Cross-realm mythic restriction goes away too.

Professions? Carrying DF style forward?

As in expansions in the past, professions are tied to the expansion, so new points and perks coming in WW. At a high level, they're happy with how professions play out, but some tweaks with stats/crafting orders, but happy with the system foundationally. Will iterate and continue forward.

How's augvoker been received? Will there be more support specs?

Not planning any for launch currently. Overall the team is happy, they've learned a lot. WIll take those lessons forward.

It's not the goal that augvokers being required for all m+. They knew it's going to be overtuned, but that's why it was added in 10.1.5. But there are lots of tuning knobs, so it's not hard to dial down the utility if necessary.

Role-changing hero talents?

So roles won't be played with hero talents, but there will be playstyle-changing trees.

Server player health/server coalescing?

Nothing to announce, but it is top of mind on the server team.

Hard-to-implement features but still needed?

Hero talents are hard combinatorically, but fun to do. Happy with what they have, plenty of iteration still to come. Also lot of hard issues with Warbands (yay 20 years of WoW). Making things account-wide is very hard to do. To reiterate that War Within reps/renown is account-wide, but still deciding on past expansion rep/renown.

Any interesting neat/new tools you're playing with?

Prototyping dragonriding talent trees was neat. They built basically an addon to make mocks for that and hero talent trees. So many unique silhouettes/rigs, but that makes fitting armor really hard. So the team's been working with machine learning options to fit rigs and make new shiny armor rather than always getting stuck on making sure elf ears don't fit through.

Transmog restriction changes?

No plans on changing transmog restrictions, clothies can still only wear cloth, even if they can collect plate appearances. That is, if plate drops it will get added to the collection, but cloth wearers will not be able to transmog to plate.

Delves expanded sniffenseeking, also integrated with great vault. What do we do to fill out the great vault?

Current plan, it'll be an outdoor route doing things like killing the world boss, doing public events, and the delve progression would set the high watermark for the item level rewards from the vault.

Any carryforwards for the vault?

Always want something exciting to get. Constantly getting asked "can we reroll?", but no guarantee that what you reroll will be better.

Top tier preorder gives 3-days of early access. What limitations are on that access?

There'll be no advantage, so any m0/weekly lockout stuff will be restricted. It's to stop and smell the roses, not to quickly get to max level asap.

What about weapon transmog restrictions?

No changes from things like wands to one-handed maces. There's been talk of expanding which classes can wield which weapons, as many Trading Post weapons can't be used for all classes.

Hero talents, will they be just flavorful?

For instance, warrior interrupt is a headbutt. Maybe your moonfire is different. One of the fun early things we discussed (that we're not actually doing), what if priests could wear plate? But that's so unbalanced and the itemization team would be very unhappy.

Any other machine learning toys? Bosses learning from players from week to week?

It's not hard to kill players, but that's not fun. The goal is for process and workflow (helm-fitting), so designers can do the fun stuff and not fixing helmet bugs.

Outdoor rewards from vault, ilvl comparison to other sources?

Def won't be as high as mythic raids, but they can get up there. Team's still exploring where that upper limit actually is. Making sure that you can complete delves with the gear you're getting from it. Lots of lessons learned from Torghast with player-count and roles. Torghast very quickly outscaled gear from the outdoor world.

Xal'atath, will there be priest interactions?

Dunno, but that's a cool idea.

Post-10.2, will there be a SL season 4 style thing?

Nothing to announce, but SLs4 was really successful.

Customizable mounts?

Delves will have a sick mount.

Dragonriding mounts in WW?

Yes, also over 100 pre-dragonriding flying mounts will be working. Want it to work on as many mounts as possible (like Mimiron's head!)

Any big playstyle shifts coming in WW?

Right now goal is shipping the best hero talents we can ship, no plans on big baseline class changes. The work of class gameplay/balance is never done, and there will be a few talent changes here/there rather than making big changes.

LFR in 10.2 is weekly rather than bi-weekly. Is that going to be the same in WW? Will the raid launch be global?

No plans on global raid launch in season 1 of WW. The world is a globe, hard to be fair with resets/launch times. Lots of other content coming out outside the normal patch cadence (Secrets of Azeroth), so it was a good time to see how the LFR cadence goes. If it goes well it could carry forward.

Warcraft Rumble Q&A

Hi all, here's my notes for the 4PM Warcraft Rumble Q&A:

Jeremy Collins art director and Elaorah Davis game producer

Rumble is a lighthearted take on the universe, like hearthstone. Where's the line between them?

Warcraft has always had a zany side to it, but there's also been the seriousness. The identity difference is for the figurines, arclight energy, playing with a lighthearted game of rumble. It is the game we wanted to make, and a different expression, and as the artstyle was being developed, lots of check-ins of "does this still feel like warcraft"

The characters are also how they separate. The toys think they're the embodiment of the character, so when you lose the hero and the game prints another, they get to play with that.

We wanted the game to be deliberately designed for mobile specifically, something to have in your pocket, focused on that with the ui, the design, for an experience that can take 3 minutes or a few hours

What about pc ports for rumble?

Certainly thoughts in that direction, nothing to announce.

Taking the wc3 heritage into account, what about a map maker?

Sounds like a sick idea, but the team hasn't thought about it.

Starting with vanilla wow, but is it a linear progression?

Nah, it's just playing within the warcraft universe, not thinking about what expansion is next. All of the PvE and playstyle expression is eventually leading to raids, to have a higher difficulty.

Bringing in new audiences?

Yes, we hope so. We believe that Warcraft is for everyone. Rumble is a part of the universe that can be played with without having the domain knowledge of the rest of Warcraft. They'll see a range of characters and maybe they'll get curious about them and want to explore further.

It's fun playing with big recognizable bosses like Sylvanas, but also random mobs like Goldtooth.

Coming from an art perspective, they asked around Blizz "does this feel like a Warcraft game?" and didn't get "no"s, so that felt good. They wanted to make a game that people new to the franchise could drop into. Cool characters are cool characters, and they want more people to experience them.

Who was the idea behind the 3d prints?

The marketing team. They wanted to hold things in your hand to touch them, make them feel more real.

What encapsulates a season of content in rumble?

The PvP ladder and the warchest. PvP has an honor system, and you'll accrue/lose honor across your leaders. Get enough honor to unlock the warchest.

For PvE you get coins you can do with your guild and lets you do things like have multiple leaders out at a time. So the more coins you get you unlock skins. Seasons are six weeks and the map meta will tumble a few times per season.

New mini every six weeks! Lots of fun stuff lined up in the hopper, can't wait to reveal it.

No battle pass.

DI/Hearthstone have catch-up mechanics, but Rumble?

In WoW, lots of stuff happens at the endgame. In rumble, the journey is important. Folks have a wide spread of things to do on that journey. You can focus on PvP or focus on the PvE campaign, unlocking things like Heroics. To go back to the question of catch-up mechanics, there's nothing really to catch up to. The onboarding experience of showing people the base mechanics, then getting to unlocking talents. We want to show you how easy it is to play, then show you how deep you can get by expending time.

What have you learned over the beta?

About the difficulty, mainly. They learned that people were getting destroyed, mainly. Lots of tuning to the campaign, redoing the onboarding experience. Trying to give people the tools they can use. But in our hubris, things were a bit harder than we thought. Also updates to the sigil progression. As you complete a campaign you get a sigil, and more sigils unlock more stuff. Trying to move more cool things earlier rather than backloading it all.

Coming from PC you're optimizing for framerate, but on mobile for battery life and heat. Lots of people got brought in to deal with that.

On tuning, was it just health adjustment?

No, more nuanced than that. You can change the board layout/towers/number of spawns. Thinking of chess, the rules of the game haven't changed, but you can play with mechanics like moving chess pieces around.

Joyful chaos?

How they felt when they played the game, moving frenetically from lane to lane or firefighting. That's what the term came from, they're having fun constantly moving things around.

How do you manage to make things read the same from WC3/WoW to rumble?

It comes to the silhouette. Warcraft is defined by giant shoulderpads, and that was def something that got shipped in Rumble. A lot of the art team came from WoW, so it's not so much "how do we make it look like a molten giant?" instead of "how do we make our molten giant?" It's like they got thrown the keys to the franchise and they said "have fun!"

How does the feedback from past mobile announcements play into rumble's announcement?

With immortal, there was an expectation mismatch. The community wanted one thing then got something completely different. Rumble was designed to be mobile first. They've been playing a lot of mobile games and having fun with it, and thought "why don't we make something fun?" The team's been playing mobile games and are fans of warcraft, so they wanted to make sure it was thoroughly shown how much they're fans of both.

What's been fun for you?

It's great when everyone comes together and gels around an idea. With PvP, one of the questions was "how do we keep things fresh?" It comes down to a tumbling meta, so they change the map and they change modifiers like the gold accrual rate every few weeks. So after building a feature, they go through soup tasting, so where they have all these ingredients, then can taste the soup and adjust it.

My favorite part was the aha moments, like standing around a screen watching the 3D units marching down the screen. Or playing around with polymorphed sheep floating in the air being unable to do anything, and the team was just laughing their asses off.

Any memorable moments/challenges of rumble that shaped the game's evolution?

Going from PC development to mobile and having to hire mobile developers was a challenge. There were lots of preconceptions on how to make mobile games, but those changed after bringing in the new talent. It's hard to make an experience that we're proud of across all these different mobile platforms. Always trying to push the bar to make it better.

Favorite mini and why?

Sometimes I'll be really attached to the look of something, and other times the gameplay value. So, for instance, the meat wagon I love for the gameplay. I love that it hangs out of range and shoots bloody murder at things. It's not out of place in any deck. But my favorite is Hogger. He hits things with a wet ham, and (play with sound on), you hear the wet ham slap! So when enemies die, your units keep hitting them for a bit, so it's hilarious to hear Hogger just going slap-slap-slap.

My favorite unit is the sapper. Great for destroying towers. Lots of animations for when they jump in, dives, belly flops, etc etc, a lot of fun.

What makes rumble unique?

It's the art style. There's the tactile feeling of holding a mini in your hands, and the childlike joy of playing with your toys. You set your minis down on the platform and they come to life and that's just fun.

The convenience is a real differentiator. I play the game everywhere, fun to make progress wherever you can. At home I'm on my tablet so I can see all the art, but I can also be on my phone in the DMV when I'd rather not be there. So being able to hit a button and jump in is great.

In the reveal trailer, there was a unit that lost an arm and got another. What was up with that?

Can't talk about early design. The important bit was hammering the idea of "toys".

Any holiday events for rumble?

Can't talk about it, but there's plenty of real world holidays in WoW and in Azeroth. We're excited to leverage those but don't have anything to say today.

Favorite encounter?

Favorite dungeon is probably gnomeregan. Fan of knockback bosses, and dealing with that counterplay is fun. Lots of cool tech and art in there.

If you're the kind of player who likes to index into one thing, but Rumble is so much more fun if you go wide and play with all of the toys first, then go deep once you find your favorites. So many times where you go "ooh, that's useful" and can add that into your deck. It's fun getting trashed by a boss and then going back to the inventory and saying "ok, I need to do this thing. Who of you can do it?" and then going back in and obliterating the boss.

Warcraft Classic Q&A - Friday

5pm group interview

Josh Greenfield, senior game producer on classic Nora Moletta - lead sw eng on wow classic

With the classic rulesets expansion, how has the team been handling it from the server side?

Lots of help from retail/server ops. Lots of unassuming things on modern wow, like spell visuals, get reused for season of mastery and there was some mishmashing to get fixed. Def not a matter of copy/pasting.

Punch deathwing with better graphics?

Yes. nothing specific for that scene in particular, but lots of general engine updates. Also turning on an option of using updated/upgraded textures

Cataclysm had some contentious issues?

Account-wide appearances, titan rune dungeons, patch cadence. Some of the contention was how long we spent in dragonsoul. Cata had a great first tier, so patch cadence in classic lets us put stuff out in a pace that keeps things fresh. Also guild progression is changing, as the cataclysm guild rewards favored mega guilds. They want small guilds to feel good

Phases?

Raid tiers and smaller interstitial stuff. Zul'Aman/Zul'drak will be a midpoint, not a whole patch

Leveling speed?

Cata classic will have accelerated leveling from 1-80, not just 1-60. Don't want to go overboard. Won't be like timewalking

Season of discovery pvp?

Not going be grinding out to rank 14, but more fun and zany. Mix and match your runes and go nuts in ashenvale

There will be a layering system. Ashenvale pvp keeps track of a progress bar and it kinda plays like AV. as you're progressing that counter, they'll keep track across layers. Don't want to layer hop to make sure you're in the optimal layer. Realms will have a capacity that they can hit. The layering tech has improved so we can have more players on a layer.

On hardcore they accidentally capped layers at 1 and they were looking at numbers and things seemed fine. On hardcore, the optimal to us is to have as few servers as possible. So they want to have as many people on a server as possible, but there are still limits. They're going to try to launch with as few as possible

Account-wide runes?

Runes will be per-character at launch

In ashenvale is there some safety/catch-up mechanism if lightly populated layers are running behind?

We can add a timer if necessary, but seasons is all about throwing darts at the wall and seeing what sticks. Layering tech lets us stick more players on a realm. So hopefully players won't ever find themselves feeling lonely in a zone

Merging retail/classic achievements?

Interesting idea, but no plans. Not something we've considered. Cata achievements will be account-wide again.

Tank warlock and healer mage made the crowd go wild. Any other crazy combos you want to see go out into the world?

Shaman tank, rogue tank are feeling like "you get to tank! And you get to tank!" we want to see how people interact with it. No ptr, feedback from the show floor and once it goes live. The homunculus minipets for warlock is hilarious, can't wait for more people to see it.

Since there's no ptr, are you worried about nerfing things?

We're going into it with the best of intentions. If warriors are super overpowered, do we nerf them? Or just bring others up to that level. Some internal playtests have caught most of the big outliers

Cata classic releasing in 4.3 patch?

Yes

Classic era ends at lich king according to many players. Has that changed how you look at cata classic?

We look at each expansion as a spectrum. They're slowly getting closer to modern. There are things worthy of being experienced again. A lot of memories of old content are colored by the time of our lives, and that impacts how we see the game. Cata was a lot of people's first wow expansion, that was their formative memory. We try not to be too myopic when we look at the content. We try to create a menu of things to do.

Classic+?

Season of Discovery is along those lines with the new raid. Is this as far as you going to get? The risks we're taking with these changes… it's a little spooky. We hope everyone's excited for this content. We want to get it into the hands of our players. We want to see what works, what they're engaging with and what they like. It's an excellent opportunity. We've been talking about Classic+ since 2019, back in the beginning. So we've done season of mastery, what's next?

Discovery gives us a little of an offramp to see what can be left behind. Maybe some parts of this could lead to some parts of that. Please talk to us, let us know what we like, what you don't. What feels too modern? What interesting ideas should we add to our approach?

Instanced pvp in discovery?

Yes

After 25 what happens next?

We'll raise the level cap, maybe a new raid, same characters, new pvp stuff, new abilities, etc.

What about a battlemaster support warrior that buffs players with shouts?

Too soon to say. Interesting idea. We played around with a lot of stuff. This ended up on the cutting room floor, but they were playing with a bow warrior. Let's just go hog wild, throwing darts on the wall. It's all about class fantasy forward. What is a warrior? You're not driving a spaceship. Rogues have poisons/venoms/etc.

New cata-classic mounts?

deluxe/epic editions coming, avatar of flame mount (ragnaros elemental mount), wrathion pet, twilight cultist transmog. Don't want to go overboard, but as a celebration of what we're doing, it's nice to have one thing.

Where does classic end?

We haven't drawn a line in the sand, it's too far out to see. People keep asking for MoP. We're driven by the direction that players want to see. The survey that went out before Wrath classic launch asked about cata and they got a lot of positive feedback.

What's it mean to be back in person again?

I keep crying. Seeing players sit down and experience the content is great. We want people to have fun. It's such an honor to be here.

It's everything. I didn't know how much I missed it until I got here. My guildies have been here to every blizzcon for a decade.

Will there be wrath era servers

No plans for right now.

How much did you decide to use future spells or make new ones?

When we first started to sketch things out, we grouped things into archetypes. What does a martyr paladin do when he hurts himself and heals allies? It's about picking themes for classes. Pick an archetype and work backwards from there. Some modern abilities don't look right in classic, so some copies were tweaked visually.

How long are you planning to have Season of Discovery last?

We want to let it have fun but not overstay our welcome.

Warcraft Q&A - Saturday

Saturday Warcraft Q&A with Marie Hamilton and Kristi Moray

3-day early access, preventing economy issues?

Dunno specifically about the AH but the goal for early access is for a laid-back leveling experience. No access to mythics/weeklies/progression systems. Also philosophically they're not looking to give advantages.

Restrictions being removed, cross-realm guilds. But what about regions?

No talks about that yet. They'd love to have it, but many technical issues standing in the way. They constantly hear "I want to play with my friends", and they want to make that happen as much as they can.

Druids getting lotsa customizations in 10.2, but will there be more coming in future expansions?

Yes. Several members of the team are big proponents of more customization, so they'll do what they can.

Expansions have been 24 months, will it be faster?

Can't speak to specifics, but yes, we want to finish the Worldsoul saga before 2030. Teams have been parallelized, they're already working on Midnight.

Druids with dynamic flight?

Nothing to announce

Delves, cadence? Daily reset thing? Can they be ground out?

It is repeatable, not a daily lockout. There will be ways to improve the loot and that will be limited, but everything else is free.

Warbands limits?

It's the entire account, all characters are in the same warband, even A/H characters

Moving away from borrowed power, now we have hero talents. But what if in a few expansions we keep adding horizontal power and things get too complex?

It is top of mind, and they don't want to get things out of hand. They're leaning into the fantasy side of it, the look and feel of it. Like following the path of some famous warrior. We're not looking to take things away, there is planning for what's coming next.

Midnight, we going to see ethereals?

Nothing we can say specifically. There is def a focus on the void and shadow throughout. Midnight is when we face some significant problems with the shadow. They're after the sunwell. There are some obvious choices for creatures to come across, but again nothing to say now.

With the announcement of a trilogy, what's being done to make sure they stand on their own?

Each expansion is a full expansion of stuff, with zones, dungeons, raids, etc as normal. The story will have a throughline across all three, but there's still plenty of small local stories to cover. It's important to tell the story across all three, but that each expansion has its own bit. With the experience of managing cadence in dragonflight, they've learned a lot about being able to shift resources around and having designers individually bounce around.

Will more mounts be made customizable, or is going to be reserved for a small sample?

We'll introduce new mounts that have customization options. Players like collecting them and designers like making them. As for making old mounts customizable, not likely. It's a lot of work already getting old mounts on the dragonriding rig.

More support specs coming?

Nothing to announce

Timeline?

Roadmap is coming, but don't know if there's going to be anything specific like 'number of big patches' per expansion.

Can A/H players in guild trade in the open world?

Seems likely, but nothing to confirm.

Account-wide stable?

No info.

World events are fun for the first week or two, but then the dropoff is severe. Any plans to make things still doable on low-pop servers?

Superbloom in 10.2 can be soloed. Future open-world content in War Within isn't going to be in the same vein. Some grindable, some group stuff, some zone stuff. But once people stop doing stuff, we'll make stuff scalable. Delves are a great way to address this too - they can be soloed or done with a group.

For stuff like Secrets of Azeroth, how much of that is going forward?

We've learned a lot from that, will have cool stuff going forward, but nothing to announce.

Any cool stuff you've had to come back on for tech reasons?

Nope. One thing we're really excited about is the underground zone with the crystal light turning on/off and hooking that into how creatures react. Light/dark has also been super fun for the quest team to give them new things to play with. Since the light isn't on a timer, the quest team can be reactive to that. Lots of gameplay that happens on light changes.

Since delves are soloable, but with visions in the past it was best if five players did it. What's the plan?

With delves, the intent is to play with however many people they have. With the treasure room, players will have the option to say "ooh, I want THIS treasure room to have extra loot". Loot is personal in delves.

Now that we know about three expansions, what's keeping players excited for the next two?

There will def be some fun surprises that we'll get to announce that will hopefully keep the hype train rolling. Because there is so much cool stuff showing, because we can share it once we expect to be able to blow people's socks off.

Now that we're seeing so far ahead, has there been a change internally in how you all are producing content?

In DF dev time it was clear that content was not coming out fast enough in SL. Yes, there were reasons, but it still wasn't good. We put out a roadmap and every bit of it got hit. Guardians of the Dream comes out on Tuesday and the next patch will be on the PTR in a few days after that. We've had a lot of oversight to make sure that content keeps flowing. When we say that the next three expansions are faster, it's because we know how to actually produce content with DF now.

How is Proletariat helping?

A few members of the Proletariat team are helping out in worldbuilding. They're working on upcoming expansions and some of their work has been promoted in the panels/videos. We just want to make cool games, and they do too. We also have a bunch of quest/narrative designers too and their content is already in Dragonflight. They're basically Blizzard Boston now. It's been great to work with them and we're happy to have them aboard.

AI stuff? How's it working in the pipeline?

It's exciting, but we want to do it in an ethical way. One thing we've been working on is helm-fitting on all the races. That's super fiddly, boring work, but the tech has saved a lot of time and the character modelers love it. We're not trying to design zones or create art with AI. Can't replace human passion/creativity with it.

With how we're all coming together in TWW, are we going to see a realignment of who's working with who? That is, over the course of the narrative, will hostile groups be working together?

Previously mentioned the elves coming together.

Third playable faction?

No

Cultural readers?

We have opportunities to meet with people from cultures that inspire us so we have them advise us on the content we're creating. Recently a lot of work with the tuskarr for example. Also the team itself has grown in its diversity and often reflects some of the cultures they're trying to use. Easier to build things and express them in a positive way and not just stereotypes.

Keeping content straight between expansions?

Having a strong vision helps a lot. We have a lore team who are always available to answer questions. But mistakes happen, we're only human after all. But knowing that we're going to be dealing with characters for a few expansions so it'll be easier to keep things straight.

Catch-up mechanics, lots of stuff to do on new characters at max level. How to not overwhelm them?

Warbands help a lot. In DF, lots behind Renown, and that's difficult to knock out quickly. Warbands lets you only have to do that once. Also, since this was the first time we're on this cadence, maybe we did a little much. In the case of a new player joining late, there'll be a better way to nudge players to the right content. DF was a bit overwhelming and now they'll be better about that.

What's the philosophy on shared stuff in warbands? For instance skip quests? Currencies?

In general, if there's a reason it needs to be character-specific, it will be. No need for a warrior-specific thing to be account-wide. The team is aware and are altoholics themselves, lots of internal complaints asking to fix this?

Process of turning static flying mounts into dynamic mounts?

Need to be on new rigs, as they don't have all the animations that dragonriding has. It's a time-consuming thing. So the question is do we just do a few and get complaints about "what about my mount?" They instead said "here's a big batch, have fun!" We want the animations to look good, and it'll take time. Not something we're doing with AI. AI can't predict the weight of a mount, how things like wings work, etc.

This is the most we've seen of dwarves since cataclysm and nerubians since wrath. What brought them out of the toybox?

It ties back into the whole saga. Dwarves for TWW, elves for midnight. Some cultures have been neglected and we'd like to come back and expand them. Nerubians in wrath were undead, controlled by the lich king. But the new nerubians are the OG, controlled their own destiny. What do they do? Also, technically earthen are not dwarves. They're earthen and have been isolated for a very long time. Some very big differences.

What about other races? Tauren and An'she? Will there be side stories for them?

Can't speak specifically to that character, but one of the things that comes up in our smaller patches is the opportunity to tell other stories, like the blue dragonflight and Baine. So whenever there's a quest designer that gets excited about something, we'll try to support it and get it in.

Will zone revisits be getting glow ups?

Seems reasonable.

Will these be zone-wide updates or more local around the new content?

Def it's going to be focused on the areas that are dealing with the new quests/expansion. Also we're going to be leaning on Chromie Time - we're not going to be destroying the Sunwell, for instance. It'll still be there to do if you want. Big difference coming from painted textures on sheer walls that are pretending they're mountains versus actually sculpted properly.

Since DF is the new leveling expansion, Anduin's kinda been absent. How are new players going to get caught up?

Anduin won't be the central character, but we will def make sure new players are properly introduced to him and why he's important. But in DF the world was about exploring nooks and crannies and dragons. Dragons are great for getting new people in. But as things shift toward the new stuff and bad stuff starts happening, it'll be important to make sure players are along for the ride.

Other major characters in TWW?

Alleria is quite important, with her cinematic and showing her own challenges with shadow and the light. On the BlizzCon floor there's a lot of cameos in the chapter for Guardians of the Dream. Everyone's having visions. Everyone's seeing stuff.

What do you want to talk about?

One of the exciting things to me is that dynamic flight will be available from the beginning of TWW. You'll dive into caves and through arches and into lower zones. We were really cognizant of how it was going to feel going between zones.

Maria enjoys working with Metzen. Didn't know what to expect. He's pretty famous. He came in, met the team and said how much he enjoyed Dragonflight. Big morale boost to the team. He's got a good way of bringing people in and moving things upward. It's been so much fun working with him, sitting with the team and bouncing ideas around.

Classic Q&A - Saturday

Classic Saturday 5pm

Tim Jones, assistant lead designer and Leany Corke Saverline, game producer

Will every expansion have its own server?

We continue to evaluate what people want to do on progression servers on a case-by-case basis. Doesn't really make sense to land on classic dragonflight. We've had some special moments with attendees here today that, some of us have been playing wow was classic was at the time, 20 years at the point. Just like what mezten was talking about, there are different generations of players at this point and for some of them classic was their first expansion and to them it's their vanilla. So it's our duty on the classic team to allow them to relive those moments the best way we can, recreate that nostalgia.

So we talk with the community, we sent out the polls and surveys and there was a fair number of people who desired cataclysm. There were some rough edges at the time, with the world was destroyed, but now we have access to era and people can go back to play the original story. We will continue to ask the community what they want, hardcore case in point. The pure passion, excitement, and nagging of our community.

Classic itself is born of the community. Nothing is off the table. We'll look at mists and beyond to see what people want.

In terms of features, where do you think you're drawing that line? For instance in retail we can share currencies account-wide but will that get ported to classic?

There's constant lessons to be learned between the modern wow team and classic. We're learning from each other. Aspects of classic that influence retail. People love classic talents, so that influenced df talents. Are there things with accessibility from retail like transmog that can come to classic? Lots of things like mount/pet/transmog collections are already in wrath classic.

The goal is to respect players' time. I'm older now, a very different person than I was 15-20 years ago. Hard to go hardcore with a 2- and 5-year old. So we have to take into consideration our entire audience. We want to make sure we're preserving the nostalgic feel, so if you go into the game it feels like classic. But QoL things like the transmog system are great to have.

What kind of new content are you adding to Discovery? Karazhan depths was hinted at, for instance?

Seasons are such an exciting sandbox for us on the classic team. We get the chance to take risks and the chance to experiment with different gameplay features that might not– that might have a positive receptions with players or maybe a negative reception with players. So we take that feedback in mind with things to add. So there's so much content in vanilla, and where the heck do you start? So looking at the artificial level bands in classic beta where players came up with their own meta, their own endgame, their own BiS lists within those bands. So those level bands let us focus on smaller chunks at a time. So what's the endgame at level 25? Can we turn dungeons into a raid? Can we add new pvp? Can we add new discoveries that tie into the Rune system. So the level band lets us compartmentalize EK and Kali into small chunks.

So we're excited into where Discovery takes us. There's more coming, but we can't talk about what happens with the next level upgrades. Clearly there will be. But will that be completely new content that got accidentally(?) hinted at in the panel? Lots of things to let people experience things and discover them together. That's the spirit of the season. We also want it to feel natural in the classic wow world, so if you're running around in the world and you see a mob and wonder "was this here before?" time to go check wowhead/wowpedia and see. It's like finding a photograph of your grandparents in italy and how that adds more to your understanding of them.

What's the plan for classic going forward?

The classic team has evolved from the announcement of classic to where we are now. Many philosophy changes over time, where people started with #nochanges in vanilla, but things have since changed. Is that what people want to continue doing? We're all about learning lessons and trying different things. With BC/Wrath classic where we experienced with the pre-nerf systems. With #nochanges can we provide the original challenge that people faced. And that really spoke to some people.

And we went to really crazy lengths about doing pre-nerf ulduar, and now we have alternate difficulty paths. In vanilla there were 40 players and there were no difficulty levels. There were both ends, people aiming for orange parses and the father trying to get his baby to sleep and clicking to move, and they could still defeat bosses. So casual/competitive players are diverging. Is that healthy?

Plenty of analytics that help us make the choices we make to preserve and nurture the communities as best we're able to. So do we want #SomeChanges? #NoChanges? Titan Rune dungeons were a great thing. Before TRD, dungeons just went away once you got past them, but now they're still viable. So do we want Mythic+? Not really, but there are ideas we can use to make some changes to classic. The goal ultimately boils down to 'how can we respect players' time?'

With the success of hardcore mode, will it be showing up in future expansions?

Good question. Hardcore is so interesting. It's a community-driven force of nature. The participation of people, the creation of the hardcore addon. It's an amazing addon, creating an alternate player-driven way to play warcraft. But they created that addon in vanilla, not in bc or wrath. So there's something to the leveling experience in EK/Cata. That's not to say that we won't bring the hardcore ruleset to higher expansions, but it all comes to what players want. We want to make sure we put our effort and support into what players are most passionable about. Like the recent mak'gora tournament. It was super exciting and people clearly want more of that. So we're going to make sure those key moments are available to players in hardcore. We want to find more ways to make hardcore more exciting.

What about reforging/dragonsoul?

Yeah, they'll def be there. The panels were about the high-level stuff. Cata classic is going to have a better cadence so patches don't feel like they're going on for too long?

Classic+?

It's interesting. Means so many different things to so many people. Is it making classic the way it was but with small tweaks so that ret/balance are in a better place, but no changes to molten core? Or is it adding completely new content? So there's no way to satisfy all players. So seasons is a way for us to experiment with things and see what resonates with players and what they're really attached to. Maybe there's a new forever home for those types of mechanics, like a new era server that isn't purely seasonal. The response to the BFD raid on the show floor has been astounding. Been humbling to see so many players exploring it.

Is there going to be another progression series, starting over from classic?

Nothing to announce, but it's all about player desire. If people want it we'll def give it another look.

Season of Discovery has no PTR. Is that going to be the thing going forward?

SoD is special, trying to the community together to help find those discoveries. We def see the value of PTRs, but also the value of not having PTRs. The PTR for ICC was fantastic to help us make it as bug free as possible.

With discoveries, is it going to be a random lockbox out in the water before the fatigue zone, or will there be breadcrumbs?

It'll be a mix of both... is that chest new? I've been to Stone Cairn Lake, is there anything new? But there will also be discoveries behind epic quests, where marquee spells will have a great deal of content required to do in order to learn them. So a big mix of small scale and epic scale.

In wrath classic, there's both the 40-player and 25-player version of onyxia's lair. What in cata classic?

Much of the old stuff was cannibalized when it got updated for future patches. It's hard when creatures got reused for different purposes so you can't just copy/paste it when it has different quests/loot drops. It's also just one subscription, so if you to play vanilla you still can.

So if runes are popular, what do you bring forward?

With Season of Mastery there were def some faults with the focus on endgame. The absence of world buffs def hurt. Players had to put in an enormous amount of effort to participate in that content. But it was fun, the people who did put in the time to participate it enjoyed it. Is there a world where some of that content gets to live again in season in discovery. Nothing's off the table. If people were passionate about it and they'd like to see it again and it fits within the context of the fantasy of it, then maybe? We're not going to force things in where it doesn't make sense, but we're open to making those changes.

Has there been any thought in breaking out the subs so people who just want to play classic?

We're not responsible for those kinds of decisions so that's not really something we can answer.

Warlords brought upgraded player models, is that going to happen in classic? Will there be a graphics toggle?

That toggle existed in warlords and that gave designers nightmares. Is that what people want? We have to work with other teams and art directors from mainline wow to see what works. For instance, the new incubus model got brought to classic and downgraded visually to make sure it fits in the context of everything else. That's not to say we won't...

How are new players finding classic if they've never played before?

It's been really interesting with hardcore recently with how popular it's been with playing and with streaming. Oh hey, this is on twitch and it's fun to watch, maybe it's fun to play? We've been seeing data for players who have never played any version of wow come in to play hardcore. You'd think that it would only be for the top-level players, but no, it's been the opposite.

There's no rush to endgame. The point is the leveling journey and taking your time. As players keep dying there's always players in the low-level zones and cities. Making games accessible to everyone and how they want to play is the point. The future of classic is exciting. Hardcore is an interesting way for new players to start. Cataclysm will be amazing, as the revamps were player friendly. The talent system makes the classes feel complete while you're leveling and not having to wand things to death for 40 levels as a priest.

As we get newer expansions, how has it been pulling data from old builds to current classic?

As we get progress in time we have more and more data we can pull from. So, for example in pre-nerf, we could pull up a history of how creatures' health changed from patch to patch. Lots of engineering help to pull that off.

Seasons level bands?

First cap is 25/BFD, next is 40 with a lot of keystone stuff there (like mounts!) and a new level-up raid (still unannounced), next band is 50, then 60. We feel like the amount of zones that players have in each phase is a healthy amount. Same for dungeons. Then at 60 there'll be another exploration for existing raid content and what does that mean in season of discovery? Do we make new tier sets for the new classes/specs we've manifested with the rune system. Do the raids play the same? In the same order? And on the topic of respecting peoples' time, time as we go into a new end cap, there'll be an xp boost for older bands.

What about timeline of level bands?

Not going to make predictions, but it'll def be faster than patches. Maybe a month? Not a desire to make you play season of discovery solely. There's a whole menu of stuff to do. Go finish your Shadowmourne in Wrath classic. Go play 10.2. Go do other stuff. Many people have been coming up to us and saying "oh, I can level to 25" and that's the point.

Self-found additional restrictions?

Hardcore was a player-driven ruleset, and so was self-found. If there's another ruleset that players are really interested in, maybe we'll do that to.

Classic has so many hooks to explore?

Why did the eranikus questline end so abruptly? What's going on under the karazhan crypts? My producers would kill me if we tried to solve all of them, but we'll explore a few of them and we're excited to look into those places too.

As classic 9.0 is really far away, but we're getting cross-faction play in retail. What about in classic?

There's a lot of decisions to be made about what makes sense and what still feels like classic.

What haven't we asked that you want to talk about?

We've been so jazzed that we've been working on Discovery for the past year. Happy to see players' response to the announcement and that there weren't any major leaks. So proud of the work that we do and seeing everyone's response and excitement has been a joy. We're so excited to see the new things we create get into players' hands. A lot of exciting new stuff coming up and we want peoples' feedback about it.