Make sure you don’t miss the Blizzcon Q&A for The War Within and WoW Classic, it has been posted up on YouTube not too long ago! For more of a summary of what the War Within will contain, then make sure to check out our quick article here.
But for now, have a watch of the official Blizzcon Q&A!
Video Summary
- 2024 Roadmap: They are working on a roadmap for 2024, similar to what they did for 2023, and plan to release it in the coming months. They confirmed three more updates for Dragonflight before the War Within pre-patch.
- 3-Day Early Access: They discussed the Early Access feature of the Epic Edition, emphasizing that it’s primarily a head start on leveling up. Certain content like Mythic zero dungeons and weekly quests won’t be available during Early Access to maintain fairness.
- Faster Expansion Releases: They addressed concerns about faster expansion releases affecting content quality. They reassured that expansions would remain comprehensive, with multiple zones, dungeons, and raids. They aim to reduce content delivery lulls while maintaining quality.
- Dynamic Flight for Druids: Druids will have dynamic flight in their flight forms in the War Within expansion.
- Static vs. Dynamic Flying: Static flying will be unlocked after reaching level 80, while dynamic flying is available immediately. This decision is to make questing more engaging and interactive.
- Professions in War Within: The new profession system from Dragonflight will continue, with adjustments based on player feedback. They are considering changes to the inspiration stat and exploring NPC crafting orders to increase engagement with the crafting system.
- Transmog and Class-Locked Items: They discussed how transmog unlocking will work with class-locked items like tier set tokens, which will likely remain soulbound.
- Opting Out of Warbands: Currently, there’s no plan to allow players to opt out of Warbands. They are open to feedback, especially if there are aspects of Warbands players find undesirable.
- Account-Wide Features and Multiple Accounts: Warband benefits will span across all WoW licenses on a Battle.net account. There will be some restrictions, like on the Warband bank, to ensure transactional security.
- Account-Wide Reputation with Opposing Factions: They are still figuring out how to handle account-wide reputation with opposing factions like Frenzyheart Tribe vs. Oracles and Aldor vs. Scryers.
- Warband Reputation Sharing: The developers discuss sharing reputation across a player’s warband (group of characters). They aim to make Dragonflight reputations retroactively work at the warband level, but acknowledge that applying this to older reputations will take time due to data complexities.
- Warband Character Limit: It’s mentioned that a player can have up to 50 characters per World of Warcraft (WoW) account, which was increased to 60 to accommodate players with many characters.
- Mythic Plus Portals Account Bound: The team confirms that in the War Within expansion, Mythic Plus Portals will be account-bound.
- Customizing Warband Menu Background: The possibility of customizing the warband menu background is discussed. While not available at launch, the team is considering adding this feature in the future.
- Bank and Bag Storage System: There are no current plans for a major overhaul of the bank and bag storage system. The team is focusing on tactical solutions to manage bag space, like moving certain items to the currency tab or integrating them into specific UIs.
- Trading Post in Future Expansions: The Trading Post feature will continue in future expansions, with plans for themed drops throughout 2024.
- Server Merging and Cross-Server Groups: The focus is on making server choice less relevant by removing barriers to cross-server play, rather than merging servers. Cross-faction play in group finders is discussed, with a preference for keeping it opt-in to maintain faction boundaries.
- Stat Squish in Future Expansions: A stat squish is not planned for the War Within expansion but is likely for the Midnight expansion. The team aims to better manage Legacy content scaling in future squishes.
- Character Customization: Ongoing efforts to expand character customization options are mentioned, with lessons learned from the Evoker class being applied to other races.
- Midnight Expansion and Time Travel: The Midnight expansion does not involve time travel. It revisits familiar lands like the Blood Elves’ territories, updating and reimagining them for current storytelling.
- Dynamic Flight in Revisited Areas: The team plans to enable dynamic flight in updated areas of older expansions, like Northrend, to align with current gameplay features.
- Flying Mounts and Dynamic Flight: Some flying mounts may not be eligible for dynamic flight due to their unique animations or designs. The team is working on solutions for these cases.
