AD BlizzCon Speculation/Spoiler Pit

Argent Dawn
141

All I want from next expansion is goblin and troll beards that’s it. If they have some development resources to spare from this massive undertaking, I’d like them to stop doing spec reworks mid season and stop with pointless spec reworks in general, no reworks with 100% focus on pve but maybe just 99%, at least remember that pvp exists, even if nobody is playing it. I’d also like the next expansion to realise there is a difference between lore and gameplay and lastly to change their solo content policy - there absolutely needs to be solo content, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of group content, but exist next to it (unlike solo shuffle and solo rbgs getting their own bracket, canibalizing the group content). But I realise that is too much to hope for, so I will be happy with just goblin and troll beards, thank you. Further pointless rant below.

I have no faith at all for the current devs to pull off a good world revamp. From technological side I fear overuse of phasing, warfront zones flipping back and forth drive me insane and strolling around with friend ic only to cross invisible border and have half the people disappear because someone has done some quest that someone else hasn’t etc. Now I heard from friends who actually do rp in places like Tirisfal that it’s not that big of a deal, but to me having all zones like that is just another hoop to jump through and while it may be small issue, I personally don’t like it simply.

From narrative side I fear they will just do another cataclysm. As much as people meme on Scarlets coming out of nowhere all the time, that’s becasue they are fan favourite (be it for the seriousness of light zealots corrupted by a demon or for the nobody expects a scarlet inquisition memes) and the devs just can’t come up with anything to replace them. So I fear there won’t be anything new like Scarlets, Defias, Syndicate, Farraki, Gurubashi, Amani, Silithids, centaur and ogre clans, dark horde remnants, Venture company and Steamwheedle, Bloodsails, Blackwater raiders and Southsea pirates etc, they will just go “What was the last thing that happened in those zones? Primalist invasions! Now not all zones are on fire, some of them are also frozen now! And all quests in all zones don’t deal with damage from cataclysm but damage from primal storms!”

142

The worst expansion when it comes to phasing is still Cata. Newer expansions rarely include it in levelling zones and definitely not on the level of Cata (exception being Stormsong Valley).
This is the one area where world revamp is pretty much guaranteed to succeed.

Good. I’d love to be able to utilize the old minor enemy factions without either ignoring their lore (which in 90% of cases has them destroyed or rejoining the main faction of their race) or coming up with an explanation on why they survived.

I feel like this statement contradicts what you wrote in the paragraph right before it, about Blizzard being unable to create new factions.
World dealing with the aftermath of Promalists is however literally that, a new story centered around new enemies.
And while I would prefer a world in style of Vanilla, with evergreen stories, by nature a story that deals with aftermath of a random big event that just ended is far more evergreen than the one dealing with the current big thing that is happening right now.

143

I hope they never add goblin facial hair.

Troll i can just about be ok with beards. No moustaches tho.

As for the rest of the post, I think SS has been great and hope it is made the standard going forward.

As for class changes and reworks, i am ok with them and I would even welcome the 90000th SP rework because the devs just can’t seem to decide what exactly do they want the spec to be about.

Same with ranged survival and/or metamorphosis warlock and gladstance warrior.

144

I’m willing to bet they’re reworking one or two specializations into support DPS; enhancement shaman being one of them.

145

We have a teaser from Blizz on Twitter. Runes engraved on some sort of structure. I’ve seen people name Frostmourne, dwarves, Zovaal, dragons, elves and even Protoss in their speculation. What are yours? I can’t tell honestly!

’ Wowhead💙 on X: “Blizzard has posted a BlizzCon decor teaser on Twitter, possibly providing a small teaser for the next expansion! #Dragonflight #Warcraft https://t.co/2NI4mUiKTQ https://t.co/eJLzCAisQv” / X’

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146

The pillars are obviously Titanic, they’re almost 1:1 with the in-game Tyrhold pillars and even have the greco-roman flourishings and titan orbs stuck to them at the top. The runes match those on a titan-void-related orb thing in Azjol-Nerub.

Its joever.

2 Likes
147

Which dungeon can the orb be found in, or outside if that’s the case? I speculated weeks ago we may get a visit from the Nerubians, especially given the hint given in Zaralek!

148

Not sure what exact dungeon it is but:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/593858778592575567/1166069334909661244/latest.png?ex=654925b1&is=6536b0b1&hm=4afc24a13c2debd9599159333401ce028d25ead6f024810d723cf9247f6238c0&

Whilst not an exact match, they do look somewhat similar in design.

Edit: the runes also look similar to those found on infinite/bronze dragon pillars.

149

Looks to be Ahn’kahet.

150

Bruh if they give Shamans support spec instead of tanking spec im gonna lose it.

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151

Yeah support spec was such a great addition to the game wasn’t it.

It’s not like it broke the game in every instanced content simultaneously in one go, needing some 3 consecutive nerfs to even somewhat bring it in line, and then it still continues to do well.

Beats me, how could a spec that can do everything be detrimental for game design.

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That’s literally been the game design principle for anything new being added to core systems of a game, across the gaming industry. New class has to be somewhat OP or overtuned so that people would try it out, and it’ll be nerfed later on to bring it in line with other classes. We’ve seen that time and time again, from DK to Monks (actually I don’t remember if Monks were OP at launch lmao) to Demon Hunters, and now Evokers.

Support specs have been pretty greatly requested and the concept of it is really cool actually. Evoker as class design, for all of its specs, have been done relatively well imo.

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153

They weren’t actually, quite infamously so. It wasn’t until later when they got brought up, and by that time they were like any other class.

Monk was designed really well and continues to be one of the best designed classes, unsurprisingly. DK as well, after 3.1.

Augmentation and DH break the mold because they are fundamentally deatructive to the rest of the class design.

You can’t make a class or a spec that on paper can do everything and ontop of that be hypermobile.

It’s a very common symptom among mmo’s and moba’s where when you begin to introduce certain game defining mechanics to the game with a new class or hero, they tend to start to saturate the playing field.

Suddenly everyone has burst mobility, self sustain and defensive utility. And the classes that do not have it fall behind, because they are not designed for the environment that has been made around them. So now they need to be changed, and the cycle repeats itself. It repeats itself because it treats symptoms of bad class design, not the root cause.

In any multiplayer game, function should come over form. No matter how cool and awesome an idea you might have is, sometimes you should kill it if it affects the core design of the game.

A good example of a game that has managed to avoid all of this has been TF2.

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154

Augmentation wasn’t really easy to learn, though. Most of the outliers came from high end players abusing the spec or group stacking classes that drew the most benefit from it. If you have 3 people in 5 man group hyping up a singular fire mage, feeding it cds and literally every resource possible, then yeah Aug will seem broken.

Mind you, speaking from my PvE experience only. PvP in this game smells so I did not get to experience Augmentation there.

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155

An old school FPS generally avoids it, because it has more simplistic systems. Has TF2 ever introduced new characters (classes?) to play anyway? It’s not really a place to add new things as the game itself is already evergreen, a ‘classic’. Newer games risk falling out of relevancy if you don’t make updates, and that can include new systems.

Age of Empires 2 for example is a game that still has development and gets new civilizations each expansion/DLC. The new civs are similarly overtuned at launch (though some less so), but over time become part of the game’s core, much like DK and Monk have become WoW’s core. And so will DH and Evoker.

AoE2 could’ve had no new civs whatsoever and still be evergreen, but to actually continue developing on the game you need to have a business model, and just campaign sets would not sell as much as new civs do. How well would a WoW expansion sell without the addition of new races or classes?

TBC added Draenei/Blood Elves, Wrath added DK, Cata added Worgen and Goblins, MoP added Monk and Pandaren, WoD added new models for all, Legion added DH, BfA added allied races, Shadowlands doesn’t exist, and Dragonflight added Drac’thyr and Evoker. I think we can see a pattern, really. Next expansion will either bring new races confirmed.

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There are plenty of ways to get that wrong too; See valorant and Overwatch, simpler as they may be. But the point is the same.

There’s been plenty of careers that almost made it to being implemented in TF2, but they never did because they realized that all of them would have been detrimental to the game, so they instead focused on the weapon diversity.

Mind you: I am not against adding new classes. Monk is a well designed class, for one.

They could have even designed DH’s in a manner that would have fit the game design of WoW, but that would have meant cutting a lot of the stuff from the class that current playerbase would see as essential part of it.

Evokers are not as glaring in this regard, because they had really strictly niches in which they operated in all forms of gameplay. Devastation was/is a high damage, high mobility spell caster, but it is also made of paper, for example. Equally, preservation is a high mobility uptime healer, with very strong utility for both themselves and the party.

But then you add augmentation- Which was sold as a support, mind you. But they also deal damage. And they also heal. And they are quite tanky too.

You nerf any of those aspects signigicantly, you kill the entire spec, because why would you not simply take a dps, if the boost in dps an augmentation brings is negligable? Or why bring them in to boost a tank or be a pseudo healer, if you could just have a healer? And finally if you take the sustain away, how are they any different from the other two specs?

Equally if you keep them like they are they are just going to devalue the other two.

I have never played age of empires, so I can not give an accurate example of the damage some bad game design can do to it, but I can give an accurate example for TF2.

If they introduced guns into the game that fulfil the role of assault rifles (full auto) in a significant way, that would kill the projectile/hit track dynamic of the game completely. Mind you, the few assault rifle weapons that do exist in the game are very limited in their use, such as the sniper SMG.

Soldier unironically was going to have an assault rifle instead of the bazooka in the base game, but they changed that to better fit the gameplay they were trying to design.

Adding new things is cool and okay.
A good example from for example BG3 are raise dead and speak animals spells. They created infinite work and problems for the devs, but they chose to do it because they were cool and did not break the game in a fundamental level.

They did not add dispel magic, despite it’s prominence in D&D, because it broke the game at a basic level that they could not allow.

Good game design in multiplayer games should -always- prioritize function over form. Any new classes or other type of content added must be in harmony with the rest of the design. Else you end up with the aforementioned problems.

Nerfing and buffing won’t make the problem go away, since youbare treating the symptoms, not the cause.

157

New factions/playable characters/classes/etc. should always be overtuned when they launch. It’s just good game design. Players are already invested in [existing stuff], they need a good reason to try out [new stuff] (and undoubtedly will be less skilled with them than what they’re used to) and when you’re unsure about a thing’s balance it’s a deathknell to release it underpowered.

4 Likes
158

I haven’t played either, but my point was about old school FPS games. Those are new games, dependent on sales and whatnot. Another old school FPS game would be Quake. You had multiple ‘character’ options, but they were only cosmetic and the game was really just about the weapons. Never from Quake 3 to Quake Live (same game, on different platform) were new weapons added, the biggest change was mostly rebalancing of some weapons and that was already enough to have some not make the move, because the rebalanced weapons weren’t what they were used to.

New games don’t really have that problem, as you don’t have the classic to compare to. There’s not going to be the same nostalgia factor present - at least as strongly - to the game’s design at launch, that adding new stuff would risk shaking it up. And most of the newer games are also more complex, arena shooter genre has mostly been eaten up by the battle royale genre, where instead of just shooting at the enemy player you also have the building stuff thing from Fortnite, or zone controls and whatnot (I haven’t played those games at all).

The balance for Augmentation is just similar to the balance of existing specs in the game that have multiple roles. Discipline Priest has been hard to balance because they also deal damage and heal. Fistweaver Monks are similar to that too. Druids have been famous for having multiple roles and contributing to damage while being a healer and vice versa. Augmentation will likely be the same.

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159

Both Valorant and Overwatch openly marketed themselves as being similar to TF2- Since TF2 set the gold standard. I think one of the devs in the original reveal even said that it is similar to TF2.

Sales dependency doesn’t have anything to do with balancing of the game- Unless of course you intentionally make new content broken and make it overshadow the rest of the game, to make people buy it, and then nerf it afterwards after you have done the sales.

Which is, as you might imagine, an extremely scummy way to develop something. A limited time pay2win model, if you will.

In either case I do not think you are trying to defend that model of development or even advocate for it, but I chose to reply to it all the same.

It isn’t for two reasons:

  • It breaks the trinity system of the game, around which all the game is designed around. The game isn’t designed to handle 25 man tank groups or 25 dps groups or 25 healer groups. Sometimes oversights happen (i quite fondly remember blood dk only raids and rank1 arena teams in WoD), but they are very brief. Augmentation is designed from the get go to fit into all the said categories, do it is a root issue, not a symptom.

  • If Augmentation is doing well in any given content, it is doing so at the expense of the other roles, as explained earlier. Equally, if they are reduced to a jack of all trades, master of none role, then there is no reason to bring them along since you might as well get one of each role to do the job of Augmentation better. And now you also have one spot free to replace augmentstion too.

I could go on but I think we are not going to agree, so I will just agree to disagree re: this. I think they should have just made augmentation a tank spec with support elements (e.g. prot paladin), then it would have been great. But alas, here we are.

Funny you should mention that because disci has gone through so many changes since Legion (including another on the way literally next patch), specifically because healing through damage is just a mess to balance. There has not been one tier where they are not nerfed halfway through because of it and I would be very surprised if they wouldn’t ust give up with it next expansion and make it back to just shielding people like it used to pre legion, where it saw very little changes. A bit like SP.

As for Fistweaving, that feature was killed in MoP in 2 patches and only came back in the form of Crane as a pvp talent from legion onwards, and is now back for DF. Again, I will be very surprised if it will survive the chopping block, because it is creating a lot of problems.

The problem with healers healing through damage also creates another problem with all healers now being expected to also deal damage- See holy paladin for example, before the nerf to their melee healing. See what I mentioned earlier?

When a problematic game design infests a game, it will eventually spread to the other classes too, which will create it’s own set of problems in return.

Good game design would mean you would not need to change the specs gameplay significantly over a bried period of time continuously because you can not get it right. You should kill that element, not stubbornly try and make it work.

The difference with druids and the other specs is that a druid has to give up something in return of something else.

You can’t heal others in cat or bear form outside of few talents and predatory swiftness- It used to be much more stricter than that too.

Resto is currently overperforming like mad due to a set bonus, not because they can fill multiple roles, as they always have and always should be.

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No, but in PvE catweaving is the most optimal in M+ and stuff (or well, used to be, cannot speak for the literal now) because your HoTs would continue healing. It took quite a bit of skill to time your HoTs with knowing when to go into Cat Form and continue damaging.

WoD broke that barrier with a talent that made your spells smart-heal for a % of the damage dealt, and I totally did not abuse that in RP-PvP, hehe.

Whether Resto Druid is overperforming or not right now isn’t really relevant, the point is that several specs in the game are hybrid specs and Blizzard can and has always tried to bring new things into the game that have gone beyond the trinity of spec design in the game.

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