Ion will brag the “success” of SL and how he is happy about all the systems have turned out in live so far. He then will address loot issues by introducing an increase of weapon/trinket drop rate by difficulty layers of raid and dungeon and in GV while suggesting they are happy with the overall droprate at this stage. Moving on, he will introduce “pathfinder 2.0” and how it is related with renown. Regarding to class balance, he will insist the team is determined to “work” with playerbase and will roll out “more frequent” hotfix to address balance issues. Of course as usual, sneeky peak of upcoming raid and mini zones
P.S. I will put 99g for the beloved gnome charity aka gbank if Ion says same things as my prediction
My pessimistic side is thinking; they’ll just be announcing more modes (and more semi-forced running of said modes) for Torghast and 'more stuff to do in The Maw as “we make our move to try to free Anduin”. Both of which I have zero interest in.
In fact; I don’t think there’s much they CAN announce that will get me hyped, because I simply don’t really care for the whole Shadowlands theme/setting.
I also have a hopeful side. Where I’m hoping to be ‘sucked in’ again with cool new stories and areas to explore and new activities to do, NOT related to Torghast or the Maw.
I’ll just wait and see. About 3 more weeks of waiting.
Them saying: Hey, next patch we’re freeing Anduin, defeating the jailer AND The Banshee Karen and then we’ll head back for our next expansion, named ‘World of Warcraft: The Return to Azeroth’.
It’ll be announced that Sylvanas is forgiven for burning innocent men, women and children alive because shes hot and her fans think that’s enough for her to be innocent.
And I’m only partially joking.
More for Torghast.
More Covenant campaigns.
Covenant changes and further catch up systems.
Maybe hint at another Legendary but not usable until at least 9.2.
A new zone.
More on the rune carvers identity. (I hope the story shifts to focus on this & the winter queen more than the Jailer, Sylvanas, Bolvar and Anduin. But I’m sure they’ll remain focus.
Another dungeon.
New raid.
Ion announced that due to the success of scaling Legion to be harder to solo meaning more people stayed in current content they will scale all old raids and dungeons to be unsoloable requiring at least 3 people for dungeons and 8 for raids.
This highly anticipated improvement to the game will increade participation rates in current content massively.
Also drop rates of everything in old dungeons and raids will be reduced to 10% of their current chances.
What they will announce:
Return of T-Sets in the new Raid.
Some Loot Changes
-Mostlikely for the time you dont get loot (-> increased anima?)
New Story arc
-What happens to Anduin
-Covenants
-eventually the end of Anima-drought (increased anima drops?)
Maybe a new feature?
Some Thorgast-Stuff
With luck new Conduits and Legendaries to help balance specs in different contents
Predictions… Hum… :
-PvE currencies
-Upgragable pieces of gear both PvE and pvp
-Maldraxxus raid (I bet it’s going to be in maldraxxus) in 9.1
-Spoiling 9.2 raid
-Kyrian mini raid to be released in 9.1.5
-Return of tier sets In raid and pvp
-A brand new Shadowlands zone, since we fixed anima drought
As most players are happy I wouldn’t call that unreasonable.
No chance.
That was announced last Blizzcon along with it’s coming at 9.1. We’re at 9.0 so the chance it will be mentioned again is pretty high. But it’s not really a new announcement because as I said, this exact thing was announced last Blizzcon.
That’s a no brainer, every con they show us some footage from the next tier.
Most of the guesses here are good. I am most interested in what will happen with Covenants.
Everything we predicted about Covenants has come to pass. For most classes and specs, there is a ‘right’ choice that not only needs to be taken, but must be taken to play your spec to it’s fullest potential.
Some people are therefore not chosing the Covenant they want, but the Covenant they have to have to actually get anywhere. It gets worse in that many people have a different BIS covenant depending on this spec. A Frost Mage’s best covenant is the venthyr, but for Fire and Arcane it’s Night Fae. So if you’re a Frost Mage who decides it’s time to go fire or arcane you’ve sunk two months work into the wrong covenant.
This is even worse for classes with multiple roles. Some healers have completely different BIS covenants than their DPS specs, so if you have to shuffle your healing team around in raiding a bit one of your healers may end up playing a gimped version of that spec. A friend of mine even tried levelling two Priests as an alternative as she felt she would be underperforming otherwise.
Covenants are still a good idea and there is a lot to them, but we’ve seen them in practice now and the locking of abilities isn’t player friendly. I am hoping they take the opportunity to pull the rip cord at last.
I think they would be wise to change it now. Patches tend to change the meta so they are faced with the nightmare scenario. Imagine if Frost suddenly becomes top dog due to a change they made. Venthyr would become the must have Covenant, yet nearly every Mage is Night Fae.
I’m so afraid they will make this a character specific requirement, at least for the duration of the expansion, since it’s tied to renown level. I sincerely hope that is not the case.
I doubt it. I think it will be tied to an acheivement you get upon renown level X but i highly doubt they will require each char to have it. My guess:
Achievement: Explore zones
Achievement: Get X renown
Achievement: Probably story progression ie full “base” storyline done, plus a covenant campaign, plus torghast story.
The way they will gate it is by making the renown rec high within the patch. So say we get to renown 40 before patch…they;ll make it renown 60 or something so we still have weeks of waiting before we can fly, but we’re grinding stuff we actually would be doing otherwise at least (instead of forcing ourselves into zones we no longer have an interest in)
I guess we will know the answer in three weeks. If there are going to make a big change to Covenants post launch, 9.1 is the time to do it. No sense doing it in 9.2 or 9.3
