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Wowhead Interview with WoW Classic Developers - Season of Discovery
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hace 20 días
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Rokman
Wowhead had the pleasure of sitting down at Blizzcon with Linny Cooke-Saverline, Game Producer, and Tim Jones, Assistant Lead Classic Designer, asking about WoW Classic Season of Discovery. In our conversation, we cover the new Hardcore Self Found mode, PvP in WoW Classic, Balancing Season of Discovery, as well as the possibility of new Tier Sets coming in the future!
Linny Cooke-Saverlline, Game Producer (Left) and Tim Jones, Assistant Lead Classic Designer (Right)
Hardcore WoW Classic
What exactly is Hardcore Self Found?
Self Found is basically you are working by yourself, as far as the items you have. You don't have the ability to trade, you can't use the mail box, even with mail to yourself, as well as no Auction House.
Will there be Hardcore Realms for Season of Discovery?
It's something we have to be careful of, on the Classic team. It's already a juggling act to manage Classic Era realms, Hardcore realms, Progression realms going from Wrath to Cataclysm Classic. And now Season of Discovery. On one hand we want to offer an amazing menu of options for Classic players, but we also have to be mindful and respectful of fracturing our player base, by giving them too many competing options. That's not to say some people won't want Hardcore Season of Discovery, and I think that's something we definitely want to listen to player feedback and something we'll be investigating. Even with Hardcore, it only came out what, two or so months ago? There are still a lot of players still progressing and leveling their characters. We want to be respectful of those player's journeys.
Season of Discovery and PvP
Where did the inspiration of Season of Discovery come from?
From the start, Seasonal realms were meant to be a place where we could try experimental game design, mix up the meta, offer new gameplay experiences for Classic WoW players, and give us an area where we can take risks and learn lessons from those risks. And that's exactly what we're doing with Season of Discovery. We really liked back at Level 30 during the Classic WoW Beta, where players were making new Best in Slot lists at Low levels, new gameplay ideas, trying totally new things out that haven't been done before. It's so exciting for us to see players have emergent gameplay pop up. We love as Developers watching players react to our experiments and see what players will do with what we give them. We have a decent idea of what players will do, but we know on Classic to never underestimate our players, they continue to surprise and astound us.
Sometimes the degeneracy of Classic players can be pretty astounding!
Yeah, there's a good mix of degeneracy and casual players in Classic, we love them all. In a lot of ways in Classic, it is truly special that you can just grind something constantly and the power of your character can be reflected by the effort you put into it.
Speaking of degeneracy, I've heard a lot of positive feedback on the new ranking system on Classic Era. As of right now, many players are just going through Alterac Valley to get ranks while avoiding actual player versus player content. There are many purists in Classic WoW that just want to rank up in Warsong Gulch, and actually fight the opposite faction. Unfortunately, there are so few games of Warsong Gulch happening on realms. Is there anything for those players going forward?
This is a question that is applicable even to Wrath Classic or Cataclysm Classic, Warsong exists among the game and it's an evergreen piece of content, it's sacred even. We want to make sure that there is a way for players to choose Warsong Gulch and not feel punished that isn't as efficient as something else.
I will say there are Rated Battlegrounds in Cataclysm Classic, which is very exciting, and we hope that players can enjoy that. If there are lessons from Rated Warsong Gulch, maybe we can learn from that and potentially apply those to Era. I'm for improving the player experience. The excitement of community tournaments, we were big fans of the
OTK Mak'gora tournament
, people want to PvP and we want to support all of that as best we can.
Still on the topic of PvP, can you explain the Ashenvale Open World PvP event? From what we got, it kind of sounded like Alterac Valley.
Well, it is a bit different because you have to queue for Alterac Valley and it takes place in an instanced zone. But if you're in an outdoor world, you're up against everyone else. The rewards we're putting in, which have different levels, there is a reward for just participating. There are also camps, some special characters like a Horde Blademaster. These camps are spread out throughout the zone and maybe it's in your favor to defend these or attack these camps. Participating in the event, you'll also earn Reputation for the Warsong Gulch. We're also adding new items to these Reputation vendors. There are also going to be Ashenvale only mounts you can use within the zone. Winning the event will also reward you with an item that has an on use World Buff. You can even bring these to your raid and save them for later.
Oh my god, we love World Buffs in Classic! Yes!
What you just described sounds like it could be opening the door for the fabled Azshara Battleground, which was a large 40 vs 40 map, with three lanes, similar to Defense of the Ancients. it was one of the many unfinished projects during Vanilla development.
What I will say is that I think the outdoor world content that we're building in Ashenvale is more representative of what we want, we want there to be discoveries, to encourage players to dig into the unknown places. We want to build on the existing lore and fantasy of zones, and have more outdoor world content. Whether that's PvP events or new world bosses, whether there are things to discover that aren't necessarily associated with new abilities. Maybe there are new elites in certain zones, or new events related to the fishing tournament.
Season of Discovery Phases and Balance
Since we're only Level 25, could we technically go into the higher level zones and possibly encounter a Discovery for higher level content, like a Phase 2 Discovery?
The Runes that you'll get access to in the higher level zones will not be accessible at the launch of the game, but you can most certainly get a group together to go kill higher level monsters in other zones.
We want each Phase to be a moment in Season of Discovery. Phase 2 will be Level 40, then Level 50, then Level 60.
I'm guessing there will be tons of balance patches? Or will you just let it be?
We're going to do our best, which isn't going to be perfect. To find outliers for certain Rune combinations that might be too extreme. Classic isn't a perfectly balanced game and we hope to elevate certain classes that struggled to be relevant.
We don't want to nerf classes really, but we want every class to feel really good. If there are things that trivialize the game and make it not fun to play, absolutely we'll want to go in and do some balancing.
That's a great word to use - trivialize, because one of the biggest fears for myself and other Classic players is, these Runes might really juice up and jack the power level on your character, and what makes WoW Classic so special is the world is very dangerous. Are the developers worried that the world might be trivialized by the player power gained from Runes?
100%, if we need to increase the difficulty of the open world to counterbalance the power from Runes we'll do it. At the end of the day, we want players to feel more powerful with the Runes. That is the selling point of Season of Discovery. It's something new, it's something special. There should be something that makes you feel more powerful. There might be some tuning changes to the outdoor world.
If you make the outdoor world stronger, what happens to little Billy who starts Season of Discovery late, hasn't read all the Wowhead guides on where to find all the new Discoveries, and is getting smacked by the open world because it was tuned up?
There will exist challenges for us with this Season, such as something like this. And I think for Billy, it's okay if he runs into a wall. If you can't overcome the challenge, there should be something available to him to learn and face that challenge. Maybe I should do some research, ask my guild, ask a friend, where to find some Runes to pick up and I think not being afraid of that natural friction is important. And that's not an excuse for us, but we want it to feel right. We don't necessarily want to make the world stronger, Ideally it's just light touches, dealing with balance with runes as well as we can.
Season of Discovery Future and New Tier Sets
So you teased Karazhan Crypts, and other stuff at higher levels, what is the plan with Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, AQ40, Naxxramas? Are we going to go to these raids in Season of Discovery?
I think players will want to be able to express themselves as their character in these iconic locations. I think there is room for us to provide additional challenges in old raids, whether that's something we borrow from Season of Mastery or something new entirely. Ultimately, people want to be able to flex and show off their new builds, their runes, and show Ragnaros who's boss. Those raids are still such an iconic part of Classic WoW and we can't take those outs.
Well, wait a minute. If you bring all those raids back, what are you going to do for Tier Sets? Are you going to make a Mage Healer Tier Set? A Warlock Tank Tier Set?
I think that's on the table.
A lot of people are really excited for Season of Discovery, but there are some players already hesitant, because they don't know what will happen at the end of Season of Discovery. Are their characters going to get moved to Classic Era realms and lose all their new gear, new runes, and new spells?
We're still figuring out the specifics of everything. We're still trying to determine what the right thing to do is. There may be a version of an Era realm for Season of Discovery. At the end of the day, Seasonal content is we're taking a lot of risks and we're learning lessons, there is going to be some things that people really like and some things people don't really like. We're totally fine with that. If there is a place where the greatest aspects of this Season can live, that's where we want our Season of Discovery players to go. There will 100% be a place where characters can migrate once the season ends. Maybe we have to take some Runes away, but maybe some Runes are so beloved that we can incorporate it into the realm they go to, we aren't really sure yet and we are listening to the community on feedback.
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