Mists of Pandaria Press Tour Interview - Greg Street Pt.2
Which classes needed the most changes in the expansion according to you? Is there any class that got reworked more than the others?
I think hands down the Warlock got changed the most. We felt like the Warlock could never really deliver on the promise of the three different specs, Demonology, Destruction, Affliction. Destruction always felt like "I’m a Warlock that plays like a Mage?" Demonology just felt like "I’m a Warlock but my pets do a lot of damage and that’s about the only difference". Demonology and Destruction now have their own resource system. Destruction is trying to build up this fiery force. They basically start catching on fire, their hands catch on fire, and then their whole body catches on fire. Then they can unleash Conflagrate, their really powerful damaging spell. Demonology similarly has a bar they fill up, but this bar drives how long they can stay in demon form. So rather than their Metamorphosis just being a cooldown that lasts for a few seconds, they can try to game it to stay in demon form for a fairly long amount of time. They decide when that happens and how that happens.
How bad did you nerf Paladins?
You know, I always say this, but I think Paladins will be pleasantly surprised. We have fixed some of the RNG in their rotations, they now have a more dependable supply of holy power, and there are fewer gaps in the rotations. Holy is in pretty good shape already. I think ret and prot will be happy with how they feel in beta.
Which new class abilities are you most excited about?
Wow, that’s a broad topic. Players get really excited about Ascendance, the Shaman ability. I think something about the term "lava beam" just really struck a chord. Players are like "Lava beam, now I can’t wait to play my shaman!". So that was pretty fun. I don’t think we have talked about what we are doing for the hunter yet. I think a lot of hunter players have guessed it but the hunter level 87 ability is basically you get all your pets at once for a short amount of time. So if you have 5 pets in your stable, they all come out and do damage for a little bit of time, and that’s really fun cooldown for them. I think it increases Beast Master’s damage by 80% while they’re out, or something ridiculous like that. That’s a pretty fun one. The rogue 87 ability is group stealth, so you get to have your whole group be stealth for a short period of time, that’s cool. The most complicated one is symbiosis for the druid, where they give you a druid ability and they get one of your class abilities to use. The matrix there sounds more confusing than it really is but there's a lot of weird gameplay going on with the kind of abilities that get traded around that way. It will take a lot of iterations, and we give players abilities that are way too powerful and then we have to scale them back.
How are challenge mode rankings going to work? Can we expect worldwide rankings on the official site at some point?
Yeah, what we are doing is dipping our toe into the waters of competitive PvE. This is something players have been excited about every since World of Warcraft came out and now we’re trying to get into that game a little bit to. I don't know if we'll do world wide originally, we will at least do region wide, and that will be on the armory site. Within the game you’ll be able to compare your ranking to your friends and your guildies and things like that. The rating for challenge modes are medals, there is a bronze, silver, gold medal and maybe some stuff beyond that. Bronze will be the kind of thing that if you can finish the dungeon at all (remember challenge modes are a little harder than heroics) you will probably get bronze. Then after that the time factor starts to be really important, we don't expect many players to get gold, that may be only a few percentage on each server will get gold and then beyond that we're going to have to start measuring in the fractions of a seconds, into the milliseconds as if you’re doing the 50 yard dash. We think it will be a really big deal when someone is like "Oh someone got a new high score for Shado-pan Monastery!"
With 5 man dungeon challenge modes bringing truly balanced competition through normalized gear levels, are there any plans to implement the same thing for PvP where an even playing field is even more important?
Yeah, I definitely understand why some players want that. When they do tournaments and things like that, they don't want gear to be a factor. They want it to be all about skill. On the other hand, gear is like the single most valuable reward in World of Warcraft. So if you had a PvP game where gear wasn't rewarding, I worry players would quickly run out of things to do. It might be fun for the individual matches, but I think if we did it, it would have to not replace PvP, but be some type of extra option. The same way we do the arena tournament realms or maybe this "challenge mode PvP" where gear doesn't matter.
What's happening with the new Female/Male Warlock pets, is this still being considered? What about the demon form? Should we expect any other changes for those pets?
Yeah, so to do a female Voidwalker we just put a bow on her hair. That's still in the works, I actually have no idea what a female Voidwalker looks like but you could imagine how some of the other pets translate over. I’ll be honest its not high priority. The way we tend to handle our tasks is we hardly ever cancel a task, but we have our long list of art request and there's a lot of new creatures we have to do, there’s a ton of new spell effects because we’re giving so many new talents to the classes and a lot of those have visual effects. So the warlocks pets are still on there. We'll see if we get that for 5.0 or if we get it for 5.1 or a later patch. That's for the male/female versions. There are some new warlock pets for Mists of Pandaria. Players who pick the right talent combinations can get say the Shivan, the big six armed demons from Burning Crusade, and Wrath Guards, and a few extra ones like that. I don't know if we ever came up with an official names for them, we call them Beholders, the big orbs with the eye. I don't know what a female beholder looks like. Just a bow on every eye.
Currently when doing non rated battlegrounds, especially the smaller ones, the game may be decided by the number of healers that each team gets. Are there any solutions to balance this out without a significantly negative impact to queue times?
They nailed it right there, the risk is the queue times would take longer and longer. Now as we go to more region wide battlegrounds, it makes it a little easier for us to assemble a group, and we can start to look at better logic to make sure groups are balanced. We just want to make sure queues don't get long. Players know in dungeon finder that sometimes they may be waiting a long time for a healer and now there are players that would say "you know, I'm willing to wait 20 minutes for a battleground if it means I'll have a more balanced team" while others players would just say "I just want to get in there and play". Definitely the kind of thing we could look at a little more.
Anything else you may want to share with us?
We have some really fun things like a mage minor glyph that teleports you to old Dalaran. So instead of taking you to the Dalaran in Northrend, it takes you to the big crater and drops you into the crater from up high. I don’t want to make it like all the minor glyphs are silly, but it’s definitely an opportunity to do a couple of things that we wouldn't do before. There's a warrior minor glyph that makes your shouts scare small animals, so if there’s any critters in the area and you Battle Shout or Commanding Shout the critters all run away. That's the kind of stuff we originally wanted to deliver with minor glyphs, fun kinda cosmetic things. I apologize, the paladins always had 9 minor glyphs that make your abilities cheaper. We're tying to do that a lot more with all the classes, glyphs that are more fun to dabble with, and that's true for the major glyphs too. I think players will be pleasantly surprised with some of the crazier things we are able to do with the major glyphs this time around.
Which classes needed the most changes in the expansion according to you? Is there any class that got reworked more than the others?
I think hands down the Warlock got changed the most. We felt like the Warlock could never really deliver on the promise of the three different specs, Demonology, Destruction, Affliction. Destruction always felt like "I’m a Warlock that plays like a Mage?" Demonology just felt like "I’m a Warlock but my pets do a lot of damage and that’s about the only difference". Demonology and Destruction now have their own resource system. Destruction is trying to build up this fiery force. They basically start catching on fire, their hands catch on fire, and then their whole body catches on fire. Then they can unleash Conflagrate, their really powerful damaging spell. Demonology similarly has a bar they fill up, but this bar drives how long they can stay in demon form. So rather than their Metamorphosis just being a cooldown that lasts for a few seconds, they can try to game it to stay in demon form for a fairly long amount of time. They decide when that happens and how that happens.
How bad did you nerf Paladins?
You know, I always say this, but I think Paladins will be pleasantly surprised. We have fixed some of the RNG in their rotations, they now have a more dependable supply of holy power, and there are fewer gaps in the rotations. Holy is in pretty good shape already. I think ret and prot will be happy with how they feel in beta.
Which new class abilities are you most excited about?
Wow, that’s a broad topic. Players get really excited about Ascendance, the Shaman ability. I think something about the term "lava beam" just really struck a chord. Players are like "Lava beam, now I can’t wait to play my shaman!". So that was pretty fun. I don’t think we have talked about what we are doing for the hunter yet. I think a lot of hunter players have guessed it but the hunter level 87 ability is basically you get all your pets at once for a short amount of time. So if you have 5 pets in your stable, they all come out and do damage for a little bit of time, and that’s really fun cooldown for them. I think it increases Beast Master’s damage by 80% while they’re out, or something ridiculous like that. That’s a pretty fun one. The rogue 87 ability is group stealth, so you get to have your whole group be stealth for a short period of time, that’s cool. The most complicated one is symbiosis for the druid, where they give you a druid ability and they get one of your class abilities to use. The matrix there sounds more confusing than it really is but there's a lot of weird gameplay going on with the kind of abilities that get traded around that way. It will take a lot of iterations, and we give players abilities that are way too powerful and then we have to scale them back.
How are challenge mode rankings going to work? Can we expect worldwide rankings on the official site at some point?
Yeah, what we are doing is dipping our toe into the waters of competitive PvE. This is something players have been excited about every since World of Warcraft came out and now we’re trying to get into that game a little bit to. I don't know if we'll do world wide originally, we will at least do region wide, and that will be on the armory site. Within the game you’ll be able to compare your ranking to your friends and your guildies and things like that. The rating for challenge modes are medals, there is a bronze, silver, gold medal and maybe some stuff beyond that. Bronze will be the kind of thing that if you can finish the dungeon at all (remember challenge modes are a little harder than heroics) you will probably get bronze. Then after that the time factor starts to be really important, we don't expect many players to get gold, that may be only a few percentage on each server will get gold and then beyond that we're going to have to start measuring in the fractions of a seconds, into the milliseconds as if you’re doing the 50 yard dash. We think it will be a really big deal when someone is like "Oh someone got a new high score for Shado-pan Monastery!"
With 5 man dungeon challenge modes bringing truly balanced competition through normalized gear levels, are there any plans to implement the same thing for PvP where an even playing field is even more important?
Yeah, I definitely understand why some players want that. When they do tournaments and things like that, they don't want gear to be a factor. They want it to be all about skill. On the other hand, gear is like the single most valuable reward in World of Warcraft. So if you had a PvP game where gear wasn't rewarding, I worry players would quickly run out of things to do. It might be fun for the individual matches, but I think if we did it, it would have to not replace PvP, but be some type of extra option. The same way we do the arena tournament realms or maybe this "challenge mode PvP" where gear doesn't matter.
What's happening with the new Female/Male Warlock pets, is this still being considered? What about the demon form? Should we expect any other changes for those pets?
Yeah, so to do a female Voidwalker we just put a bow on her hair. That's still in the works, I actually have no idea what a female Voidwalker looks like but you could imagine how some of the other pets translate over. I’ll be honest its not high priority. The way we tend to handle our tasks is we hardly ever cancel a task, but we have our long list of art request and there's a lot of new creatures we have to do, there’s a ton of new spell effects because we’re giving so many new talents to the classes and a lot of those have visual effects. So the warlocks pets are still on there. We'll see if we get that for 5.0 or if we get it for 5.1 or a later patch. That's for the male/female versions. There are some new warlock pets for Mists of Pandaria. Players who pick the right talent combinations can get say the Shivan, the big six armed demons from Burning Crusade, and Wrath Guards, and a few extra ones like that. I don't know if we ever came up with an official names for them, we call them Beholders, the big orbs with the eye. I don't know what a female beholder looks like. Just a bow on every eye.
Currently when doing non rated battlegrounds, especially the smaller ones, the game may be decided by the number of healers that each team gets. Are there any solutions to balance this out without a significantly negative impact to queue times?
They nailed it right there, the risk is the queue times would take longer and longer. Now as we go to more region wide battlegrounds, it makes it a little easier for us to assemble a group, and we can start to look at better logic to make sure groups are balanced. We just want to make sure queues don't get long. Players know in dungeon finder that sometimes they may be waiting a long time for a healer and now there are players that would say "you know, I'm willing to wait 20 minutes for a battleground if it means I'll have a more balanced team" while others players would just say "I just want to get in there and play". Definitely the kind of thing we could look at a little more.
Anything else you may want to share with us?
We have some really fun things like a mage minor glyph that teleports you to old Dalaran. So instead of taking you to the Dalaran in Northrend, it takes you to the big crater and drops you into the crater from up high. I don’t want to make it like all the minor glyphs are silly, but it’s definitely an opportunity to do a couple of things that we wouldn't do before. There's a warrior minor glyph that makes your shouts scare small animals, so if there’s any critters in the area and you Battle Shout or Commanding Shout the critters all run away. That's the kind of stuff we originally wanted to deliver with minor glyphs, fun kinda cosmetic things. I apologize, the paladins always had 9 minor glyphs that make your abilities cheaper. We're tying to do that a lot more with all the classes, glyphs that are more fun to dabble with, and that's true for the major glyphs too. I think players will be pleasantly surprised with some of the crazier things we are able to do with the major glyphs this time around.
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