BlizzCon 2016 World of Warcraft: What’s Next Panel Transcript

The BlizzCon 2016 World of Warcraft: Legion What’s Next Panel revealed details about the upcoming Patch 7.1.5, 7.2 and 7.3. The panel was hosted by Ion Hazzikostas.

Narrator: Welcome to the World of Warcraft: Legion What’s Next panel.

Hazzikostas: Hello, Blizzcon! I love it. This is the best time of year. Thank you all so much for coming out coming all this way from across the country, from across the world to celebrate the community that we’ve built together, and to learn about what’s coming next at some of your favorite Blizzard games.

So I know sometimes you might be hoping that you are going to be in attendance for the announcement of an all new expansion, but this is not one of those years, we are way too soon.

We’re working on one, of course, but we’re not going to talk about that right now today. Today is all about Legion, and what is coming next for you, and for us, and for everyone in Azeroth.

So just before we jump into it, first off, I want to begin by talking a little bit about our philosophy about how we’re approaching Legion content, how we’re doing things a little bit differently this time around, and What’s really guiding us. And so, I think point #1, and this is really the ideal, the value that drives all of the decisions we are making about Legion (and about the content that goes into Legion)– it’s delivering a steady stream of content for all of you, for all of our players; and that means it is a lot of content.

Everyone loves content, right? It means a lot of it, but the steady part also means pacing it out appropriately making sure that there’s something new to do, something to look forward to, something just around the corner; but also that you’re not getting overwhelmed, that you’re not feeling like you’re falling behind, like the next thing isn’t coming out before most people are ready for it.

So balancing those two ideals, those two competing goals, It’s kind of what’s leading us forward. Next we really want to double down on one of the magical things about the animal RPG genre. The fact that it’s a persistent online world where things are happening when you’re not necessarily around. It’s a world that’s growing. It’s a world that’s evolving, and we want to really create this sense that instilled a sense of a living world where you don’t necessarily know exactly what’s going to happen when you log in every day.

Obviously, you don’t know exactly what world quests or emissaries are going to be on, but there could also be random holidays, different events, things that are changing not just through patches but through just a scheduled unfurled content that make this a dynamic of all the living world; and how we pursue those two goals? We want to change up a little bit how we go about doing that.

I think, in the past, we’ve really had these large monolithic patches that have anchored all of our expansion patch content, things like 6.2 Fury of Hellfire, or 3.3 Fall of the Lich King — big great tier in a 10+ raid bosses, outdoor stuff to do, a whole new tier of item level; and there’s a great place for that type of patch– you know, that type of patch like 6.2; but a patch like 6.2.3, for what it was actually also was very effective.

It was a small patch. We weren’t trying to add a ton of content, but we added Valor Points to upgrade your gear. New goals to pursue. The Moose Mount, of course. from the end of Hellfire Citadel as we saw the community rally together and make a push to defeat Heroic Archimonde. Expansions like Timewalking, and the Timereaver mount there. Just new goals new rewards, things to breathe life into content that was already out there.

That’s another arrow in our quiver, and we also want to experiment with a middle ground, what we can call medium-sized patch. I think 7.1 is a great example of that type of patch. Who here has had a chance to check out the new Karazhan dungeon in the last week and a half? That’s one of my favorite pieces of content we’ve put in the game ever. And that’s not a huge patch, it’s not the giant raid tier, but it’s definitely not a 6.1, definitely not a 6.2.3. There’s a dungeon. There’s a small raid. There is outdoor quest content. There is something for everybody to engage with and move forward with, and so really it’s all about content, it’s all about getting it into your hands in the right package, in the right ways; and so with all that said, let’s start talking about some of it.

Next: Patch 7.1.5: Timewalking

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