Q: What's the latest info on any allied race ever being a Death Knight?A: Allied Races fit into storylines which make sense and feed into Battle for Azeroth, and currently Death Knights are really tied to the story of the Lich King. Even though Bolvar is going down a different path than Arthas, he’s still the Lich King.
Q: How is the physical collector's edition going to handle the allied race preorder event?A:
You will get a code allowing you to unlock and create Allied Races in advance. In addition, if you purchased the Digital Deluxe Edition, you can get it refunded for Battle.net balance when you purchase the Collector’s Edition box!
- Clarification by Blizzard: In order to unlock Allied Races, you must first purchase the base digital version of BfA and then claim your Collector's Edition code.
Q: When will Orcs get the upright posture? Will other races have the option to stand upright, like Male Undead?A: They believe that the barbershop option will be available for the Green Orcs right when pre-patch hits. The Male Undead - Well, that's up to Sylvanas!
Q: Ion recently said in the March 15 Q&A that more customization for old races isn't a top priority. However, we recently saw Golden Blood Elf Eyes on the Alpha. Are more customization options on the way?A: As many other things in the World of Warcraft team, things that are said at BlizzCon may change significantly over the course of the year. They love the ability to add more player customization options -- it's super cool and players are responding very positively to it, so it's something they'd like to keep doing but they have nothing to announce quite yet.
Q: Will Personal Loot be the only form of loot in Battle for Azeroth?A: Not their area of expertise, but they believe that is the case right now.
Note: the developers made clear this was not their area of expertise and they really didn't know.Q: What types of rewards are there from participating in Island Expeditions, especially for things like Collections?A: They are hoping for something similar to the Timeless Isle which had a large amount of different rewards -- anything from Battle Pets, Consumables, Mounts and Achievements. Some creatures will drop items that will send you on a quest that tells you a little bit of a storyline. You'll still be getting cool stuff but by far the biggest reward is it directly translates in Azerite Power for your
Heart of Azeroth. There's a moment after your Expedition where your team is holding the Heart of Azeroth and that big chunk of Azerite that you collected, however much you collected on the island, flows into the amulet.
Q: Does that mean stuff like mounts, pets or toys will appear on Island Expeditions?A: There's a lot of different creatures that can show up there, a lot of stories they can tell. It's the first time they'll be showing the Pygmies again since Cataclysm. No specific details yet, but expect to see some cool items show up on the Alpha.
Q: What are some of the funny abilities that stand out among the Advanced NPCs?A: When they first did the original Islands playtest, the word "Sneaky Pete" was mentioned -- lots of people cursing about Sneaky Pete because he had the tendency to find the healer in your group and just stunlock them the entire time. He'd
Sap them, then stun them. He's pretty adept at understanding who the high-value target was and making sure there were... Sufficiently dealt with.
People have gotten a taste of him on Alpha after they did a Tuning Pass to normalize things and they had a more aggressive version of the AI internally. The internal version was way worse than what was on Alpha. He would jump you while you were busy,
Blind your healer, kill the other guys, kill you, yell "SNEAKY PETE!" and then leave.
In addition, as you go up in the difficulties, the NPCs unlock more abilities. There's a Paladin NPC on Heroic, where when he gets low on health will bubble and run away out of line of sight to try to heal himself, which is hilarious to see an NPC do. Their goal was to create not exact replicas of players but create interesting abilities and stories that players can tell.
Q: Is there a chance we could see those Island NPCs elsewhere to learn more about them?A: Not necessarily. They're visible at the docks, have some lines to say and will have a couple quests associated with them to help flesh them out. They're in some cases characters that you would notice from past experiences. A lot of their character comes out in their voice over lines and abilities. There's one guy who thinks all the Alliance smells like Cheese!
Q: Will there be a competitive side to Islands?A: Islands has the potential to be a great PvP feature. Some of the feedback from hardcore Mythic raiders is "I would love to play this in PvP because it shows my mastery of PvE in a situation where I also get to mess with the other team." It's kind of having a Mythic Dungeon Invitational but you can jump over to the other side so that you can stun their healer so that they get hit by the big AoE and die. For that kind of player, it sounds super awesome and seems like it has potential to be a great viewable thing. No plans quite yet though.
Q: Is the The Hivemind a part of a future adventure to require the community to use their brain?A: No hints.
Q: Will quest and profession progression still be gated behind Dungeons and Raids?A: Profession progression isn't quite ready to talk about yet. For quest progression, having the final part of certain questlines end in a dungeon is super cool, as its the best way to tell the end of the story. They do want to improve the visibility of dungeon quests.
Q: What are the biggest lessons learned from the Artifact system that shapes how the Azerite system works?A: The artifact system was interesting for the first chunk of the expansion, where you're making meaningful choices between abilities. They feel like it fell off at the end of the expansion. They're hoping that Azerite armor will be a consistent series of choices throughout all of the different raiding tiers throughout the expansion so that as you progress your character, you keep getting new pieces of armor with new traits that synergize in different ways all the way to the end of the expansion.
Q: Will there be a visual component to the Azerite system similar to cosmetic rewards like the Artifact skins?A: TBD, not quite ready to talk about it visually.
Q: How are the Guardian and Feral artifact transmog forms going to work?A: They will work. They're working out the technical aspects.
Q: What is going to happen to Hati?A: They have plans. Not ready to talk about them yet.
Q: Will we hear Artifact whispers (such as Shadow Priest) going forward?A: They're still thinking about how they want to carry forth the sentient creatures. In some cases, they need to pay attention storyline wise given how the storyline occurs and whether or not its the right lore for that kind of thing.
Q: How are Warfronts going to be released?A: Not something they're ready to talk about yet.
Q: Can artifact appearances be available cross spec, but remain lock within the class (e.g. Frost Mage using Aluneth)?A: Not something they're releasing with 8.0. As with anything to do with transmog, they have loosened restrictions on things over time and they'll continue to read the community's feedback. It would be a little weird to use
Ashbringer to heal, and in some cases, it would break the lore too much.
Q: Will more things ever be account-wide such as the Honor and Prestige rewards or Balance of Power?A: The account-wide discussion is interesting because it has certain detriments and benefits. Any time you make a system account-wide, it makes it very difficult to go the other direction and you lose a bit of that character identity. Throughout Legion, they learned a lot about what account-wide unlocks feel really good for players that make it easier for players to play their unlocks. When you unlock the Islands feature by completing the War Campaign, it will also unlock for all of your alts. If you want to level up your alts by doing Islands, they will let you.
Q: Will Hunters get more stable slots?A: Every time they have this discussion, they discuss what the system is for. Is a place to store individual pets, or is a collection game similar to transmog. The discussions are in place for the system, but they're not ready to talk about it yet.
Q: Are there more UI updates coming to the Auction House in Battle for Azeroth?A: There's definitely a problem, though they're not sure what changes they're planning on making.
Q: What would you say to those that have seen the information between Saurfang/Sylvanas?A: You mean like Garrosh? There's no big Old God heart, so clearly that can't go bad. It's a very interesting story and something that was announced recently is that when you get the physical Collector's Edition, you get a two-sided storybook that tells some awesome stories up to the Burning of Teldassil and that further explains the dynamic between Saurfang and Sylvanas and all the leaders of the Alliance and Horde.
Q: Is there anything sinister buried beneath Barrowknoll Cemetery in Drustvar?A:
Drustvar is a very creepy place in general. The storyline of the Drust people is that the people of Kul Tiras and basically wiped them out and they were sent to the realm of the dead where they were able to finally able to contact Lady Waycrest. It sounds pretty sinister.
Q: There's a lot of hints that Boralus may be directly under attack. There's a lot of material about conflicts in Warfronts, old zones, etc, but what about attacking new cities?A: There is the
Siege of Boralus dungeon where Alliance defend the city and Horde make a sneak attack in there and a cool way for Horde to see Kul Tiras but both factions are going to be undergoing world quests on the opposing faction's continent. There will take players to the opposing faction's outposts and their cities to undergo war efforts.
Q: Most people have only seen the Horde attacking. Will the Alliance get to retaliate?A: Don't want to spoil that yet. Exciting plans for where the war effort is going to go.
Q: G'huun has been called many things, including a Blood God and Old God. Can you talk a little more about his storyline? Is it related to Hakkar?A: He is unrelated to Hakkar. G'huun is an aberration, Old God type creature that exists in this Titan containment facility. They used this facility to try to figure out what makes Old Gods tick, including performing experiments. This led to some creepy and weird stuff there. They don't want to spoil exactly what G'huun is here but he is the result of years of experiments where they couldn't figure out how to cure this Old God disease.
Q: Is there going to be any story explaining how the Order Halls go from having a bunch of champions working together, to fighting each other in Battle for Azeroth?A: The Order Halls don't directly battle against each other in Battle for Azeroth. The pre-launch events will need to tell that escalate story where the story breaks off from being the Champions against the Legion and looking at the small-scale escalations that build up to the all-out war. You start with skirmishes in Darkshore, which leads to the Burning of Teldrassil which leads to the assault on Lordaeron. That whole bridging storyline should take you out of being a Champion of a specific class and back to being a Champion of the Alliance or Horde.
Q: How are the Worgen and Goblin updates coming along?A: Right now Blizzard is focused on Allied Races. Nothing on the immediate list but they want to!
Q: What are your thoughts on the Vulpera as an Allied Race?A: They can't talk about future Allied Races. They're a lot of fun to do quests for.
Q: Any Pepe content updates in Battle for Azeroth?A: No announcements yet on specific Pepe content but they do already have a Kul Tiras, Zandalari, and Ghost Pepe.
Q: We now know where Alleria and Turaylon are, so what about Wrathion?A: Have we seen the last of Wrathion? Or more interesting, is he really one of the last black dragons? There are islands that we have not been to where Dragonflights might be hiding out and you may see some of them show up on Island Expeditions.
