Azeroth Round Table BlizzCon Interview with Jeremy Feasel and Paul Watkins on Island Expeditions

Posted 2018/11/07 at 12:13 PM by perculia

Azeroth Round Table

Blizzard learned some lessons from Islands at launch and is applying them in Patch 8.1. There is a new vendor selling some items for Dubloons. There are fewer Azerite events at the start, so you can see things like other invasions instead, as well as new events like Azerite Seams. There is also a new type of wave event, where you take a point and have groups of creatures attack you that are more and more powerful.

They talked a bit about the challenges of creating the AI bots. The AI bots will get a new location to shine in a future patch, with the Arathi Basin Brawl. One difficult and funny part of the AI bot creation was adding in jumping mechanics--the characters didn't feel realistic without jumping, then they jumped too much. Another challenge was figuring out the bots and line of sight. Blizzard ended up building a bot that only wanted to see, and let it loose in Dalaran, to fine-tune this behavior. There are also challenges in making the bots realistic--which means they don't always play perfectly.

The Islands reward system is a little too obfuscated. Ideally, you should be cool winning and want to focus on that, instead of playing a different way for rewards. Blizzard wants to encourage players to win and is thinking about ways for players to target rewards on islands.

All Island Battle Pets can be caged and traded in Patch 8.1.

Content like Islands and Heroic Warfronts is designed to provide players with a variety at content across group sizes outside of the traditional dungeon or mythic raid sizes.

The team is thinking about island content that could have special perks or bonuses for professions, similar to the mechanics in Court of Stars.

There are two brand-new AI teams coming for the Horde and Alliance in Patch 8.1. More teams will be coming in Rise of Azshara.

Blizzard is looking at ways to change up Island gameplay. For example, in Rise of Azshara, perhaps they could play around with the ruleset. Wouldn't it be cool if some Islands had no enemies, and the goals were exploration-based?

Islands may be related to the story of Magni and healing the world in the Rise of Azshara patch. The quest drops relate to larger story threads, some of which can be developed in BFA, and interesting drops will be added related to other storylines.

RewardsStrategiesMaps

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Comments

Comment by 1831114

I'd love if some islands had certain story, rather than being just pure randomness, so they'd be somehow similar to scenarios from MoP.

Comment by Smiteypantz

All island pets cagable!

Comment by Drorith

Awesome! ;D

Comment by Soeroah

"Blizzard wants to encourage players to win and is thinking about ways for players to target rewards on islands."

Yeeeeeeesssssss, finally

Comment by Wishblade

More story bits to islands would be awesome, and cool if it didn't always involve killing everything in sight and instead you could hunt for treasure and only fight the other faction for it.

Comment by Aeliel

The Islands reward system is a little too obfuscated.

No, really? You don't say.

Ideally, you should be cool winning and want to focus on that, instead of playing a different way for rewards.

And... it... didn't occur to them when they were designing this in the first place? When the fact that there were a gazillion rewards was one of the selling points of islands?

I mean, of course when people win island after island with no rewards they then go looking for ways to solve the issue. (Because it is an issue: "you get AP!" is not a reward.)

They could've fixed this before it ever became a problem by putting in a reward vendor straight at the beginning... and making the currency used to purchase stuff off it be more plentifully rewarded when winning an island. There you go, now people care about winning, rather than just killing specific mobs because whether you get rewards or not is not affected by winning.

Wouldn't it be cool if some Islands had no enemies, and the goals were exploration-based?

...yes? This was a selling point of islands to begin with - "look at all these cool islands to explore!". But the enemy team plays counter to that, because you can't just explore, or you'll lose. (Which, honestly, I don't care about, since the rewards very clearly aren't affected by winning - but they say they want people to want to win...)

Comment by Chilela

All Island Battle Pets can be caged and traded in Patch 8.1.

Thank you. It was ridiculous that only some could be caged and traded.

Honestly would be neat if each individual island had a handful of layouts, such as Molten Cay having 3 different maps, rather than just the things on the island being semi-randomized.

Comment by Karneg

Being able to target specific rewards is a great change. Finally...
I still have no mounts from expeditions, so I'm looking forward to this.

Comment by omedon666

Honestly my biggest complaints with islands are

a) The tug of war between "get it done, win and get out" and "but I want this mount/pet/transmog"

and b) As happy as I am that these are viable leveling content... as a non-source of gear they're really not ideal until heirlooms. Your gear remains static, but the scaling marches on.

Fix these and islands are appealing again beyond the rep grind!

Comment by ForsakenDima

Island expeditions piqued my interest prior to BfA launch because it seemed there was new territory to explore. Once BfA launched, while I still somewhat enjoy these expeditions, it became clear rather quickly that the goal isn't to explore - instead it's to rush through and aoe mobs as quickly as possible, before your opponents can do the same.

In my mind - and it sounds like maybe Blizzard is moving in that direction - these shouldn't be resource races; these should be heroes exploring new lands and finding resource/enemies/loot/etc. to somehow help with the greater BfA conflict.

Comment by omedon666

Very much agree! Any sense of adventure is immediately canceled by the timer of "BEAT THE OTHER TEAM!"

Comment by Drakvul

Well said, I'd love for them to maybe have a mode or event where the enemy team isn't on the island at all or something, and your team can explore or do events at your heart's content.

Comment by tmptfate

Blizzard wants to encourage players to win and is thinking about ways for players to target rewards on islands.

Sweet jesus yes. I'm tired of hundreds upon hundreds upon HUNDREDS of Expeditions and still not a single mount.

Comment by jodmos

This means absolutely nothing. Pets boe, great. Mounts aren't (and even if they were BOE, they drop so rarely they would be priced out of the average player's range anyway) so it makes no difference as you're going to have to run the islands and deal with ridiculous levels of RNG which is only going to get worse as the keep adding to the drops, invasion types, mobs types, islands etc.

A way to target rewards. hmm, difficult one. Maybe a vendor of some type that uses a currency from the expeditions?

Comment by MaXiiczek

I would like if Islands were more about exploration and less about mass pulls, there are just too many enemies, you often can't even go some route to a point you want to target, having less and more focused enemy camps would be nice :)

Comment by Tygravesar86

Good, I will have a reason to do IEs again.I just have not wanted to since I rep capped with Honorbound weeks ago. Felt like that was the only "reward" out of it.

Comment by Viewofshadow

They can simply add new currency that drops from expeditions while trigering invasions. And then add the npc which goods change once a week with the new theme each time. Just like it was with coins in Legion.

Comment by 1900098

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Comment by Fenril7

Just an FYI if you all are looking for an Alliance and Horde communities JUST FOR Island Expeditions, we run all kinds from premade for Mythic and PvP to leveling up toons 110+.

I have posted the link in WoWHead message board, at the moment since Communities are capped out at 1,000 people we have two for the alliance at 1,000 and 940ish with a third community only days away from opening. Total members from the three around 2,200 people!

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/invite/amYdNVWi54b?region=US&faction=Alliance
Alliance Code: YeBzeRlskWm

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/invite/bLx0DLGfzDX?region=US&faction=Horde
Horde Code: bLx0DLGfzDX

Comment by BarlowTheSeeker

The thing I hate about it most is it feels like there is a lot of fun stuff to be done, but players have made it unenjoyable. I want to do those little quests, but everyone is running around killing rares. And I get it, I want rewards too. They designed these sort of poorly if you ask me. I think they'd be way more fun as solo scenarios.