by Its_Immanis - 6 months ago     show comments

During the opening ceremony the Warcraft team announced the next iterations on World of Warcraft – Classic.

During the What’s Next panel members of the Classic team took to the stage to discuss lessons learned and feedback provided by players from earlier iterations of Classic and new ideas they’ll implement moving forward.

Cataclysm Classic will introduce Goblins and Worgen like it did the first time around, as well as the transmog, Rated Battlegrounds, new Class/Race combos, and flying in Azeroth.

New additions to the existing game, however, will bring new dungeon difficulties and rewards, account-wide transmog, guild progression updates, and a faster patch cadence and leveling to the cap.

Hardcore will get a new difficulty called “Self Found” mode, which limits players ability to interact with mailboxes, the auction house, and trading with other players to ensure that players are on a level playing ground.

Season of Discovery will be the first season of Cataclsym Classic. When getting started players will start off like any other character. However, at level 2 players can visit their class trainer who will send them in a different direction to progress their character. Discoveries are new hidden secrets, designed to encourage players to explore parts of Azeroth they may not visit regularly to find new secrets.

To help this system feel fresh and new there will not be a PTR or Beta test for this system, it will go straight to live servers.

Season of Discovery will start off capped at level 25 and progress through various bands of levels. This system was inspired by the initial WoW Beta where players were capped at various points, giving them time to try new talent builds or find different combinations of gear sets. There will be new gameplay at each level band and the intent is that players never feel like they’re being “left behind”.

To help players engage with level cap content the Blackfathom Depths dungeon will be available as a raid at level 25. If this goes well it could open up future instances of revitalized content or potentially new content in previously unused areas.

Players will also be able to unlock runes to change how their characters play. There will be 3 rune slots at level 25: chest, legs, and hands. Runes will allow characters to add aspects of certain classes to other classes to allow them to fill roles not previously available (ie Tanking Warlocks).

The goal of runes is to shake up the meta. Players can experiment with different classes. They give each class “something to brag about”. Some runes may be similar flavors to existing spells and abilities, while others may be completely new additions to the game.

The team provided a significant number of examples of runes, but ultimately the goal is to make everyone feel OP instead of just certain specs.

Also during the Season of Discovery, Ashenvale will become a zone-wide active PvP event zone. Killing a member of the opposite faction will trigger an event, turning the zone into an open-world battleground with a similar objective as Wintergrasp: kill the enemy faction leader. Participating in this zone will unlock certain perks including a mount specific for this zone usable at level 25, some of the best armor available at that level, and additional ways to earn rep for the factions represented by Warsong Gulch.

As stated previously, Blackfathom Deeps will be turned into a Level-Up Raid.

At level 25 BFD is the first raid players will experience for 10 players and will offer a 3-day lockout to allow players more time to experience the raid even with a shorter than usual patch/release cycle.

The seven bosses of BFD have been updated and reimagined, with new and updated rewards, as well as new secrets.

The Classic team is very excited for players to get our hands on the new experiences coming in the future, beginning with the launch of Season of Discovery on November 30th.