Image: WowheadCrix interviewed Kris Zierhut and Tim Jones on WoW: Forever and discussed raid rewards, player vs player (PvP) balance and more!.
Check out Crix on his YouTube Channel, Twitch, and Twitter.
We've summarized the key points from the interview below.
What Success Looks Like.
For Kris, he hopes that they are still pulling in and picking up new players and growing the audience of players.
A stable ecosystem of raids and player vs player (PvP) events to go to, but not overwhelming.
For Tim, he wants there to be many opportunies still: zones to explore, quests to do, raids to defeat.
He wants to go to places that players want to go to, but also new mysterious zones, raids and dungeons.
A key thing is that every time there is a patch with new content, they mix up the meta enough with new unsolved problems so that the best way to play is ever shifting.
They also want to add to the threads in the world that were never finished, and then add more threads to new stories.
Changing Old Classic Decisions.
For Kris, it's been really weird because he was on the team back in 2005.
He knows why they made those decisions and the regrets of the team back then.
He's been able to take 20 years of wisdom and apply it back to Classic, making different decisions.
Cuts Before Launch.
They did a lot of work with the weather and they wanted to connect gameplay with the weather.
They didn't quite find the right design with enough time to implement, but it's something they want to explore in the future.
The Tier 1 Set is split across all 3 raids. If you want to finish your set, you're going to have to go to all 3.
If you just do 10 man, you will be able to get a lot, just not everything.
The progression should be meaningful in each raid.
The Item Level should be level across all difficulties.
They've learned that the raid size doesn't change how hard encounters are, but it changes how hard it is for the organizers and raid leaders.
Because of this, it doesn't make sense that the loot is better because you had more or less players.
To address 10 man and class stacking, they've made a lot of changes: Shaman buff totems are raid-wide, all raid buffs last an hour, they cut down on the number of Blessings you want to have.
They want to make sure that you don't need to stack your raid group.
Shaman (and Discord).
Regarding the Discord closure, "I think some of their issues are legitimate and some of them are that they're mad they can't have improved Ghost Wolf".
They're looking at Enhancement, as they're being pushed towards wanting too much spell power gear.
Enhancement Shamans should want to wear Strength, Intellect, and Spell Power, similar to Ret Paladins.
They do not want Enhancement to run around in Cloth Robes.
Source: Wowhead ↗