World of Warcraft: Legion - A Chat with Ion Hazzikostas

August 30th. In that location'south only a little over a week until the release of new new expansion for WoW. The game has been ramping up for the return of 1 of the Warcraft universe's more than fearsome enemies, the Called-for Legion.

Blizzard appear a few days ago that they are already working hard on upcoming content, with Patch vii.i bringing Kharazan dorsum as a 5-human dungeon. Other features were highlighted when nosotros were shown the extended preview of Legion; at Gamescom 2022, though, I had the chance to participate in a Q&A session with Assistant Game Managing director Ion Hazzikostas in order to learn more about the expansion and the upcoming updates.

Could you lot aggrandize on the office of the Demon Hunter? It's the new hero class that tin can also be used as a tank as well as functioning as a impairment dealer. How could this could touch other classes?

There are multiple classes that tin co-exist and office equally the same role within the game. We see the demon hunter equally broadening the possibilities. The ane thing we've done with the demon hunter is decide to give them only 2 specializations, rather than the iii or four that other classes have. Nosotros felt that there'southward this offensive of defensive side of them and wanted to focus on the fantasy of the demon hunter as a hybrid master of the bract who likewise uses fel magic to fight the demons who ability he draws from. Within that there'due south the defensive and offensive components.

Volition at that place be any lasting changes to Azeroth? In Cataclysm the whole earth was turned upside down. This time the demons are coming for us, will there be any consequences?

Of course consequences. Whereas the Calamity actually was a fundamental transformation back in our third expansion in 2022, we revamped and redid the unabridged old world and levels ane to sixty. Our demon invasion events that we currently have going on are a more limited scope advanced characteristic. Those are going away Baronial 30th. The general thought is to give those playing now on the eve of the expansion something special to do as a limited time event. Those themselves aren't going to permanently change, things like demon invasions may return and take other forms in the futurity.

The lore of the Demon Invasion is huge, what furnishings will this take on the characters. How big will the trunk count volition be?

In the initial quest series leading up to the events of Legion, some of which are playable on the live servers today, there are some major casualties. The leaders of both factions are lost to the battle against the legion. They're not going to be the only ones nosotros lose. At the same time, we desire to exist mindful that we're non killing off characters left and right. That will take to exist seen as the story unfolds, but certainly nobody is safe.

Could you expand on the new PVP organization and why you actually changed it?

There's a couple of major changes coming to PVP in Legion. First off, in the past PVP was very particular dependent. The stronger the items you got the stronger yous were at fighting other players. Rather than serving as a progression system the mode gear does in the rest of the game, gear in PVP felt similar more a limiting factor. Information technology felt like you had to reach a certain level in order to compete on even terms with the others. Every new actor who tried out PVP for the first time, or wanted to get dorsum into it, had a very tough experience losing over and over once again until they could hook their mode up to the correct gear level. That's non a very inviting or welcoming system.

The first master change is massively reducing the impact of gear and stats. Players come in with fixed stat templates and the gear they have can slightly increment or decrease that. We still want gear to have some meaning, just we're basically dividing the impact by ten.

What that did was reduce the complexity, customization and progression of the system. We desire those to be, so we've replaced the old increasing your stats with an Honor system that lets players earn specific PVP only talents. Equally they level their Accolade from level i to l, they tin can traverse through a tree, unlock additional options and customize their characters and PVP. Once yous reach Award level 50, y'all tin choose to prestige and go back to level i but unlocks permanent bonuses. More often than not cosmetic, not power, rewards, that are at that place for players who want to keep progressing and piece of work towards a goal that rewards time investment.