Following last week’s announcements at BlizzCon 2023, two of the most notable shotcallers on the World of Warcraft development team answered community questions in a pre-recorded Q&A session, touching on topics dealing with the game’s transitional period between Dragonflight and the next expansion, The War Within.
Before Dragonflight comes to an end, there will be at least three more planned updates coming to WoW, game director Ion Hazzikostas and associate game director Morgan Day confirmed today. These updates will likely focus on quality-of-life changes that polish the landscape of the game ahead of the launch of The War Within. One of those updates, though, will feature the final season of Dragonflight’s PvE and PvP content, which will—similarly to Shadowlands’ final season—keep players’ need for content sated with fated raids and another refreshed Mythic+ pool.
Hazzikostas also addressed what is perhaps the most controversial decision regarding The War Within, which is the three-day early-access period for players who pre-order the most expensive edition of the expansion. Although the decision to include early access for a WoW expansion (a first for Blizzard) has been negatively received by the community, the WoW director defended the move, calling it nothing more than a “headstart to leveling up.”
The devs confirmed that within the early-access period, players will not have access to Mythic dungeons, weekly quests, and high-end pre-raid loot. Of course, it’s possible that players who pre-order the epic edition of The War Within will be at the max level by the time the expansion goes live for the rest of the player base, giving them first dibs on that endgame anyway. This, in a way, makes the epic edition a much-purchase if you want to be among the first to start grinding The War Within’s endgame content.
“The goal here is to make sure that certainly by the time season one starts, if you have two players with similar play styles side by side and one of them had early access and the other didn’t, you really can’t tell which is which in terms of any competitive aspect of the game that matters,” Hazzikostas said. “It’s looking to offer increased value where we can, but also roll it out and manage it carefully to make sure that it’s fair.”
The devs also confirmed the game will be going through another “stat squish” in the expansion just after The War Within, Midnight. In WoW, a stat squish occurs when the damage and healing numbers your characters (and enemies) put out become way too high, and all of your stats must be reduced to a lower figure to make the game’s numerical information more manageable.
Other things mentioned in today’s Q&A included the continuation of the Trading Post in the next expansion, as well as confirmation that the upcoming Worldsoul Saga expansions will continue to have the same amount of content, even with a faster release schedule in mind.
WoW: The War Within is currently slated for a fall 2024 release, while Dragonflight’s last major content patch, Patch 10.2, was released earlier this week.
