Summary
The latest Community Council interview with theWorld of Warcraftdevelopment team yielded some illuminating information, including a glimpse into how reward structures may change inThe War Within. A permanent fixture inWorld of Warcraft’s endgame for the past couple of expansions has been its Great Vault, which allowed players to combat back luck (to a limited degree) by guaranteeing an item once per week. WhileThe War Withinis bringingchanges to the Great Vault inWorld of Warcraft, it is also taking another look at other reward structures based on player feedback accumulated over the course ofDragonflight.
A particularly sore point in obtaining endgame loot concernstier sets inWorld of Warcraft. While the community rejoiced when Blizzard brought tier sets back, the endless grind of trying to obtain missing pieces began to grate on players, especially in the Aberrus and Amirdrassil raid. In many ways, tier sets haven’t evolved withWorld of Warcraft, and while simply removing them proved to be a poor solution, their current state seems to stifle loot progression rather than enhance it.
World of Warcraft: The War Within Will Modernize Tier Set Acquisition
Among the many points discussed during the latest Community Council interview, Ion Hazzikostas and his team revealed that tier sets would likely have a different method of acquisition inThe War Within. Instead of relying on boss drops across different difficulties to obtain their set piece,World of Warcraftplayers will seemingly have a much more elegant system to work with inThe War Within. While the developers aren’t yet ready to share the specifics, they strongly implied that raids wouldn’t be the sole source of tier sets anymore, which is certainly a very encouraging piece of information for Mythic Plus players most of all.
Another key takeaway is the confirmation that Delves will have their Great Vault rewards capped at an item level comparable to Heroic Raid loot. Given that Delves inThe War Withinwill be solo-able (similarly toTorghast fromShadowlands), the developers explained that they still wanted the best source of loot to come from group activities, as givingWorld of Warcraftplayers the option to obtain the most powerful gear on their own would hurt the social aspects of the game.
Given that players enjoy clearing old raids inWorld of Warcraftfor transmogrification pieces and rare mounts, Blizzard also confirmed that it would be taking another look at adjusting certainBattle for Azerothencounters to make them viable for solo-farming. While there is no concrete schedule as to when players might expect these changes, the developers promised that the raid adjustments would arrivebeforeWorld of Warcraft: The War Withinreleases. In terms of reward structures that won’t change in the next expansion, Hazzikostas and his team seem happy with dungeon farming, so players shouldn’t expect to see any bad luck protection mechanics added in the near future.
