Wowhead's Exclusive Interview with Anne Stickney & Tina Wang: Unveiling Blizzcon 2023

Moving into day two of BlizzCon 2023, the WoW: Deep Dive panel is just getting started. Today, we'll be diving into all the exciting highlights from the panel. Join us as we explore the new features and content coming to World of Warcraft: The War Within!

The War Within: Delves - Outdoor Endgame Content

The WoW: Deep Dive panel started with Game Director Ion Hazzikostas presenting the new endgame feature called Delves. He described Delves as a capstone to the outdoor world experience, offering a deeper and more structured gameplay experience for outdoor-focused players. Previously, outdoor players often found themselves lacking excitement and meaningful upgrades. Delves aim to address this issue by providing a seamless extension of open-world content.

Unlike traditional dungeons, Delves focus on exploration and unraveling mysteries rather than moving from one boss to another. While there might be a boss at the end, it's not guaranteed. Delves offer true open-world style gameplay and conclude with a rewarding treasure pile.

To keep the content fresh and engaging, Delves are tied to seasons, with increasing difficulty and rewards. In Season One, players will have the opportunity to team up with the NPC companion Brann Bronzebeard, who not only adds a narrative hook but also assists in solving puzzles and complements your playstyle.

To further differentiate Delves from dungeons, players may need keys obtained from activities outside of the Delves themselves to unlock certain chests. This encourages players to engage with various open-world activities instead of solely focusing on Delves.

There are twelve themed Delves planned, each based on the ecology and zones found in World of Warcraft. Additionally, there might be a secret delve awaiting exploration.

Delves also introduce a new World row within the Great Vault, allowing open-world players to enjoy the disappointment of discovering their rewards every week. This change replaces the PvP row, which received feedback suggesting that PvP and random loot are not an ideal combination. PvP players will now receive more conquest points, affording them greater control over acquiring the items they desire.

Furthermore, Delves offer a wide range of cosmetic rewards, including silly hats like mushrooms and candles.

A unique and customizable flying machine mount will also be exclusively available through Delves. Similar to Dragonriding mounts in Dragonflight, players can personalize their flying machine with modular upgrades.

Warbands: Account Wide Convenience

Another exciting feature introduced in The War Within expansion is Warbands, designed to address the convenience and flexibility of playing multiple characters. With most players now juggling several characters, the system eliminates the need for clunky solutions like mailing items between characters.

Warbands serves as an account-wide bank, enabling players to access shared resources and crafting materials across all their characters. A new type of item, Warbound Until Equipped, can be freely transferred between characters for their use, enhancing alt gearing without funneling power to mains.

Transmog collections are also account-wide with Warbands. Mages, for example, can unlock Plate items in their collection, allowing Warriors to transmog them without the need to acquire them on every character.

Reputations and Renowns are also now account-wide, offering a more streamlined progression system. While making this retroactive to past content will take time, the developers plan to start with Dragonflight reputations and work backward.

Flight Paths will be unlocked across a player's Warband, eliminating the need to rediscover them on every character.

Shared progress applies to the Season One Delve companion, Brann Bronzebeard, ensuring players won't have to gear him up multiple times for each character.

Achievements will function across the Warband, similar to existing account-wide achievements.

A revamped character selection screen will also showcase all characters, even across different servers.

Hero Talents: Deepening Class Fantasy

Hero Talents, inspired by class fantasies and iconic heroes in WoW's history, offer a flexible system to enhance player customization and complexity. This new talent system, introduced in The War Within, raises the level cap by 10 and provides 10 new talent points.

Unlike previous expansions that simply added extra rows to talent trees, this approach allows for deeper power customization and complexity using a separate talent tree. Players unlock the Hero Talent tree fully by level 80, but choices remain in selecting active hero specs and choice nodes.

As an example given by Hazzikostas, a Balance Druid can choose between two hero spec options in their talent tree: Keeper of the Grove, focused on treants, or Elune's Chosen, centered around lunar abilities. These choices can affect gameplay direction and provide enhancements to signature abilities.

Passive abilities within the Hero Talent tree augment abilities directly, encouraging players to nudge their gameplay in a specific direction.

It's important to note that all aspects of the game are still under development, with class design being one area subject to extensive iteration. The developers aim to have everything testable from the start of the Alpha, allowing players ample time to provide feedback on the new systems.

Allied Race: Earthen

A new Allied Race, the Earthen, will make their debut in The War Within. Unlocked through the campaign, players will discover and earn the trust of the Earthen, gaining their assistance for both the Alliance and Horde. This addition includes Earthen Dwarves for the Horde, offering greater class variety for both factions.

The Earthen will have access to every class except Druid, Demon Hunter, and Evoker.

Dragonriding: Dynamic Flight

Dragonriding, introduced in the Dragonflight expansion, has become a beloved feature. In The War Within, it will be the default mode of flight and referred to as dynamic flight. However, players will still have the option to toggle "regular" flying, which will be unlocked after completing the campaign.

The development team plans to enable dynamic flight for most mounts to ensure players can utilize their entire collection while dragonriding. While not all mounts can be adapted due to animation limitations, the majority will be compatible with dynamic flight. This shift to dynamic flight will also extend to the old world in Patch 10.2.5.

Existing dragonriding glyphs will seamlessly transition, granting their bonuses as default effects.

PvP Updates

The War Within introduces a new 10v10 battleground called Ringing Deeps. This mirrored map focuses on resource gathering and control of a central point, influencing the momentum of the match. Details are still being refined, but the developers are working to perfect the map's layout.

Gameplay and Interface Updates

The developers aim to update and modernize the spellbook interface, enhancing convenience by eliminating the need to flip through pages. Additionally, the quest log and window will receive new filters to show or hide objectives, allowing players to focus on desired content more effectively. Enhancements to iconography and colors will also improve colorblind support.

Cross-Realm Guilds will be introduced in The War Within, allowing players to form guilds regardless of server or faction. This change aims to make it as easy as possible to play with friends and pursue Day 1 Mythic raiding.

With all these exciting updates and features, The War Within expansion promises to bring a fresh and engaging experience to World of Warcraft players. Stay tuned for more news and updates as development progresses!