WoW Roadmap Update – New Zone in 11.2
Blizzard updated the WoW Roadmap published with the Warcraft Direct yesterday, adding a new zone for Patch 11.2.

Developer Interviews
Blizzard did some interviews to go along with the Warcraft Direct!

Windows Central
Windows Central talked to Warcraft game director Ion Hazzikostas and Assistant Lead Quest Designer Mark Colada.

• Overall, The War Within has been going well
• The team is looking to smooth out pain points in some dungeons, as well as looking at class balance
• Players hit Level 8 delves and earn powerful rewards, making it feel like there is no point in doing anything below Mythic 7, which is already fairly hard.
• Mythic 7 isn’t the best point of entry for players, so some are hitting a cliff wall instead of doing earlier Mythic+ tiers
• The Mythic+ Crest gearing system meets almost all of the team’s design goals, except for clarity and intuitiveness
• The team wants to fix the names and add some tutorialization. It should be logical what to do with Crests.
• Players of all playstyles should have something to work towards, with ongoing power advancements other than drops.
• It’s important to have them as part of the game’s tiered structured, rather than endlessly grinding basic content like with Artifact Power.
• Players should want to complete higher tier dungeons, but making it clearer on how to get there is something the team wants to fix.
• The team took a pass at racials that don’t even feel like they are worth clicking. Overall they want to keep the power of racials low, just above pure flavor.
• There are still some race/class combinations that are a little too powerful, but not something the team will touch mid-season.
• The Alliance vs. Horde conflict is not the primary theme of WoW at this stage
• The team found that trying to shoehorn conflict into the story felt dissonant for players. It’s wasn’t realistic and was frustrating to watch the Horde and Alliance snipe at each other while Azeroth is potentially facing apocalyptic destruction.
• It would’ve been a horrible injustice to make an expansion underground and miss out on Undermine
• The team wanted to end the Warcraft Direct on player housing to start conversations and discussions, and listen to what people want to see most from it.

The Daily Star
The Daily Star talked to Executive producer Holly Longdale.

• The team’s vision now, and for the past couple of years is generally to leave no player behind, and that started with The War Within
• They can do better on the new player experience and that will be a focus going forward.
• The designers are working on player housing and have made great progress
• Housing is going to be a journey for the next couple of decades. It’s going to stick around and live with us. It’s your house, it’s your home, so the team is really committed and dedicated to it and has built an entire team around it
• Players don’t want different graphics, they want the game to feel like WoW and appreciate the current style.
• When asked about the game coming to consoles, Holly said “We have nothing to announce right now, but we’re always exploring. We’re always looking at opportunities in the future, to provide access to more players”

PC Gamer
PC Gamer talked to game director Ion Hazzikostas and lead quest designer Mark Kelada.

• Brann will be able to act as a tank in Season 2.
• Delves had a couple of tricky bugs with scaling that, until they realized that there were bugs, led to some very wild over-corrections and tuning
• Giving players that historically didn’t have solo content that was challenging some goals to work towards is something the team was excited about.
• The Undermine mount moves four to five times faster than regular ground mounts.
• The teams is testing mount mechanics, such as the longer you can hold the drift, the more boost you can get
• Players can change the turbo/boost, selecting from high efficiency so it uses less meter, do you want it to be high-speed, so you press that button and you’re just gone
• There might be an option for an NPC passenger who can lend a hand
• There will be timed quests, similar to the skyriding races

NetEase Results – WoW and Hearthstone Growth in China
NetEase reported their quarterly results this week, sharing growth numbers now that Blizzard games are back in China. The two companies took some time to reach an agreement, with Blizzard games returning this summer.

• World of Warcraft saw a 50% increase in daily active players as compared to levels before the shutdown
• Hearthstone achieved over 150% growth in daily active players as compared to levels before the shutdown

Avowed launches on Battle.net on February 18
Avowed is an upcoming action role-playing game developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Xbox Game Studios. It’s launching on multiple game stores, including Battle.net. You can read the announcement here.

Mountain Dew In-Game Event on November 15
There will be some kind of Mountain Dew in-game event on November 15th, on the Emerald Dream server, at Caverns of Time. The tweet mentions a chance to win some rewards, but it is unclear what those rewards will be.