This week Manny and Joce talk about a couple of interviews with Blizzard employees both past and present, the Shadowlands Alpha, and then take your emails. All this and more on this week’s For Azeroth!

Zoltan Interviews Ian

Zoltan and Cinderys interviewed Ian Hazzikostas.

  • Shadowlands is still planned for this year. The transition to working at home took basically a week.
  • The team plans 2 expansions in advance, and they make course corrections along the way. Bwonsamdi was not originally gonna be a major character in Shadowlands but after seeing the fan response, they changed it.
  • Leaving a Covenant will not be difficult; however, rejoining a Covenant again will be the hard part.
  • The datamined Jailer model is the actual Jailer not just a Jailer.
  • Sylvanas’s new Armor reflects her basically joining the Maw Covenant.
  • At the start of the expansion, you can only equip one Legendary at a time.
  • You should earn 1 legendary every 2 – 3 weeks.
  • The Maw raid set is the appearance of the Shadowland legendary items.
  • Blue-eyed Blood Elves are textures for NPCs and not available to players.
  • Seasonal affixes will return for M+ but design isn’t there yet.
  • Strong hints of a return to tier sets later in the Shadowlands expansion cycle.
  • https://www.twitch.tv/videos/605045210?t=05h02m02s

Morhaime and Ghostcrawler talk about WoW’s Social Interaction

VentureBeat had an interview talking with Mike Morhaime about World of Warcraft and the changes made to the game as it evolved.

  • Morhaime lamented that matchmaking systems and stream-lining helped erode the social interaction of WoW’s earlier days.
    • Servers offered limited selection of players before cross-realm options
    • LFR and LFD did not exist
    • Large groups of players are harder to organize and many games are designed for smaller groups for that reason.
    • Monetization has to match the game as it can dictate content updates and structure
  • Ghostcrawler commented on the unique circumstances around WoW’s strong social bonds.
    • Social media was in its infancy – No discord, Zoom, etc
    • Players used in game mail in place of email
  • https://youtu.be/bPFtUiTncy8
  • https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/status/1255613318636564481

Alpha News

  • Demon Hunter “One per realm” restriction to be lifted with Shadowlands Pre-patch
  • Large changes to Balance Druid Eclipse
  • Warriors now available to be tested in Torghast
  • 280% flying removed
  • Pathfinder removed for WoD and Legion
  • Additional Covenant abilities added and datamined    

Community Resources/Add-ons

Manny’s Horrible Bag Organization 

I need help organizing my inventory. I usually manually sort through my items but have let them fall into chaos. I’m looking for suggestions on the best way to keep everything in order.

Submit suggestions by tweeting out to us @FAZpodcast, emailing FAZpodcast@gmail.com, or in the discord bit.ly/fazdiscord