With Nazjatar recently open on the PTR, we’re seeing some new gear catch-up systems, including notably the Benthic system which shares some similarities with Timeless Isle catch-up gear like upgrading tokens, but a twist with interesting combat and exploration procs. Can you talk a bit about your design philosophies behind this new gearing system?So one of the things we wanted to do with
Rise of Azshara in particular was give you a large number of different choices on how to progress your character. So you'll see this in a number of different ways, and one of them is this system in Nazjatar where you can start getting catch-up gear, and upgrade that gear, and get procs on it. With this system, as well as others in 8.2 like the Mechagon trinket, dungeon loot, and the Essence system, we want you to feel like there are many ways to progress your character, and they each offer different powers, on top of the existing Azerite gear.
Our design philosophy for 8.2 gear is all about player agency.
So we're also having a lot of fun exploring Nazjatar, What are some little touches from Nazjatar that you think will make people smile or that you’re particularly proud of? We think it's a nice touch that Azshara follows you around everywhere, mocking you while holding a wine glass in her hand.One thing we worked on from the tech side to make Nazjatar feel a bit more epic was the giant wall of water surrounding the zone. We're trying to sell the notion that the ocean is parted and we're looking at the bottom of it. Everywhere you look, you see that wall, and you're reminded that yep, we're under the ocean. It's cool that there's a constant reminder that you're here due to the will of Azshara.
Nazjatar and Mechagon were very different places. We had some incredibly creative designers working, giving us opportunities to do creative things in these spaces. You can see this in everything from the fishing questlines in Mechagon that are starting to be teased on the PTR, to other types of wacky content with unique little story elements, to things like the combat allies you encounter in Nazjatar. Everyone got to tell their own cool unique story.
Going back to Azshara, we wanted Azshara to feel like the focus. Every rare and champion in the zone...she's the one that's talking to you, welcoming you to her court as a gracious hostess. There's an element of congratulations when you win against a champion. We wanted her to be the spectacular character that she is.
Vash’jir introduced a lot of Naga lore in Cataclysm, but felt truncated when the Abyssal Maw raid storyline was not pursued. Could we be seeing some familiar faces from Cata in 8.2 or continuations of old storylines?The original idea behind the Abyssal Maw raid didn't really form with a major storyline to carry forward. However, one thing we do want to showcase though, is the Warbringers piece. There's an entire
questline in Nazjatar highlighting the Warbringer piece, where you get to encounter the place Azshara held back the tides. We also wanted to highlight the storylines of what happened to the people that didn't side with Azshara. What happened to them, and their battle pets?
There's so much history down here in Nazjatar for us to get to, we tried to get to as much of it as possible. There was one question from the community asking about seeing the
Battlemaiden again...unfortunately no. But Azshara has some brand-new followers we'll meet.
