Wowhead's Exclusive interview with Ion Hazzikostas - Class Balance, Covenants, Season 1
Wowhead's Shadowlands Interview with Ion Hazzikostas
Group interview (Different than Wowhead's Interview)
Classes and the MetaOnly 3 Torghast Layers Available at LaunchNo Flight Master WhistleNo Legendary Transmog at Launch
Storytelling and LoreShadowlands Delays and Working From HomeEngagement Metrics
Art
Concept Art for Covenants and Zones
Interview Summaries and Discussions
3 Pieces of Loot From Mythic Raid BossesGreat Vault Loot Doesn't Include Final Bosses Until Defeated Once
The Flight Master's Whistle will not be in Shadowlands. Some of this is due to the way Shadowlands is laid out and the way that our quest wrappers at max level are laid out. We don't have emissaries any more and instead, we have Callings that will send you to a single zone. Navigating within that zone there are transportation options, especially if you are a member of that given zone, through unlocking your covenant's transportation network.
What spawned the Flight Whistle was things like the Warden and Kirin Tor emissaries in Legion, or the War Campaign objectives in BFA, where you'd look at the map and the game was telling you 'hey you need to visit these four zones and criss-cross thousands of yards in game in order to complete this single objective.' That turned into an onerous amount of travel time, but in Shadowlands, we're not asking players to do that in the same way this time around. Plus...there's a little bit of the fantasy of the whistle in the Shadowlands and all that.
If you upgrade your Transportation Network to level 3, that actually also adds a portal to Oribos from your sanctum and so at that point, players should feel free to set their hearths in their sanctum and have free access to Oribos and the other zones from that and that becomes a quick shortcut.
