MrGM w/ Ion Hazzikostas Fireside Chat Transcription

**Fireside Chat Intro**
MrGM: Hello, Gamescom.
How are we doing? Good. So, so I'm going to be here for the next
like 45 minutes to chat to Ion Hazzikostas about Midnight and all the questions
that everyone keeps sending me. So here's Ion. How you doing?

Ion: Doing great. It's been an amazing thing here at Gamescom and excited to sit down with you and chat
some more. Yeah, this is a fireside chat with no fire. We did ask. Let's keep it that way.

MrGM: All right. So, let's get into it.

**The War Within Reflections**
MrGM: All right. Hold. All right. So, one year ago, almost to the day was the we we had a chat, we edited an interview
about the war within and we're kind of a year out of that, we're kind of floating the chapter on that expansion. How do
you feel it's gone from kind of a year ago to now?

Ion: It's it's been an amazing ride. I think
the team is really proud of what we've accomplished in War Within. I think War Within really represented the first... one
of the first expansions that really was from the ground up design with modern game design philosophies
from the World of Warcraft team. I think we saw a lot of it in Dragonflight, but you know, War Within took that to another
level. So I think the systems, the structure, the frequent
content updates, and the reactiveness to community feedback um doing things like
significantly overhauling the mythic plus system and expansion to make sure everyone's happy, all of those are
successes that we look back on. and I think we look ahead to Midnight just
looking to continue to level up. I don't think, you know, I don't think we're seeing huge problems we need to fix. I
think it's more a question of how can we do more of what we're doing well. What can we do anything better?


MrGM: Excellent. Yeah, it's been it's been good. The content cadence has been really quick, right? Like so I feel like
we constantly have something new and fun to do. Uh how's that been from the development point of view?

Ion: Um I mean there have definitely been challenges, right? Just, you know, keeping up with it all. I think we've really grown and restructured our team
so that we can parallelize development more. Uh we don't have to, you know, shuffle resources around and short
change one part of the game to make the other better. I think that's something that we really learned from past efforts
in frequent content updates like in Mists of Pandaria and Legion, were both expansions that had a good patch cadence
and some great patch content. but unfortunately that came at the expense of the next expansion
because we had to pull resources off one to serve the other. The way we have a team structure now I think we can do
both at a high level of quality without having to make compromises.

MrGM: Excellent.

**World Tiers in Retail?**
MrGM: So 11.2.5 brings Legion remix. Any Legion fans? Yeah, it's on the PTR if you want to go
test it. It's really great. Um, so it brings in a ton of features, uh, which
is awesome. Great to see artifact weapons back in the tree and everything like that remix format. Uh, one of the big
features for me that I find really enjoyable is the idea of a world tier where the outside world becomes more
difficult, more difficulty begets more rewards, and things like that. Is that something we could potentially see in
like the future of the like kind of regular game you say?

Ion: I think some form of it is something we
could see in the future. Um, we don't have specific plans for Midnight at launch, but I think we're going to be
very looking closely and trying to assess the results of this experiment. I think something self-contained that's
only going to last for a few months like a remix is a great place for us to experiment with ideas. I think you know
the outro world the reality is after the first couple of weeks of a season
especially once everyone has you know an epic gear, is pretty trivial. and that's a
shame and I think you know something like the Prey system at midnight is is an example of efforts to add a layer of
depth and potentially a little bit of challenge to the outdoor world for those who want it.
and if we can come up with a
more comprehensive way to do that, like these World Tiers, I think that could be huge for the game moving forward


MrGM: Fantastic. World Tiers confirmed at some point.

**What can we expect from Patch 11.2.7?**
MrGM: Uh so kind of the final thing on the War Within,
we obviously have one more patch beyond 11.2.5 which brings in uh early access to housing. It brings in the new player
experience and everything like that. Uh is there anything else you want to talk about with 11.2.5 being like the kind of
final patch of the war within?

Ion: Um yes 11.2.7 obviously the
centerpiece of it is going to be you know housing rolling out. of course for everyone who owns Midnight, you'll have
your house at that point, but everyone else will be able to start collecting decor. So, you know, in those last weeks
of the expansion, you want to start going back and taking off old achievements that you've missed. Um, I
think that's going to be a fun way to, you know, close out War Within. um we will
have you know as well as the new player experience, we'll have the lorewalking version of the War
Within experience for people who want a condensed version of it, as well as assorted smaller updates um holidays and
so forth. but the centerpiece really is Housing.

MrGM: Excellent

**Lorewalking Future**
MrGM: All right well let's actually you mentioned it so, lorewalking. one of my favorite new features of the uh just world warcraft in general being
able to replay those experiences but also having some extra content as well really telling the story in a really good way.
Uh what can you tell us about what is coming for lorewalking as we kind of expand that system?

Ion: I think the next big thing that we're doing that's with on lorewalking is this War Within
catchup-enhanced experience. But I think we're really happy with how lorewalking has played out recently. Um learning
lessons from that and there's a ton of new stories that we want to tell moving forward, or i guess old stories as the case may be. I think it's a
great way really repackaging quest content that's out there and making sure that no matter what year in WoW you're joining in, you can
get those fundamentals and experience the stories being told over the years.

MrGM: Excellent. Thank you.

**Stat Squish in Midnight**
MrGM: Uh so one thing that was kind of like semi spoken about like a couple of months ago in a couple of press
interviews and things like that is the idea of a stats squish coming at Midnight. Now we're now in like the 700s
item level. So kind of getting tools at Legion level. Uh is is there any more details you can give regarding a stat
squish in midnight?

Ion: Uh yes, I think numbers are definitely pretty huge. I think I was just watching
Dimensius, mythic Dimensius stream earlier. One of the casters were talking about how it's down to only 3
billion health remaining. Um it's awesome. So yes, we are doing a stat squish in
Midnight. levels are not changing levels. There's still going to be 80 to 90, but it's still going to work that way past where they just kind
of compressing the unused high level ranges from Dragonflight, War Within like
Shadowlands and getting us back to high levels and 100s, numbers that have, you
know, five digits instead of nine digits.

MrGM: Excellent. Is that prepatch?

Ion: Yeah, that will be part of the 12.0 prepatch.

MrGM: Okay.

**More Character Customizations?**
MrGM: Um, so yesterday I did an interview and
there was um discussion or there was kind of, Paul Kubit and he announced that there's going to be some Darkspear uh
additional customization from completing the Zul'Aman story. Uh is there any other kind of race
customization in the pipeline right now potentially?

Ion: Um, nothing specific for nothing else for
Midnight at launch, but I think we always want to keep adding depth and
variety and self-expression options and racial customizations. Um, I think where, you know, especially where the
story suits it. So, as we, you know, visit home labs or engage with particular cultures, that's a great time
to unlock new options and something we're going to keep doing down the line.

MrGM: Brilliant. Thank you.

**Void Elf Starting Experience?**
MrGM: So, another feature that was kind of announced at Midnight is Void Elf Demon Hunters. Any Void Elf fans? Hey, look at them.
Um, so we're getting elf demon hunters. Um, can you tell me a bit about like how
like you unlock them and what their starting experience will look like?

Ion: Yeah, I think there will be a fairly
straightforward quest that you can undertake um in Midnight that unlocks
accountwide access to create a Void Elf demon hunter. It really explains how the Void Elves have come to, you know, learn
those arts and make those sacrifices uh and receive that gift in return. And then once you've done that, you'll be
able to just create one. Um they already start at a higher level as an allied race. So you'll just kind of jump in and say I
[want a Void Elf Demon Hunter] and go from there.

MrGM: Excellent.

**More Demon Hunters in the future?**
MrGM: Could that open the door for future demon hunters perhaps?

Ion: I think certainly could. Um they're likely to be other elves, but
anyone can make a sacrifice if you that part.

**Visual updates to older zones?**
MrGM: That's true. Um okay. So bit about zones, I guess.
So with Quel'Thalas being finally added to the Eastern Kingdoms map, we can literally fly from Booty Bay to Silvermoon, right? if you
wanted to.

Ion: Yes.

MrGM: That's excellent. Um, could we expect any other kind of visual updates to like Northern Lordaeron
and things like that perhaps?

Ion: Here we're really focused on you know that northernmost part of Eastern Kingdoms, the areas of Quel'Thalas, Quel'Danas
as you know what's being updated. But I think it's been really exciting for us to see the reception to it and it's
encouraging. You know I'll be perfectly honest. There was a part of me when we decided
to do this for Midnight that was worried like would would fans would players see this
as somehow a pop out and say, "Oh, this is just rehashing old stuff. I want to go someplace new." But I think seeing
the reactions to fully realized in all it's glory, Eversong and so forth, I think are really
encouraging and we're going to look for opportunities to take a similar approach to the other fan-favorite zones.

MrGM: Yeah, it really hits that nostalgic feel right of like the Burning Crsuade. It's Yeah, it's really great to
see like really high fidelity and things like that. The B-roll that we've seen is amazing.

**Silvermoon City faction divide**
MrGM: Um, kind of thinking of like Quel'Thalas
There's been some talk in the community about Silvermoon and it's a Horde city
of course, still is. There is some concerns from Alliance players in regards to how much space they're
actually going to have in this city. So, could you tell Gamescom and the world how
the Alliance going to be?

Ion: Silvermoon is a very large city. The majority of the city is going to be accessible to both
factions. But at the end of the day, you have the armies of the Void and Xal'atath outside the gates. You're going to
accept all the help you can get, whether they're Horde, Alliance, or whatever. And of course, for gameplay reasons, we
need everybody to be able to move around the city. But there are sections of the city that remain certainly Horde-only,
and that's it's the traditions, the history of the city. There are those who live there who don't take too kindly
to the Alliance being present. The majority to the players will be cross-faction.

MrGM: Okay, excellent. Hopefully that calms
people down.

**Special Assignment World Quests in Midnight?**
MrGM: So in the War Wwithin we had world quest, we had the special assignment world
quest. So essentially kind of like an emissary system of sorts that we saw in Legion originally. Uh is this something
we're going to continue to see in Midnight?

Ion: I think so, currently. We may iterate on that as we get into beta and more
you know testing our endgame loop. I think we always want some kind of structure or wrapper for world quests whether
that was emissaries in the past or these in War Within and it feels like a pretty natural way to do it.

MrGM: Excellent.

**Any updates to Renown and Reputations in Midnight?**
MrGM: Um so one thing that's kind of I've not heard a ton about you, I'd like to hear more about I suppose is like uh
Renown reputations in Midnight. So obviously we have four zones, presumably four Renowns. Can you tell us a bit
about like what is coming in regards to that?

Ion: Yeah. Um I think again in the systems and features panel we had earlier Paul
ran through the features several features that the Renowns we're gonna be working with.
I think we're happy with the Renown system as it currently exists. Really you know it's just reputation of a lot more
granularity much clearer UI to let you know what you're working towards what you're going to earn every step of the
way. And I think, variety of activities in a given zone, Renown is a good way to
deliver rewards and track progress them. I think the way in which you earn Renown from zone to zone
we want to keep varied and well, thematic so variety to your experience.

MrGM: Okay, brilliant. Yeah, because there's like lots of like new world events or something like that that we talked about yesterday so.
Yeah, extremely exciting.

**Thoughts on Delves and any changes in Midnight?**
MrGM: Um, so I want to talk about delves. I'm a delve enjoyer. Uh, I bet some people in the
crowd are also delve enjoyers content. As someone who
doesn't really raid that often, it has been a joy and I've got the highest item level I've ever got in World of Warcraft, I think, by myself. So, shout
out to Delves. Um, so we're now an expansion into delves, obviously, an
evergreen content. Uh, they've evolved a lot over the the course of the War Within. Um, I guess the question is like
how you feel about how delves have gone, you know, from the start and can we expect any kind of system changes to
them going into Midnight?

Ion: We're incredibly happy with delves. I see them as one of the great successes
of War Within. I think it's no secret that over the years we've tried past experiments with small group or solo
content that haven't necessarily landed in the same way and I think this one is here to stay. I was here, doing this
signing earlier and one of the people I was signing a poster for said like, "I just want to tell you
I'm probably the only person who enjoys them, but I really love Delves." And I'm sitting there thinking like, you know,
actually there like, "There's millions of you buddy." Um because really it's
all the focus that is often high-end or competitive rating. I think the majority
of the players in World of Warcraft are looking for challenges that they can pursue on their own [???as part of this vast
world of???]] often on their own. And delves really scratch that itch. Now, in terms of, you know, Midnight, of course, preparing for
we have 10 exciting new ones coming. Um, a couple, you know, several new settings for them. Two of our delves are going to
be outdoors, places where you can mount, which will add a different dimension to exploring. Um, but really I don't I
don't think we have any specific systemic changes in mind right now. I mean, after all, we're within season 3
basically just kicked off, you know, a week and a half ago. And I think when it comes to a system like delves, we think
we're iterating season over season. So I think you know season 3 reflects some of the things we learned from season 2 and
we're going to be paying close attention over the next couple of months and that will inform through the the systems
layer of now what's going into Midnight. Right now we can focus on just building up the content and the enemies, but the way it
all fits together that's going to be a product of what we learned from the community in the months ahead.

MrGM: Excellent. I like the the idea of like different settings for Delves, right. So like it started off the caves and now it's
opening up. You have like excavation site 9 which is a whole free flowing and things like that. So looking forward to seeing that in alpha for
sure.

**What will become with the older Delves from The War Within?**
MrGM: Um I guess sticking with delves uh obviously we're going to be leaving our
beloved War Within Delves behind when we move off of Khaz'algar into Quel'Thalas. Um what
will become of those delves? Will we see Bran again?

Ion: Um, we haven't 100% nailed
this down, but my assumption would be that just as old dungeons remain accessible, the old delves are
accessible. Um, you'll be overpowered for them. There's a whole bunch of achievements and things to things to do
and to collect. There are quests that send you into the delves. All of those should remain accessible and still just
be old content.

MrGM: Brilliant.

**Mythic+ Dungeons for Season 1?**
MrGM: Um, actually, speaking of dungeons, I guess we'll move into the little dungeon section I've got here.
Um, so Mythic Plus, uh, season one of Midnight, uh, now we obviously have
eight new dungeons. Presumably four of those will end up being in Mythic Plus. Uh, do you have any updates on where
we're at with the other four legacy dungeons, presumably?

Ion: We haven't figured out the exact ones
yet. I think the team has really been focused on bringing the eight new midnight dungeons to completion, and
then from there, we're going to figure out which four make the most sense to be the season one dungeons. And then when
we look at the legacy dungeons, those are kind of chosen to complement the modern dungeons in terms of size,
structure, is it linear or [???waved???]. We want to make the dungeon pool as a whole with a little bit of variety.
And so like that's kind of the order of operations there.

MrGM: Okay, brilliant.

**Could we see Dungeons older than Cataclysm in the M+ pool?**
MrGM: Um I guess kind of like
a followup I guess on that like the legacy dungeons, obviously we've seen some Cataclysm dungeons
you know rolling into the mix here and there which you know may take a little bit more work, because obviously
kind of redesign a lot of the bosses to the kind of 2025 uh sort of standards. Would there ever be a world where you go
further back than Cataclysm perhaps?

Ion: It's certainly possible. I think that as
as you go the farther back you go, the more of a mechanical gap there is between how things were and what modern
standards are. But that's fixable. I think the bigger challenge obviously at some point becomes just art and visual
fidelity. And it gets to be a little bit odd if you're, you know, a player coming
to World of Warcraft today and queuing up for a dungeon or getting a key and going into something that feels like it
literally was built almost 20 years ago. And so that's probably there's probably a line there that we're not going to
cross.

MrGM: Yeah, completely understandable, I guess. Rolling into like a ramparts when you've just come out of like this incredible
deep world quest, perhaps is a little weird.

**Cross-faction Dungeon Finder?**
MrGM: Um, I guess moving on from, still
on dungeons. So 11.0.7 brought in pre-made uh LFG groups so we could queue up like
heroic dungeons and things if we were sort of like cross faction, right? So for like Alliance and Horde. Uh do you have any
updates on regards to like opening that up or just like freely queuing like uh
through pre-made activities cross faction?

Ion: Um no nothing to announce right now. No
plan changes there. I think that, you know, our our philosophy remains that by default.
The Horde and Alliance are not on friendly terms, and if you're a Horde player, you should generally be playing
with the Horde players and the Alliance are unfriendly. And of course, if you have real life friends, if you have a
pre-made group, you're in a guild, you can choose to cross those lines. But the Horde and Alliance by default are still
in conflict. I think where we allow cross faction play, it's generally to
help solve social issues. If you have cross faction friends and you want to play together or if you know you want
to, you know, make it easier to find mythic dungeon groups without having a faction change, that's one thing. But
when it comes to randomly queuing for a heroic dungeon, ultimately that is an experience that's accessible to everyone
regardless of your faction. And there's no barrier just because you're solo. And so the need isn't as great to justify
setting aside like the war concerns of the role of faction divide.

MrGM: Okay, that's fine. Yeah.

**Will we see any changes or updates to the current Valorstone/Crest system?**
MrGM: Gearing in uh in Midnight. So I think in Dragonflight, it was the introduction of like uh flightstones back then turned
into valorstones and crests and things like that. Um I feel like it's been a good system in regards to just how easy
it is to upgrade everything and and get up to a level of sorts. Uh, is this something we can see continue into
Midnight and beyond perhaps?

Ion: I think the upgrade system is definitely continuing for into Midnight. That said,
I think it's not about its flaws and we're definitely looking at ways in which it could be streamlined further,
but I think from a systems design perspective, it does a great job of giving everyone at every level of
gameplay a clear deterministic path towards upgrading their gear, that doesn't just rely on lucky drops and RNG there.
Getting steadily stronger over the course of the season. I think it has a lot of benefits all around. Now, it's
also pretty complicated, particularly for returning players, newer players. It's like, wow, there's a lot of
different names here. It's not necessarily intuitive how adventurer or
explorer compared to veteran or champion. Like, these rewards don't necessarily have magical meaning to
them. And we definitely need to work on feedback from players around flightstones and
questioning whether they're even necessary in a world where you already have to go out and earn the crests to
upgrade your gear. So I think the team is taking a look at several of those aspects of the system. We don't have any
exact changes to announce right now, but as we get into beta and we're kind of testing the end-game gearing loop, I would expect
to see some differences with how it was in War Within

MrGM: Brilliant. Thank you for that. Hey, yes.
See ya later Valorstones.

**With early access to housing coming in 11.2.7. Could you clarify what the current thinking is on what will and won’t be available?**
MrGM: Housing is coming in 11.2.7 before the end of the year, you said, right?

Ion: Indeed.

MrGM: That is extremely exciting. Um, so it is early access to housing. Uh, I presume
the actual like full launch is in pre- patch.

Ion: Yes. So yes, in the 12.0 expansion prepatch,
it'll be there. Um the way I would view it is in 11.2.7. Um the neighborhoods will
exist and you will be able to, if you own Midnight, claim a house in each faction
neighborhood and begin decorating it and upgrading it and all of that. But the neighborhoods themselves are going to
eventually have much more in the way of activities and events and Endeavors to pursue. Those aren't going to be
available yet in 11.2.7. Those are a Midnight system. Really, the goal of
11.2.7 housing is just to give you all a head start on collecting decor,
decorating your house, and getting to really play with the creative expression side of the system. I think we
understand that at expansion launch, it can be potentially awkward if you're being, on the one hand, you know, pulled
towards the new zones and the new content in Midnight. You want to do those zones, you want to run dungeons, you want to gear up, but then also housing
is there asking you to go revisit a bunch of old content to collect decor. Let's give players a chance to do that a
couple of months ahead of time and just enjoy the system.

MrGM: Excellent. So, basically, you're saying
11.2.7, we're going to make our house, but also be out running old dungeons and going out in the world to find all the
suiting decor, right, for our for our house.

Ion: Exactly.

**Will we have some base Decor?**
MrGM: Actually, I had a kind of follow up on the decor thing. It's um will we have
like some base decor or are we literally starting from zero and then we're going to go and go get like Onyxia's head?

Ion: No, you will have several dozen pieces of base decor that are available to decorate your house. So the instant
you walk into your house, you can start playing with the system, then of course you're probably going to want some
cooler things. And that's that's what's going to lead you into our profession system, into new content, reputations, and
new reputations and just kind of a cross-section of all the content WoW has to offer.

MrGM: Amazing. That's incredible. So,
and I'm guessing that's all accountbound as well, warbound, everything's like, you collect something on one character
it's across the whole account right.

Ion: Yes, your house is owned by your entire warband and that includes characters
from both factions. So, if you have uh a house in the Alliance neighborhood
outside of Stormwind, your Horde characters can port to that too and use it freely because it's your warband's house.
We want to make sure that convenience, and again that sense of shared ownership
is foremost.

MrGM: Excellent.

**Cross faction guild Neighborhoods?**
MrGM: That's actually kind of a a kind of a segue into what I was going to ask the kind of final thing on
neighborhoods. Um so, obviously crossfaction guilds is now a thing. How would a neighborhood work when you have
like a specific like crossfaction guild neighborhood? Are we having Horde and Alliance houses in there? Like what's the kind of thinking with that?

Ion: Exactly that way. Um so there going to be three types of neighborhoods. There are the default public neighborhoods
where if you are just, you know, you are making a house, you will be in a
neighborhood with 49 other plots that are random other people from your server
or connected servers and that's the neighborhood. Those will generally be same-faction homes. That's where it is.
But you might have a private neighborhood that's kind of a charter with a fixed group of friends or what we think will be the most common is guild
neighborhoods where you know that that can scale past 50. You can have multiple shards of the same neighborhood as
needed. And there any member of the guild can have a plot in that space. Um
doesn't matter if it's a cross faction guild. You can you know, the guild leader though will have to choose whether your
guild neighborhood is going to be based in Stormwind or in Orgrimmar. That is the one aspect, but then once it's there
anyone can move in at some point.

MrGM: Okay.

**Where are the Neighborhoods in the World?**
MrGM: I do have a follow up on that actually that I kind of thought about
was where are they in the world? Are they a physical location that you kind of walk into? Is there a teleport a
portal? Like how is that going to work?

Ion: Um current thinking is there's a portal off of Orgrimmar and Stormwind and then once
you're there it's a very expansive you know outdoor feeling space. You can fly around these spaces. Um, we really kind
of there there's sort of kind of constructed spaces that try to combine several of the biomes around the area.
So like the Horde neighborhood for example has some sections that look and feel like Durotar, some sections that
look and feel like Azshara, some that are more like coastal beachfronts. Um, and so that you can, you know, kind of pick
the vibe that you want as you decide which plot you're going to pick for your house.

MrGM: That's awesome.

**Will there be creatures in the Neighborhood?**
MrGM: Is there going to be
NPCs there like creatures running around?

Ion: Tons and tons. And I think there'll be some just kind of inhabiting
it at 11.2.7. But once we get to Midnight itself, neighborhoods should be bustling with activity. There'll be
visitors coming by with different events going on, quests potentially, the shared Endeavors that everyone who lives in the
neighborhood can work towards. I think we really want these to feel like, you know, just a slice of life in Azeroth.

MrGM: I'm looking forward to that for sure.

**Do you need Midnight to own a house?**
MrGM: Um, kind of a final thing on housing. I just had a thought on. So, it's an
evergreen feature of the game. If someone was to join World of Warcraft in Midnight, but didn't own Midnight, could
they build a house?

Ion: So, having a house requires owning Midnight. It's an expansion
feature. But anyone, even if you don't own the expansion, can begin collecting decor and make progress in
that aspect of the system. And that's true in 11.2.7 also. So, even if you don't own that yet, everyone in 11.2.7 will be
able to, you know, we'll get retroactive rewards from achievements you already may have. You can go out and start
building your collection, so that when you eventually do have a house, it's all there for you to play with.

MrGM: Excellent.

**Any interesting sources of Decor?**
MrGM: Is there any like interesting
sources of decor? Like obviously the kind of standard ones, achievement, vendors, and things like that. Is there any other kind of out there ones like
secrets and things like that?

Ion: I mean, if they're secret, I can't tell you about them, right?

MrGM: That's true. That's true. The Secret Finding Discord will have to find them for me.

Ion: Philosophically though in we see this as very similar to existing cosmetics. There there should be a wide wide range of sources for these. One
thing I will say philosophically, we recognize this is this is not a power system. This is about you know
creativity and expression. Um while there will be decor that comes from sort
of very skill intensive accomplishments, those should be positioned more as trophies, right? You may have some
banner that you can hang on to your wall if you achieved a certain type of mythic plus,
but things that just feel like natural elements of a given culture should be
pretty broadly available. If there's a bookcase that you want, you shouldn't have to clear a raid to get that bookcase. And so that's it being
figuring out what comes from where.

MrGM: Okay, so you don't have to like go into Stormwind and click the bookcase, the book on the
fourth shelf three times and do a spin and then you get it

**Is there any changes coming to professions in Midnight?**
MrGM: I guess a final thing um professions. Uh so we've kind of seen an
evolution of professions kind of from Dragonflight going into War Within. Uh is there anything you want to talk about in
regards to professions in Midnight?

Ion: Sure. I think the general structure of
professions is being carried forward from War Within to Midnight just as it was from Dragonflight to War Within. Um
that said, I think reflecting on the state of professions today, I think there's definitely room for improvement.
Um in Dragonflight, when we overhauled professions, one of our major goals was really to add a level of depth
professions that previously had been lacking. So that if you're someone who really wanted to dedicate your character's identity to being a crafter,
you wanted to become a great blacksmith, a great tailor, you could put a lot of time and progression into that and be
special, right? You can be the person that everyone on your server is hitting up with orders. And I think that aspect
of the system has played out, and it's been it's been really cool to see. Um the other goal that we had was to make
professions relevant to nearly everyone. Even if you aren't yourself a crafter, you should be able to engage in that
ecosystem. We also accomplish that. However, I think the amount of
complexity in professions is probably on average higher than we want it to be
right now. And what we've heard from many players is that they love the fantasy of professions, but it just
feels a bit too overwhelming. And so, I think we're looking to potentially differentiate professions from each
other a bit more. Like there's a certain level of depth and customization that
may make sense if you're a blacksmith making an item that someone is going to use for the next 5 months. I don't know
if that same level of complexity makes sense when you're making a potion, or gathering an herb, right? And so we'd
like to kind of differentiate the professions from each other a little bit more so that if you're someone who wants to engage in trade skills but doesn't
necessarily want to go all the way down that rabbit hole, there are some options that feel more approachable to you.


MrGM: Fantastic. I love to hear it.
I guess uh kind of a final thing on professions as well like we, there's a lot of decor
through old professions, right? So like and things like that which is kind of cool. So guys, if you go and level your
old professions right now cuz it's going to be a lot to do. So definitely go and do that. Will we see like new materials
coming in for like building different decor and things like that?

Ion: The main avenue for that is going to be
an all new resource called Lumber which you'll be able to just gather out in the world. Um like a standard gathering
skill, just grab a, you know, pickaxe from your neighborhood or - you know, a logging axe, rather - and just carry that with
you and you can gather Lumber and use it to craft wide variety of furniture and more.

MrGM: Amazing.

**Outro**
MrGM: So, that's all I've got. That's uh that's everything. So, thank you very much for your time again. I really appreciate it.
And uh everyone's super excited for Midnight,
anything like that.

Ion: Thank you for your questions, it's been a pleasure chatting. Thank you all for coming out. Really,
it's been it's been amazing being here at Gamescom these past few days, seeing people experience housing, especially
hands-on. Like, that's been it's been so special for the team. Like for the last few months, we've seen intuitively what
we can do with the system. And you know, you know, a hundred of us or so have been tinkering with it, making our
houses, making our rooms. But just over the last few days, I think we've had something like 6,000 people play the
demo at this point. And seeing the amount of just complete creativity that people can come up with in just 15
minutes, it's amazing. I can't wait to see a million people have their hands on it in just a few months. But again, so
excited to be here. We have a lot more information to follow in the weeks to come. Stay tuned for alpha news in about
a month. And thank you again.