War Within Alpha is HERE! - The Good, The Bland, and the BASIC

[@SamoIsKing]

Account wide progression is a massive win. Players who play 500 hours over 10 characters dont progress as far as a player who plays 100 hours on one character, so you’re finally being rewarded for the time you invest.

[@Fydron]

Honestly account wide reputations already is a massive win in my book.

[@ToHonorKnowledge]

You always have been, but when you choose to spread yourself thin that’s YOUR fault not the games

[@Fydron]

@@ToHonorKnowledge depends entirely what kind of game we are talking about because not everybody is masochistic and plays just a one class in mmo where your class could be totally shit and denied access to stuff like raids because it performs like turd in a worse case for years.

[@ToHonorKnowledge]

@@Fydron then you chose the wrong class. If fun isn’t your objective and parsing is, play a class that does the most damage. Don’t complain about your personal choices like it’s bad game design.

[@CarlosSpicyweiner-iv8mq]

I want TRUE account wide achievments. If I get an achievement on an alt I want the achievement points POINTS on my main.

[@Tazandd]

It would be dope if they made it so that you could use your alts on the follower dungeons controlled by AI. So that your warband can feel like a party in itself

[@Nokomak]

Honestly I hate the stigma against passives. They're more fun and often more active than just getting another spell. There's much potential in conditional passives like when you do x chance to y and on prog get enhanced or changed X when you do z. If everything is just a new button you'll struggle to find a use case for them all and you'll quickly find yourself only using a couple of them. Passives can make the flow of combat in a way buttons never can.

[@Fydron]

I know a lot of people hate what i am gonna say but to me wow just has way too much crap that fills up all the action bars for no reason at all other than giving you just another button to press making rotations extremely annoying to play in a long run. Personally i would kill for WoW having something like GW2's low intensity builds they don't have to make raid level damage but i would like to have builds without dozens of cooldowns and buttons. Just chill specs that would do little less damage than high end builds with way less button bloat.

[@Ray-b7r]

​@@Fydron agreed.

[@Sodacacik]

YES passives are better.

[@Tehstampede]

I like having cool passive traits but I hate having to rely on random procs to do real damage/healing/tanking. I would like for a class to have between 4-6 core abilities they cycle through in a rotation, with 1-3 long CD abilities. Real talk the difference between playing an Elemental Shaman and Enhancement Shaman is night and day. On Elemental I'm using maybe 1-2 buttons most of the time, with Shocks sprinkled in. Popping a couple long CD's every few minutes to do damage is beyond boring.

[@TheDevilsOwl505]

Passives are SO much better, too many spells and juggling action bars, keybinds and macros just isn't fun

[@sirbear4962]

i have a feeling delves should max out at 2 players, as it will just replace the npc with a friend. i REALLY hope thats the case

[@sephrinx4958]

Yeah, that makes sense. Otherwise it's just a ... shitty dungeon? lol

[@duman173]

he's always there i think even if you go with 5 players, which is what allows for it to be possible for 5 dps to do it together if they want, also the rewards only go up to lvl 8 out of 11, so that's where they can really put the challenge

[@John776521]

I love that you're bringing other game experience to help push the content in the right direction. I love the idea of keeping systems self contained.

[@needsanameedit4982]

couple pieces of information about Delves from various interviews and devs talking to streamers: - There are 13 delves but you must complete the first 12 to unlock the last one which is a single boss similar to, but not as hard as, the mage tower. The delves will NOT be as hard as the mage tower, they are role/spec agnostic and need to scale from 1-5 players, it is not possible for them to be that hard and not have something be weird with tuning. - Each delve has 11 tiers of difficulty but the rewards stop at tier 8 and the remaining 3 are just for bragging rights similar to pushing high M+ keys. - The keys to open the chests will be capped/limited in the number you can earn per week as the chests they open contain better gear. - The NPC companion will rotate every season so you will need to level the new one up each season. - Delves/world content now has a row in the vault and will reward up to heroic raid levels of gear. - Each delve will have at least 2 versions with different objectives and/or enemies even though the layout will not change.

[@BigBeanBilly]

Bummer.

[@deadclicks]

Dunno where people got the mage tower expectation tbh, I don't think Blizz ever directly said it'd be like that

[@ZombieSlayerTakashi]

@@deadclicks People have a REAL raging boner for Mage Tower....

[@maxw565]

​@@deadclicksthe got it from loving the mage tower and asking for a similar experience eversince 7.2

[@deadclicks]

@@maxw565 Yeah and I've been wanting a return of Visions since 8.3. I'd love for delves to emulate that gameplay style but I'm not expecting it because Blizz didn't say to expect it. Preach is posting vids advertising content for something it was never intended to be. idk its just kinda irresponsible

[@MrSiobert]

I havent heard your voice in forever and it made me happy

[@BogzySama]

New buttons is the last thing this game needs. Wow is so incredibly bloated already, its good the new talents are just passives.

[@PurpleOcarina]

I haven’t watched the video yet but the biggest “feature” warbands isn’t even that glamorous. Its more like a quality of life thing and it legit doesn’t effect any gameplay outside of making grinding abit easier. Like wheres the meat and potatoes. People keep talking about warbands like its this new way to play when its just a new login and transmog / achievements are all cross race and such. Like what this is it?

[@Kagetheorc]

The fix for situations where slayer warriors could be bladestormless is making the first point also grant the skill that is vital to the hero tree; similar to some of the interactions based on class (Shamans, for example), where you could take an ability in the class tree, and also unlock it in the specialization tree, too.

[@xwartornx]

yea see i have a feeling when it comes to the bladestorm and ravager thing he said about slayer build i really thing thats going to also effect ravager its just not something they have updated yet.

[@kimaclaret]

I imagine all this solo play stuff that is here/coming has got a lot of people happy. I met soooo many people who refused to play with others in the later years of my playing WoW. 😅

[@michaelandreasen993]

Well have you met some of the people in this game 🤣 i get why

[@Sifujohns]

At the start of wow you had to be nice or you never got help. Now players can be as toxic as they want with no consequences. Even when you play classic you got back some of that camaraderie that is lost in retail.

[@Boxkar24]

@@Sifujohns Players were toxic back then, no idea where people get this idea from. I cannot tell you how many times I got called the n-word in classic. Edit: And to add, even as a former cutting edge raider, I like to push my character in ways that don't involve other people. Things I can do on my own time. I spent ages in Torghast with a variety of alts just seeing how I far I could go. Not everything "needs" to be centered around groups. I get it "it's a massively *multiplayer* online game" but that doesn't mean I want to spend every waking hour looking for a group to do something I want to do.

[@kimaclaret]

Oh yes, I absolutely do not blame them. 😅​@@michaelandreasen993

[@Xeirus911]

Paying $15 a month to play single player is wild

[@kylethomas432]

I would be happy if other content dropped keys for delves on top of already being able to get keys in the delves themselves. This can make other content gives little bonuses so you can go do those, and then when you hop into a delve you have a lot of keys to make it even more rewarding, but if someone wants to only focus on delves that’s totally rewarding in itself too.

[@Shiirow]

You have more faith in Blizzard than I do, I truly believe they will de-evolve into Delveghast+, and all the sweats will just suck all the fun out of it. Ive already been burned twice with the prospect of fun solo content with Island Farming and Choreghast.

[@darrenzzz426]

Wanted to make a little addition about the delve section; from what I understand of dev-interviews and early statements made about the chest and key system, keys will be rewarded weekly ( don't know if they'll be tied to "kill a rare or do x world quests", or if you just get them upon login like the catalyst charges) and those are the only ways to get the heroic level gear from delves and open world sources.

[@tobiasb1632]

Often I get where he's coming from but I still don't get his complaint about the blandness of the first zone there's literal crystal mountains, a massive city with earthen monolithic architecture, forests with burning honey (and probably more, but I don't have alpha access) and all he can say is "why doesn't this random island on azeroth look like a dead planet drifting in space or the literal afterlife?"

[@thesunthrone]

I think the issue Preach can't put his finger on is the awful blue fog that the zone just fades into. The bigger, more open zones for Dragonriding flight mean the draw distance kicks in much faster and the blue fog they use for it just desaturates everything and makes it look really bland. In all the zones he mentions as examples, the draw distance was generally better, but they also had a certain visual flair to them that made it feel better.

[@EbonizerScourge]

Keys for the good chests are prolly weekly/daily-timegated.. Gotta give them the good ol Blizzard treatment. Create something and lock it behind a wall.

[@peter-8483]

I loved the mage tower, because it was something I could do alone, I didn’t have to rely on waiting for guildies or for randoms that have zero patience

[@seluhir8820]

I imagine there will be a max cap per week of delve keys but they'll be awarded through a variety of content including within the delves themselves.

[@Orthus100]

It's mildly concerning that almost all your Delve info was slightly off.

[@Icarus696]

Make Delves a Single Player Experience! This avoids boost groups and people paying for progress and would create something truly unique, catering to the more single player oriented people.

[@Akinon93]

for keys, maybe a good system would be that you get some keys from inside the dungeon, but can also get some from outside the dungeon, so if you have a key from another source of content you can maybe bypass a side route which you would normally go down to grab a key, and take a shortcut? this would let the system still be self contained, but also reward players that do other content in addition to Delves

[@ZestyGuides]

Great take and input, lots of things to consider

[@itskhro]

9:11 Not entirely. A lot of tier sets were built around certain abilities that you got from the talent tree, like Frost with Glacial Spike.

[@sephrinx4958]

Which is really really stupid.

[@icresp4263]

@@sephrinx4958 I don't think it's really really stupid at all. It's a way to change specs up between seasons, like FDK taking chill streak a talent you'd basically never take, and if you can't make a tier set rely on a certain ability the effects would end up being very boring after a while because almost every flavourful ability is a choice now.

[@Gebirges]

@@icresp4263 If a tier set is set around a talent, that talent shouldn't be a talent anymore but a core ability.

[@icresp4263]

@@Gebirges But you see, there are almost no 'core abilities' anymore, everything is a talent.

[@sephrinx4958]

@@icresp4263 No, you're just unimaginative.

[@smittfish]

Haven't missed Metzen for a single second.

[@michaelandreasen993]

Blizzard: delves are gonna be INSANE! Players: ..we've been lied to before...

[@sollmoll]

What I'm more afraid with the keys to delve chests is that it ends up like a gacha energy system. Sure you can get more keys from m+ or something but you can also just buy 5 more keys if you can give up 5 dollars

[@CielBlanche]

Blizzard's zone construction has been lacking since Legion, but it's been slipping under the radar because the quality of the art itself is high. Think about Northrend. Pandaria. The Broken Isles. Their sense of immersion, the interesting cultures, the sense of history, secrecy, intrigue, and mystery. Delving into these places that felt so rich and full of possibilities by the visual landmarks, the architecture, the awesome sights that made you ask questions about what this place is really about and what amazing things had happened here. Environmental storytelling. The architecture and absorbing geographical layouts telling a story and pulling you in. There is a serious art to making these zones that has been mostly absent for years now. The Dragon Isles have pleasing video game graphics, sure, but there's more to it than that -- it doesn't feel like a world. I'm not hoping for an encore.

[@BrowneePointz]

Lol. k

[@Djynni]

I like and agree with your stance on Delve chest keys.

[@peter-8483]

The monk talent around the heal works, if they do it like the talent feral druids had in the past, that the heal would increase your damage abilities

[@chaoscommentz4582]

it should be like this 'Hey, that passive would actually work well if you got a certain talent on, are you sure you want to set the talents like this?'

[@svhr1959]

How many weeks did it take for preach to get this footage? I have tried beta and crashing out every 2-5 mins is the current theme. (On a normally rock solid warcraft PC)

[@toxicity791]

So if I understood the first part of the video, achievements, reputations etc are being made account-wide now? If so that’s a massive quality of life change, I wish they’d done that 4 years ago when I still played the game, but definitely a case of better late than never.

[@HatMachine]

That's right. One of the main features of TWW is a new system called "Warbands", which can just be translated as "account-wide everything". Achievements, reputations, currencies etc can just be account-wide automatically. You'll also have an account-wide bank (which is new space, alongside your existing character-specific banks) and account-wide reagent bank, and there's going to be a new class of "account-bound-until-equipped" gear, different from current BoA gear in that it does become soulbound when you equip it, but it means that Blizz can award higher ilvl account-bound items without breaking the balance too much.

[@toxicity791]

@@HatMachine that sounds dope as fuck, props to them for modernizing that shit finally

[@ghaithking8891]

Damn i didnt see you for a long time Preach... holy moly that hairline is doing wonders for you! Looking sharp as ever!

[@tomklemp894]

good points and worries mentioned, i certainly didnt think about them like that

[@cmcneil726]

The comments make this video seem quite a bit more negative than it really is.

[@Miniath]

they were really in love with making tiersets surrounding around talents in Dragonflight, they like forcing certain talents i guess

[@SondreGrneng]

the natural source for the chest keys would be harder encounters in the delve. Would be interesting to see if Blizzard agrees with me :P

[@tirandeshibaraki743]

I wish my Legacy achievement for Knight Captain could be shared between alts so I can get my Lvl 60 PVP gear transmogs =_=

[@nekogod]

Delves sound interesting. Had nothing but bad experiences with Mythic+ so would love something similar that I can do solo.

[@phild8238]

Preach + Wow content = chef’s kiss

[@BruceKarrde]

Delves - Yeah, I will see when they launch it. Torghast used to "infinite" and then it became a weekly reset thing.

[@whiskybob]

Correction: Dragonflight forced you to play spells nobody liked with tier sets. At least destruction warlocks. My theory is that Season 2 (CDF) and Season 3 (Rifts) were designed to punish people complaining about those two spells by forcing them upon warlocks with tier bonuses.

[@MomsterGirl]

War Within alpha: Nice New Preach vid about War Within every week: REAL SH*T!!!

[@CookiesOnDowels]

I really like how Spoiler-free this video is, thanks Preach.

[@ChinnuWoW]

Dalaran gets destroyed and Khadgar dies.

[@CookiesOnDowels]

@@ChinnuWoW every streamer and their dog knows that, it's literally everywhere. You aren't slick bro, troll somewhere else.

[@Tdiehl717]

As a PoE player and someone who played classic as a sweat until Mid Woltk. If I find out everything above Delve allows me to just live in Delve and not do any other content I will literally play this

[@lj1653]

they should release a new hero talents trailer that showcases each hero class in action

[@Jonseemann]

That would be completely pointless as they really are just completely normal talents

[@ryanpower1291]

They won't bother even though it would be intersting to see. Especially ially since the hero talents are shared between two specializations and they probably figure most people will just Google what their best one is and use it

[@maxw565]

It would make many players depressed to see how their boring and heartless hero talents look compared the insanely good ones like mage/evoker/lock

[@HatMachine]

I'm sure they will closer to launch, once all the trees are finalized and the new visuals are all in place. Right now, some of the trees are way more developed than others, and all the new animations aren't done yet.

[@diegostrossen6751]

You cannot fathom how excited I feel to see all the old Wow Content Creators coming back to see what the fuzz is all about! The future looks bright for the first time in years! Unless you are ofc one of those Stockholm syndrome people who hate wow and bash on it all the time while playing it regardless like a beat up junkie too hooked on crack.

[@jesseperez4185]

It has writing issues for sure but gameplay wise I've been liking it all the time. Yea some specs that I enjoyed get gutted and I have to move on but I overall defend it from retail Andys

[@anthonys8400]

How do people who get alpha invites - which seems to be very specific invite only - not comprehend basics of hero talents?

[@profion85]

in a recent interview from Blizz developers(Naguura's channel) said that tiers 1-8 will grant you with upgrade gear and tier 8 will be the top gear that u can get, equal to heroic raid / mythic 5+ . The rest 9-13 its only for those who want more challenge difficulty. Tier 13 it's very very difficult to complete.

[@duman173]

@@ronniez6911 yes, the delves will also count towards its own part of the vault so you'll also get 3 extra pieces to choose one from depending on how many delves you do per week

[@Snagprophet]

I mean, if the hero talents are about Bladestorm and you aren't talenting Bladestorm is that the game's fault that you can't read? I get it if you want to idiot proof it but it's not hard to just look at the talents and read it.

[@SpagetteWoW]

PREACH LOOKING GOOD

[@JKane_88]

Although I have been pretty pissed at Blizzard for years now, I hope they hit this out of the ballpark and actually make WoW great again!

[@Turskaify]

I hope the keys in the vaults are just speed rewards essentially like the Throne of Thunder mini-game.

[@Franciaeregimaxima]

Need 3 DPS and a Tank for Cataclysm Beta Dungeons ! -> Elundor ( low pop server ) Also need a guild A2 French or English would be great but i can speak Italian or german for playing WoW in group on my fav extension 😅😅

[@idowhatiwant3557]

People will always buy runs, happens in WoW, happens in FFXIV, happens in Lost Ark. So long as people can pay for runs people will.

[@UMCorian]

It seems like for some Hero Talents/Classes, they were super inspired... and for others, they just clearly didn't seem to have any good ideas on what to do. Good example is Rider of the Apocalypse, being mounted in combat as a Death Knight? Amazing. Then, look at Priest... IMHO, they couldn't put together one single interesting idea across all three paths. Probably maining DK next expansion. lol

[@kristianflamsted9038]

I still don't get why we have to level in every expansions. Is it really that important?

[@chris123chris82]

Can somebody please answer because I am extremely confused. I stopped playing wow a year after Legion maybe. Now I'm thinking about getting back into wow and it's extremely confusing. Seems to be a ton of different versions and I have no idea what is actually happening. If I start playing again will I continue where I left off or is every character level 70 now or something??? When is this expansion coming out and what's the level cap and is it after Legion or is there something between?? I'm so confused..

[@denzildk]

i hope delves give vault no matter what, but if you do want (need) the gear from the end, you need to get the keys.

[@ruscanugelu5995]

I really hope delves will not become the second M+ (NO MORE TIMERS!). I would love to be able to play at my own pace (especially solo) and just cassualy run through while also getting a nice reward at the end. You could, however have timers just for the leaderboards.

[@SwimmingTiger]

Im thinking the keys in delves should just be earnable inside the delve itself: find a secret treasure, solve a puzzle, kill a elite and etc... I dont know anyone who likes having to farm keys outside of said activity. Evergreen systems should be self contained, easier to implement, to say the least.

[@fragdq]

didnt they say 1-5 players? for delves. so, im pretty sure you can do all rewards in a group, too. like Thorghast was. Yeh, that WILL lead for boosting nonsense once again, and people rather but tokens for gold and but their rewards instead of having to do something that requires some sort of skill, like mage towers did. if this is the case, I will not even bother with these delves dungeons. no reason if the rewards can just be bought with tokens/gold anyway. (IN GAME) only incentive dead on arrival

[@chadgrundle]

They've reaffirmed why I left with every successive expansion.

[@chrisshield4066]

Mister preach needs to do a warband transmog comp

[@Ghazter]

You totally had to spec a certain way in Dragonflight to make set bonuses work.

[@nfc14g]

Diablo rifts was a good balance on repeatable dungeon runs

[@monkerud2108]

the move for early access is not that bad, it includes 30 days of game time as well, that the other packs don't so it is not twice as expensive.

[@CrayonEater9845]

Please Blizz listen to the recommendation for keys for Delves being obtained from doing Delves

[@IceWolve67]

I actually prefer NOT having more buttons with hero talent, some spec already have about 15 ability in a rotation. I wish to focus more on the game rather than my spell bar

[@kindcam]

Yo Mike, love u btw, I went to the TDP channel and only saw a video on DKs, am I missing something?

[@albertmassingo4249]

They have said from the beginning this is casual content. I have already said that the keys are going to be from lots of different content. I wish they would not have let KZbinrs or raiders test this. I wish they would have only let people who don't raid or do mythic Plus test this.

[@wyfyj]

No where near enough for me to come back. WoW needs to change too much for me to come back at this moment. I hope everyone can have a blast. Took so long for all these changes to happen.

[@AWorthyGamer]

the one thing, more than any other thing, that would bring me back is the complete removal of addons.

[@xzygy]

I continue to keep an eye on the game, but after shadowlands, I really don’t think this company has any idea where the fun is. All headlining features are always bad, and they break something super obvious in the main game, ignore the feedback and release it like that, then halfway through the expansion “they’re listening to us.” GW2 is treating me just fine.

[@Anaklasis1]

Look man, I agree with 99% of your criticism, but calling these zones bland (fair statement, no issue here) but then naming Hellfire Peninsula as an interesting zone made me almost spew my coffee at my monitor lol. I love TBC, then and now, but that zone is one of the most dull in the entire game.

[@StoganNZ]

doing it with a group should only save as much time as it takes to get everyone there, so the only benefit is having a premade group ready to go. Avoids anyone benefitting from not playing the game.

[@StrobeFireStudios]

Meanwhile shamans STILL waiting for their other two hero talent trees to be revealed.

[@needsanameedit4982]

join the rogues

[@steviebeavie1]

I just watched the first 30 seconds of this video and had an idea for warbands. Before watching the rest of this and not being 100% clued up on what warbands is, imagine this: You can play a 5 man dungeon and invite 4 of your alts along and they are mostly computer controlled but they join you in the dungeon!! And can get loot! Then it is a huge success and warband 10 man raids come out and so on.. Is this mic on? Is this not a revolutionary idea? To play with your alts?? Of course you would not control them and slow everything down, AI/computer would do this. Feeling like a Wow artistic genius here tonight, or is this what warbands is? I thought it was something like altoholic or a mechanism to make the game more alt orientated, should you wish to play like that. (I would)

[@mrgoats]

I thought they were going back to wow roots. This looks and feels like retail.

[@Nokomak]

I want hero talents to be flavor. It's for the RP feel of your class. The talent trees in DF are so good and most specs are so solid now that it's dumb to continue the trend of taking a sledgehammer to what the spec plays like. It's not new, just wasteful. Focusing instead on added spice is much more fresh. Flavor goes a long way. I'd appreciate if there were more toy/utility spells like Shaman's farsight ability though. Something that makes the spec feel living outside of just combat.

[@mathiashammar1]

Thanks for update. I feel this is an expansion that can be skipped. The story of Xal'atath is dragging on for its 5th expansion. And Iridikron will be killed off in beginning of War of within. I'm happy this will contain nerubians but im afraid with blizzards track record they will just do content cut as usual and keep those nerubians to a minimum.

[@milenasoloduhina1726]

Is it just me or has Preach been taking care of himself? He looks younger.

[@Velshin1986]

Delves is kinda combination of brawler guild and Torghast.

[@sholtoz799]

i think the key stuff is ment to be from WQ or something like that from what i heard

[@Arizonian312]

Preach isn't diving as deep in the hero talents as he should be. Some hero talents are completely insane and do change up your rotation a lot like Sunfury and Frostfire for mages or adding in a huge combo hitter like in Templar. Or opening up a dmg window like aldrachi reaver in dh. Others are just % dmg and passive crits like Hunter or Slayer.

[@ianardell4660]

He’s doing individual class videos. Already dropped the DK one

[@tranquilitydove1155]

What is the point of xp boosts when you can buy level boosts?

[@MegaMideast]

4:50 of course they will

[@matt9682]

They said the 1 boss 13th delve will be closer to mage tower, but the 12 normal ones wont be. I dont want people to be disappointed as this keeps getting repeated and its not accurate.

[@James-em1pq]

During MoP beta, Blizz actually redid the quests in jade forest following poor feedback. Perhaps this will happen again here if this negative opinion is common?

[@needsanameedit4982]

not shot they make major changes to a zone ~5 months before release, they might have more stuff planned but major art assets are basically locked in at this point.

[@maggimaster]

about the hero specs using WW as an example shado pan was really disappointing in the initial look as like you said we would simply be playing DF BUT like with 7 other specs we found out WW is getting a rework which helps shado pan make sense

[@MrNikomadsen]

Um, as far as I can tell, you've only done a video on the DK hero talents and there's not even a link to that?

[@TrueCasualYT]

Come home for investors is what he ment.

[@stainedart1696]

Hope delves isn’t gonna be thorgast all over

[@Dryzual]

Welcome home preach.

[@shrubninja6444]

It's a video game, not a home. Branch out a bit. Don't make a single video game into your personality.

[@Dryzual]

@@shrubninja6444 Settle down mate, its an expression no need to read super deep into it. Maybe go touch grass, you seem to be projecting personal issues.

[@shrubninja6444]

@@Dryzual The incredible irony.

[@elilawrence7166]

Man said “Metzin’s Horn”

[@dbix11]

Like dragon flight, I probably won't be playing it

[@Flysh24]

any ability tied to hero talents just need to be baseline, period

[@WowMark]

delves sounds like greater rifts in D3

[@akmetal574]

Not trying to be negative but I can believe it took this long to get account wide progress…

[@Draethar]

When Preach talks about WoW my Nostalgia Nipples get soooooo hard!

[@ChinnuWoW]

Do they lactate?