This weekend at PAX Australia, gaming YouTube channel Skill Up sat down with WoW Classic Associate Production Director Clay Stone to discuss how Horizontal Progression and Horizontal Content fit within the scope of WoW Forever.
Horizontal Content
First, Clay Stone clarifies that when he mentioned “Horizontal” during the WoW Forever presentation at BlizzCon, he actually meant the expansion of the world of Azeroth, rather than horizontal character progression.
In addition to transmog and collecting, Stone also mentions that Professions will be another piece of content that expands over time. Another example of horizontal progression is the new Legacy System, which will allow players to unlock account-wide benefits by completing certain challenges within the game. This will encourage players to level alts and give them something to strive for if endgame raiding is not their primary focus.
Character Power Progression
The goal in WoW Forever is to limit the amount of character power progression gained from one raid tier to the next. While there will be some Vertical gear progression that happens between each raid tier, the team wants to make these vertical increases as small as possible.
This is because the team wants all endgame raid and dungeon gear to be viable for completing the highest-difficulty content in the game. However, there will be chase items if players want to earn their best-in-slot items, similar to Dragonspine Trophy from Gruul’s Lair in TBC.
Gear from earlier raid Tiers may be considered best-in-slot for certain specializations, and this is intentional, as the team wants players to feel like they have a reason to go back and do older raids and still earn player power. While gear from these early raids may not be the best option “forever”, the goal is to keep these items relevant for multiple raid tiers, and even years into the future.