Developer Log - October 2023

Written By Kaytotes

Another month has both arrived and is now about to leave, we hope you have been enjoying the spooky season. It is time for the latest Developer Log, giving you a brief update of what we've been working on and what you might experience in the near future. Please keep in mind that this is not everything that has received developer or designer touch and should be viewed as a short snippet of some of our favorites or important info.

A Rare Surprise

In the past we have expressed that one of our goals on Project Epoch is to touch essentially all areas of the game, whether they'll be seen by the many or whether they'll be seen by the few. Rares fall into the latter category. Our goal at the offset was to add at least 3 new rares per zone in the world and with this month we're happy to say that work is now completed.

There are now more than 120 new rares for you to uncover, each with unique item drops and combat behavior. This has been a surprising challenge to not only add variety but also avoid overlap with existing rares in a zone.

Post launch we will continue these overhauls to rares by taking a pass at existing Blizzard rares, particularly those that do not have unique loot added to them.

Endgame Dungeons, Reps, and Gearing

During this month, our talented designers have essentially completed work on planning and designing end game itemization across Raids, Dungeons, World Drops, and max level Reputations. This is a surprisingly large scale effort, requiring not only cataloging all existing items from each source but also identifying which classes might want which items, discovering gaps in itemization, and then either modifying existing items or creating new ones assigned to bosses and reputations.

Now that this is complete we are in the home stretch of end game instanced content with the final focus in November being completing the implementation of trash reworks, upgraded boss encounters, and secret new additions that we hope you'll uncover in Beta 3 and beyond.

Planning content such as this has proven to be more complex and in depth than typical leveling affairs simply because we know that you will be diligently farming these locations on repeat aiming to discover all new drops and create all new BiS lists to share.

Of course, not all things in life are focused on explicit power gains. For the collectors among you, we have also upgraded various Classic reputations to offer new cosmetics and companions.

Class Is In Session

From the offset on Project Epoch we have described ourselves as leveraging TBC Class Abilities, Mechanics, and Talents with tweaks to solve certain minor issues. This decision is mostly rooted in our feeling that TBC provides necessary upgrades to essentially every class and spec, drastically increasing viability for all in comparison to a Vanilla world. However, TBC is not perfect and so in Beta 1 and Beta 2 we had already made minor changes to certain classes to solve obvious issues, such as Wolfshead Helm.

Publicly we have been overall quiet on any class changes occurring in the near future for one simple reason; with all of the conversion to a TBC base alongside custom itemization and minor core differences, we knew that balancing was going to be a tough task so staying relatively strict to TBC was the safer option.

However, we have seen all of the feedback from the community, content creators, and within the team itself that this doesn't feel like the spirit of Vanilla. One of our key goals with Project Epoch is to provide a world you know with twists and we simply were not embracing the twists for the key vessel into that world, your class. After discussion internally, we decided that since balancing is already going to involve a lot of iteration within Beta 3 and after it in dedicated class testing sessions, we may as well embrace the chaos and make further tweaks to the TBC base with the aim of adding flavourful, impactful and class spanning impact.

Taking inspiration from various versions of the game from Beta to Dragonflight mixed in with our own thoughts and ideas, we have made the following changes on top of our current base and at the same time aim to clarify key gameplay tweaks we have alluded to in the past such as what may or may not be raid wide.

Please note any and all values are subject to change based on continued iteration and testing. We will update other sections of the website over the next week to include these changes. Pre-existing custom class changes such as Feral Attack Power on Weapons for Druids have been included so that you can see the whole picture and because we are overall happy with how they have played out and intend for them to persist into the live realm.

Warrior

  • Victory Rush is available at level 10.
  • Spell Reflection is available at level 54.
  • Commanding Shout is available at level 58.
  • Intervene is available at level 60.
  • Battle Shout will now apply to your full raid group.
  • Commanding Shout will now apply to your full raid group.
  • The positions of Death Wish and Sweeping Strikes have been swapped within the Arms and Fury Talent trees.
  • Improved Taunt within the Protection tree has been upgraded to also increase the range of Taunt by 7 yards at Rank 1 and 15 yards at Rank 2.
  • Warriors have received a new baseline ability available at level 40 named Heroic Leap: "Leap through the air and slam down on all enemies within 5 yards of the target area, causing 50% weapon damage and stunning them for 2 sec. This ability will remove any Immobalization effects when used."

Mage

  • Invisibility is available at level 36.
  • Spellsteal is available at level 44.
  • Molten Armor is available at level 52.
  • Arcane Blast is available at level 54.
  • Ice Lance is available at level 56.
  • Conjure Mana Ruby now has 3 charges to mimic the Burning Crusade rank of Mana Gem known as Mana Emerald.
  • Slowfall can now be cast on raid and party members.
  • Arcane Brilliance will now apply to your full raid group.
  • The effect of the Arcane tree Arcane Fortitude talent has been merged with Presence of Mind. In its place you will now find Focus Magic from Wrath of the Lich King: "Increases the target's chance to critically hit with spells by 3%. When the target critically hits the caster's chance to critically hit with spells is increased by 3% for 10 sec. Cannot be cast on self."
  • Slow has been removed as the Arcane tree capstone talent and replaced with a new spell, Arcane Barrage, inspired by Wrath of the Lich King: "Launches several missiles at the enemy target, causing X to Y Arcane damage. Damage increased by 15% for each stack of Arcane Blast."
  • The following talents in the Arcane tree have been updated to function with Arcane Barrage.
    • Arcane Subtlety
    • Arcane Focus
    • Arcane Concentration
    • Presence of Mind
    • Arcane Instability
    • Arcane Power
    • Spell Power
    • Mind Mastery
  • Mages have received a new baseline ability available at level 50, Rune of Power: "Places a Rune of Power on the ground for 30 sec which increases your spell damage by 10% while you stand within 4 yards."

Warlock

  • Soulshatter is available at level 44.
  • Fel Armor is available at level 52.
  • Incinerate is available at level 54.
  • Ritual of Souls is available at level 58.
  • Seed of Corruption is available at level 60.
  • Blood Pact will now apply to your full raid group.
  • Curse of Elements will now also reduce Nature resistance and increase Nature damage taken.
  • Soul Shards now stack to 5.
  • Soul Bags have received an on equip bonus similar to a Hunter Quiver that adds a chance for the Warlock to to generate an additional Soul Shard when they acquire one in normal play. Chance is equal to Soul Bag total slot number.
  • Demonic Sacrifice within the Demonology tree has been replaced with a custom variant of Demonic Empowerment "Grants the Warlock's summoned demon Empowerment." with the following Empowerments per pet:
    • Imp: Sacrifice 30% of your current health to empower your imp, granting all party and raid members health equal to half of what was sacrificed for 10 seconds. After the effect expires, the health is lost.
    • Voidwalker: Summon demonic plating onto your voidwalker, increasing its armor by 15% and improving its threat generation by 10%. Lasts 20 seconds.
    • Succubus: Your Succubus casts Greater Invisibility, causing it to vanish from sight for 5 seconds and clearing all negative effects from it.
    • Felhunter: Sacrifice 10% to 20% of your maximum health to empower your felhunter\'s Spell Lock ability, reducing its cooldown by 10 seconds for 30 seconds. Must be above 20% health to cast.
    • Felguard: Your Felguard hurls their weapon at the target and enrages, stunning the target for 4 seconds and making your felguard immune to all stun, snare, and movement impairing effects for 10 seconds.
  • Warlocks have received a new baseline ability available at level 58, Soul Pact: "Enter a pact with a raid or party members soul lasting for 60 sec. If the target dies while under this pact you gain 1 Soul Shard and your Spell Damage is increased by 36 for 10 sec."

Shaman

  • Water Shield is available at level 52.
  • Wrath of Air Totem is available at level 54.
  • Earth Elemental Totem is available at level 56.
  • Fire Elemental Totem is available at level 58.
  • Bloodlust / Heroism is available at level 60.
  • Bloodlust and Heroism now affect the entire raid group, and then apply a debuff that prevents you from being affected by Bloodlust or Heroism for 10 minutes.
  • Unleashed Rage will now apply to your full raid group.
  • The following Totems will now apply to your full raid group.
    • Wrath of Air
    • Strength of Air
    • Healing Stream: Capped at 5 targets per pulse.
    • Grace of Air
    • Fire Resistance
    • Frost Resistance
    • Nature Resistance
    • Totem of Wrath
    • Windfury Totem: To compensate for this it has received an effectiveness reduction.
  • The Totem Bar functionality from Wrath of the Lich King has been retained as removing it will cause addon issues. Due to this Shamans will baseline receive the following abilities each with a 3 second cast time:
    • Call of the Elements: "Simultaneously places up to 4 totems specified in the Totem Bar."
    • Call of the Ancestors: "Simultaneously places up to 4 totems specified in the Totem Bar. Can call different totems than Call of the Elements."
    • Call of the Spirits: "Simultaneously places up to 4 totems specified in the Totem Bar. Can call different totems than Call of the Elements or Call of the Ancestors."
  • Shamans have received a new baseline ability available at level 8 with multiple ranks, Molten Blast: "Hurls a ball of molten lava at the target for X to Y Fire damage and resetting the duration of your active Flame Shock effect."
  • The following talents have been updated to function with Molten Blast:
    • Convection
    • Concussion
    • Elemental Focus
    • Eye of the Storm
    • Elemental Fury
    • Elemental Precision
    • Elemental Mastery
    • Call of Flame: Now also increases the critical strike chance of Molten Blast.
    • Lightning Overload has been renamed to Elemental Overload and now impacts Molten Blast.
    • Lightning Mastery has been renamed to Fire and Lightning Mastery and now also impacts Molten Blast.

Hunter

  • Steady Shot is available at level 52.
  • Aspect of the Viper is available at level 54.
  • Kill Command is available at level 56.
  • Snake Trap is available at level 58.
  • Misdirection is available at level 60.
  • Aspect of the Wild will now apply to your full raid group.
  • Ferocious Inspiration will now apply to your full raid group.
  • Trueshot Aura will now apply to your full raid group.
  • Each Rank of Disengage has been upgraded to alongside the threat reduction, cause the Hunter to leap back with increasing strength and an increased range to 15 yards. Requires you to be both on the ground and in combat.
  • Aspect of the Pack has been reworked to be an on use ability with a 5 minute cooldown causing party and raid members within 25 yards to receive 40% increased movement speed for 8 seconds with no daze effect.

Druid

  • Cyclone is available at level 46.
  • Maim is available at level 52.
  • Lifebloom is available at level 54.
  • Lacerate is available at level 56.
  • Gift of the Wild will now apply to your full raid group.
  • Moonkin Aura will now apply to your full raid group and has received an effectiveness reduction to compensate.
  • Leader of the Pack will now apply to your full raid group and has received an effectiveness reduction to compensate.
  • Druid players will now see Feral Attack Power on all weapons starting around level 10. This allows all weapons to provide damage in Cat Form and Bear Form.
  • Consumables such as potions can now be used while Shapeshifted.
  • Polearms are available to train for Druid players.
  • Druid players can now train the spell Revive, which is a simple out of combat resurrection ability available at level 12 onwards.
  • Wolfshead Helm no longer provides 20 Energy and 5 Rage when entering Cat Form or Bear Form. Furor now provides 60 Energy and 15 Rage, up from 40 Energy and 10 Rage to compensate for this change.

Rogue

  • Cloak of Shadows is available at level 38.
  • Envenom is available at level 52.
  • Deadly Throw is available at level 54.
  • Anesthetic Poison is available at level 58.
  • Shiv is available at level 60.
  • Axes are available for Rogues to train.
  • New Axe Specialization talent has been added to the Combat talent tree, which increases your chance to critically hit with axes by 1%. 5 ranks.
  • Rogues have received a new baseline ability available at level 42, Redirect: "Transfers any existing combo points to the current enemy target. Requires active combo points."

On the surface, it may seem like Rogue has received limited additions but that is simply because Rogue is in a fantastic state mechanically with most of its issues being gear related and thus resolving themselves over time. With our dedicated itemization keeping them in mind, however, we do not anticipate this to be an issue in the early game here on Project Epoch.

Priest

  • Shadow Word: Death is available at level 52.
  • Binding Heal is available at level 54.
  • Shadowfiend is available at level 56.
  • Prayer of Mending is available at level 58.
  • Prayer of Fortitude will now apply to your full raid group.
  • Prayer of Shadow Protection will now apply to your full raid group.
  • Prayer of Spirit will now apply to your full raid group.
  • Somewhere in the world you will find a Tome granting priests the ability to learn Levitate Rank 2 which allows Levitate to be cast on raid and party members.
  • With the addition of Tauren Priests the following new ability is available from level 10 and swappable via Racial Knowledge system, Radiance: "Causes the target to emite harmful rays of light, dealing X to Y Holy damage to up to 3 enemies around the target every 2 sec for 16 sec."
  • With the addition of Tauren Priests the following new ability is available from level 20 and swappable via Racial Knowledge system, An'she's Protection: "Reduces the chance that attacks and spells against you will be critical hits by 20%. Lasts 15 sec."
  • With the addition of Gnome Priests the following new ability is available from level 10 and swappable via Racial Knowledge system, Bedside Manner: "Greatly increases the morale of party members, giving them X mana every 5 sec. Effect lasts 15 sec."
  • With the addition of Gnome Priests the following new ability is available from level 20 and swappable via Racial Knowledge system, Medical Practice: "Increases your Spirit by 10% of your Intellect for 20 sec."
  • All priests have received a new baseline ability available from level 34, Penance: "Launches a volley of holy light at the target, causing 175 to 214 Holy damage to an enemy, or 491 to 550 healing to an ally instantly and every 1 sec for 2 sec.". This ability is inspired by the Wrath of the Lich King with the below key twist.
  • Shadowform will now dynamically alter Penance giving it a new Shadow visual alongside flipping the potency of the heal / damage to do reduced healing to allies and increased Shadow damage to enemies bringing it into the Shadow DPS toolkit.
  • The following Discipline tree talents have been upgraded to target the Holy variant of Penance:
    • Silent Resolve
    • Inner Focus
    • Force of Will
  • The following Holy tree talents have been upgraded to target the Holy variant of Penance:
    • Holy Specialization
  • The following Shadow tree talents have been upgraded to target the Shadow variant of Penance:
    • Blackout
    • Shadow Focus
    • Shadow Weaving
    • Darkness

Paladin

  • Crusader Aura is available at level 48.
  • Seal of Vengeance is available at level 54.
  • Seal of Penitence (Blood, see later section) is available at level 54.
  • Avenging Wrath is available at level 60.
  • The following abilities will now apply to your full raid group:
    • Devotion Aura
    • Retribution Aura
    • Concentration Aura
    • Crusader Aura
    • Sanctity Aura
    • Shadow Resistance Aura
    • Frost Resistance Aura
    • Fire Resistance Aura
  • Blessing of Sacrifice is now named Hand of Sacrifice and no longer removes other Blessings when applied.
  • Blessing of Protection is now named Hand of Protection and no longer removes other Blessings when applied.
  • Blessing of Freedom is now named Hand of Freedom and no longer removes other Blessings when applied.
  • All paladins have received a new baseline ability available from level 46, Seal of Dedication: "Fills the Paladin with strength of will for 30 sec, causing your auto-attacks to deal an additional 50% of the damage dealt to 1 additional target nearby. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Unleashing this Seal's energy will release a wave of light in front of you, dealing X Holy damage to all targets it hits. 35% of all damage dealt by this wave will also be dealt to you over 6 seconds."
  • Paladins no longer have faction based seals. Instead, Paladins now have race based seals that utilize the Racial Knowledge system allowing them to be swapped just like Priest racials.
    • Seal of Vengeance is now classed as the Human Racial Seal.
    • Seal of Blood has been renamed to Seal of Penitence and is now classed as the Undead Racial Seal.
    • Dwarf Paladins have received a new Racial Seal available at level 54, Seal of the Mountain: "Fills the Paladin with the might of thanes, giving your attacks a chance based on weapon speed to gain X Armor and increase the damage of Hammer of Wrath by 3% for 10 seconds. This effect stacks up to 5 times. Unleashing this Seal's energy will expend your stacks of Mountain's Might and cause you to hurl a holy hammer at the ground, dealing X Holy damage per stack to all nearby targets."

Closing Statement

On the surface, it may seem like some classes have received more changes than others, but over time these will even out. The primary goal of these initial changes is to provide impactful changes to gameplay and flavor.

This is quite a pivot from our previously hesitant stance, however, we are essentially endeavoring to pop the cork on class related changes beyond numbers tuning and we look forward to your feedback and suggestions.

Before launch we are committing to include a Project Epoch specific Talent Calculator on our website to aid in creating and sharing unique builds.

Beta 2.5: Return to Azeroth

It has been a little under 23 weeks since the end of Beta 2 and we value each and every one of you for your patience as we continue to work diligently in the background to prepare for Beta 3 (which is expected to be early 2024).

While we do not yet feel that the journey beyond level 45 is quite ready for you to enjoy and test, we feel that we have made several fundamental systemic changes over this phase of development that require an extra dive into testing and a chance for us to monitor the performance impact of new systems that run in the background such as our Creature AI Overhaul and get a better understanding of the impact of our World Difficulty Buffs that we have elaborated on in prior dev logs.

With that in mind, during November we will be revving up the server, re-enabling registrations, kicking into action the updater service, and opening the gates to Azeroth once more. The realm will remain available for a little over one week starting at the beginning of one weekend and commencing at the end of the following weekend. We do however need to do some final preparations before giving out a firm date, but don't worry, you will all be given amble notice of when we go live.

What Can't I Do?

  • All characters will be restricted to a maximum level of 45 the same as in Beta 2 and by proxy gated from any quest content requiring a higher minimum level.
  • You can not journey into the following Dungeons / Raids:
    • Temple of Atal'Hakkar
    • Blackrock Depths
    • Lower Blackrock Spire
    • Upper Blackrock Spire
    • Scholomance
    • Stratholme
    • Tol Barad
    • Onyxia's Lair
    • Molten Core

What Can I Do?

  • Everything else. It's that simple.

Test Helpers

Just like with previous Betas we have hosted we will be including our usual arsenal of test helper NPCs in starting zones providing level boosts, spells, misc goods, equipment crates, professions, flight paths, and teleports around Azeroth.

The level booster will now allow you to boost to levels 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, and 45 including level appropriate equipment crates at levels 15, 30, and 45 allowing a broad amount of content to be tested at both an undergeared and accurately geared level to gauge a middle ground of difficulty.

Key Focuses

The key focuses of testing will be as follows:

Creature AI

Thousands of creatures in the world have been converted to use our new Creature AI system linked above, which means almost any combat action you take out in the world and in dungeons is valued feedback.

We primarily care about checking the performance impact of the system via internal monitoring, information from you if a creature does not seem like it is casting an ability that it should, if you were able to break the combat loop in any way and does it "feel" right. The best way to test this is to enjoy all PvE aspects of the game.

World Difficulty

Starting from level 14 onwards we have introduced gradually increasing buffs to the difficulty of creatures both in the world and dungeons by modifying their health, basic damage, and buffing the intensity of the spells they use. With that said we are keenly interested in how this feels at varying levels and across all aspects of the world and instanced content.

The key feedback in this area we are seeking is whether things feel over / under tuned, are you struggling, is it fun, does a spell used seem to be too powerful or too weak, etc. The best way to test this is to enjoy all PvE aspects of the game.

Classes

Many bugs have been fixed related to classes alongside the earlier announced additions that are upcoming on Project Epoch. While you will be limited in capacity to access some of them simply due to the level 45 restriction in place, many of them will be available for early feedback.

Caveats

Please do keep in mind as you hop on that we are expecting to find crashes, performance issues, imbalances, and more. This should very much be considered an early version of what will return in 2024 with many features in an incomplete or work in progress state. You may see plenty that is still to be tweaked, bugs you've reported that are still present, and so on.

Full patch notes of the differences between the end of Beta 2 and this new patch will be posted alongside the announcement of the date.

Community Shoutouts

Over the course of this month we have been collaborating with the community member AlexS to begin the process of not only creating brand new loading screens for our Custom content, but also over time upgrade all of them to be Project Epoch specific. The main benefits to this include having a consistent style and theme for all our custom instances while also leveraging the extra horizontal space afforded to the Wrath of the Lich King client.

Below is an example of what will become the final loading screen for the Deadmines.

This has been both an iterative and collaborative experience working with AlexS to nail down the vanilla style with modern capabilities and aim to choose a loading screen that suits its area in all aspects.

Conclusion

While this month is not the most visual focused of our Dev Logs, we hope that all of the new information has both interested you and leads to spirited conversation and theory crafting within the community.

Please stay tuned for future updates on when Beta 2.5 is going live.

Kaytotes
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Developer Log - September 2023