Class Identity and Philosophy
Classes are a fundamental building block of the WoW experience, the lens through which players view and experience every aspect of the game. It's the first decision you make upon logging into the game and creating a character.
The developers want meaningful differences to flesh out the fantasy, though in recent years its been a challenge to avoid homogenization between capabilities as they try to make multiple paths and playstyles all valid. Class fantasy was a lot simpler 15 years ago when the only content was solo casual player, raiding, and PvP, so they could more easily define which classes/specs were good at what activities.
Today, the game has a ton of different playstyles, and as important as class fantasy is, players who love those playstyles wouldn't think it's satisfactory if they were completely inviable in Mythic+. The toolkits have become a bit more homogenous for that reason, so they team tries to lean more on visuals and aesthetic. There are still some mechanical differences as well, it's just harder to balance them in the modern game.
Intra-spec balance depends on a few factors, but balancing hybrids vs pure DPS classes is also a matter of prioritization: if you have multiple spec options in the same role, you've got more opportunity to switch between them, so balancing each one to be very competitive is not necessarily as a high priority as the class which only has one option.
New seasons and expansions are able to reset balance, though they try to avoid making too big of balancing changes mid-season, since players have already invested into building their character.
Addon Changes in Midnight
Tracking enemy cooldowns hasn't traditionally been possible through the UI, though that's never stopped players from creating tools to do it as far back as Molten Core, so Blizzard is keenly aware that players will find ways to fill gaps in whatever they don't provide.
Once alpha begins, the first boss of March on Quel'Danas will be testable on normal mode in order for players to check out Blizzard's new built-in Boss Timers, helping them identify what information needs to be seen and how players want to customize it.
Regular mobs won't have ability timers like this, but Ion considers that an issue on Blizzard's end - if there's a regular mob in a pack that has an ability that will wipe the group, it should be very obvious through visuals and voice lines. These are things the developers really want to hear more feedback on.
Likewise, they're making improvements to PvP unit frames to make it easier for players to track important things like trinkets and major cooldowns. Interrupts aren't tracked right now, but it's all modular on Blizzard's end, so they're looking for feedback as to what players feel like they need to see.
This does mean you won't have access to track every single thing that's happening anymore, but it also levels the playing field. Different players won't have access to differing amounts of information anymore, creating more room for skill as the deciding factor, rather than setup.
A lot of the class changes seen on the Alpha so far are in response to trying to play the game without WeakAuras doing the decision making. In some cases, the answer is to change the UI, but sometimes the answer is just to simplify design so that players don't need to track three different buff states before deciding which ability to use.
Remix, Housing, and other Collections
When deciding what would be available in MoP and later Legion Remix, the team tried to err on the side of letting players earn as many things as possible, when they felt like they could reproduce the same conditions. Garrosh heirlooms and AotC mounts were all subjective calls that landed on one side of the line, but if they were to do MoP Remix again, they might make another decision.
Notable exclusions exclusions include Challenge Mode and Mage Tower rewards, because those systems are considered incompatible with the Remix environment. Challenge Modes normalized your stats and the Mage Tower was designed to be a high level challenge which is undermined by the much greater power scaling in Remix.
Bringing Collector's Bounty back is an interesting idea, and while it is likely to return in some form, the developers want to be careful to not create the impression that it isn't worth trying to farm things outside of the event.
The next step for housing is making it so that you can place your collected pets in your home and yard. They still need to fix some technical issues with moving around and interacting, but once they add that feature, it's only natural that they will want to include furniture that your pets can interact with (like a cat tree).
New Mount achievements are on the team's radar, they want to make sure that they have a reward that feels worthwhile, not just another recolor. Lately all of their prestigious mounts have been going to other activities, but they'll find something soon.
Down the line, they're looking at rolling out miniture versions of notable things from the game as part of housing decor. You may be able to place artifacts or even miniaturized versions of the Sword in Silithus or Frozen Throne in your house! The Sword in Silithus will also be revisited before the end of the World Soul Saga.
