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Final Encounter Expectations
Initially, Belo'ren was designed with the expectation that all mechanics to ramp, with a fourth wave of echoes. There was even an idea for a third wave of birds, but after testing with QA/UX, it turned into too much of a challenge, resulting in what we saw on live.
The fight was actually intended to be killed on the 3rd egg, berserking after. They were slightly worried about two-phase strategies, but it wasn't thought to be feasible without the unanticipated long-range Augmentation Evoker tech - they do think it was a cool way to skip.
There was a strategy they expected players to use on L'ura, utilizing extra crystal time, but Liquid's damage ended up higher than expected to the point it wasn't needed. They were certainly screaming at their monitors about it though, since the internal testing expected players would have about 10 more seconds than they did.
The Encounter Journal
Like Gallywix in Liberation of Undermine, Alleria's Crown of the Cosmos encounter didn't really feature a functional journal,
originally, the intent of the dungeon journal is to provide a guide for players who don't already have an understanding, especially on lower difficulties. Over time, they've been experimenting more with making the higher-difficulty details more ambiguous and enjoy how it's played out - they've found that players who engage with Mythic enjoy learning as they go, so they have a higher tolerance for the wipes that come with it.
Secret phases also play out a little better if they're not telling you about it before hand! Like L'ura, they can provide great narrative moments that players don't see coming.
Visual clarity is a huge focus for the design team, with so many things happening on the screen at one time. They want to ensure they have enough affordability to make mechanics clear and the team is generally happy with the way swirls are visualized in Midnight. One thing they learned with the Lightblinded Vanguard is that they didn't have a whole lot of color variance to play with, so they tried to find new ways to differentiate them with hints of blue and orange, but it's something they really feel they could do better with.
Their goal is to make sure players are equipped with the right tools to figure out how to solve the mechanic. That doesn't mean every detail needs to be explained fully, but that once players see it, they can start to understand how to solve it.
Race Encounter Tuning and Predictions
Encounter philosophy going into Midnight focused more on moment-to-moment decision making, rather than planning out long lists of raid cooldowns, which translated into more steady (rot) damage, triage moments, and healing debuffs. They want to provide more texture for healers from encounter to encounter, rather than every fight feeling the same.
Many of the developers watch the Race to World First together, and each individual encounter designer is always eager to see their boss being fought and eventually defeated. The secret phase reveal was the most anticipated moment, and although they assumed that players were already aware of it due to datamining, they were surprised to realize that Liquid and Echo weren't actually expecting it, culminating in a fantastic whiplash of emotions for everyone involved.
Tuning the bosses damage checks for the Race to World First requires a ton of playtesting and analysis, even as far as predicting comps that players will use. They're constantly refining these tools between tiers, and they paid pretty close to the race in real-time as well, but they don't like to adjust things too much once they're out in the wild. Ultimately, they understand how skilled and dedicated players are, firmly believing that "players are going to be able to find the damage" over their many repetitions.
Despite all of their preparation, there are always doubts. L'ura Phase 1 stands out as something that the developers weren't sure if it was too much for Race guilds to handle, and they did consider nerfing it more than they did during the early parts of progress.
There's no perfect time for mid-race tuning. A progression blocking bug is much more important to get out quickly, though tuning can be tricky since they don't want to give either region a distinct advantage. Things like L'ura tuning was a little safer, since it made the phase more consistent, but they weren't worried about it resulting in a quick kill since both guilds still had a long way to go.
Flexible Mythic Sporefall Raid in Patch 12.0.7
Blizzard has introduced mid-past raids in the past, and some of them are fond memories, while others are remembered as bone-crushing difficulty, which isn't something they necessarily want to repeat in Patch 12.0.7. The upcoming Sporefall raid in Harandar will offer a flexible 15-25 player Mythic difficulty for the very first time, which developers hope will help players struggling to bridge the gap between Heroic and Mythic difficulties.
This is an experiment and not something the developers will necessarily repeat in the future, but they're eager to hear player feedback and see how it works out for different groups.
