Addon UI Customization
The UI and engineering team has been working closely with addon-authors to make sure everyone is aware of what information is being removed. It's going to be a continual conversation as they progress through the Alpha.
Generally, addons will no longer have direct access to real-time combat information, such as aura and damage. They won't be able to perform calculations that in suggest rotations or trivialize encounters.
As far as reskinning is concerned, the UI engineers have been working on new tech to allow more control over the visual customization of that information, without allowing direct access to it. Ion previously described it as a black box, whereby addons can change the color or scale of the box, but can't affect what's inside it.
Approachability vs Simplicity
The one-button rotation and "approachability" efforts of class redesigns in Midnight are two separate things. They have heard a lot of feedback from people who just want to do general quests and explore the world of Warcraft, but feel daunted by how much they have to learn.
The approachability efforts of Midnight are for other reasons, one of which is the deprecation of addons. They want to ensure that abilities don't feel too dependent on addons - one example is Outlaw's Roll the Bones, which required some complex math to play optimally at the same time as doing mechanics and paying attention to the rest of the rotation.
The intent is not to just make the game easy to play, so much as just make it easier for folks to understand the rotation. There should still be plenty of opportunities for skill expression. If players think they simplified the fun out of something, they want to hear that feedback.
A New Coat of Paint
Players know what an expansion is - there's going to be raids and dungeons and seasons, but they are trying to add novel experiences to each expansion instead of just a new coat of paint.
There's a non-linear aspect to the zones, Arator's journey in particular breaks the typical "a zone is a campaign chapter and a campaign chapter is a zone" setup, by taking players all over the place.
The Midnight team worked closely with Chris Metzen and the creative team to use old zones for more than just old content, instead letting it be a setting to move the story forward, allowing Arator's story to take place in places like Stratholme and Blackrock Mountain.
Prey is another new feature which will shake things up by having players both hunt and be hunted. In brainstorming about how to make the outdoor world more interesting, they thought about Nemesis bosses ambushing players in Delves or the Butcher suddenly appearing in Diablo, and tried to figure out a way to engineer more moments like that.
Story wise, the elves of Silvermoon are very high and regal, but they also have this sort of skeezy underbelly with shady dealings in Murder Row, which lends itself to the idea of going on hunts. The quest team then saw it as an opportunity to add more difficulty to the outdoor world, which wasn't the initial goal, but turned into a cool opportunity.
People who just want to mine and pick herbs don't need to opt into the higher difficulty, but the most exciting part of Prey is the potential for those higher difficulties to keep you on your toes as you travel through the Midnight zones.
Whether or not Prey will become an evergreen feature and make its way into The Last Titan depends on how it plays out. Delves proved popular enough to continue in Midnight and have been expanded with a bunch of new functionality as a result.
Staggered Raid Release
For those who are unaware, Midnight Season 1 will feature 9 raid bosses split across three raid zones. When the season starts, the six-boss Void Spire and one-boss Dream Rift will be open, with the two-boss March on Quel'danas releasing a couple weeks later.
They decided to split the raids up based on player feedback, and the team was looking to shake things up after having already built several ~8 boss raids in a row. The initial plan was just two raids, which turned into three with the addition of the Dream Rift.
Staggering their release is a function of the story, rather than anything to do with addons. The team just started dabbling with storymode raids in The War Within, as a way to allow non-raiders to experience the story, and it was very successful.
Midnight has some fun twists and turns; there are some story spoilers in the upcoming raid bosses, and there are some good story opportunities in allowing some stuff to happen in between the first and third raid.
They want to try new things to mix up the presentation and give players a different experience with the expansion and are eager to see how players will respond to putting more story spoilers in raids. Maybe it means future raids will have more story connotations, maybe it means they'll be tangential - The Azj-Kahet storyline wrapped up with Alleria facing Xal'atath, so while the Nerub-ar Palace raid still still important, it wasn't a loadbearing part of why we progressed into Undermine.
They're building a fantasy game, so anytime they can inject some cool story, get players invested in characters or excited about the world is a positive thing.
Raid Difficulty Progression
The six-boss Voidspire will have a difficulty similar to previous eight boss raids, with the single boss inside the Dream Rift falling somewhere in the middle of that progression.
Since players will already have some gear by the time it releases, the final two bosses in March on Quel'Danas will be a bit harder. The first is probably not as hard as the last boss in Void Spire, but the final boss should "be the exclamation point at the end of Season 1."
Housing Limitations
As far as how many people can pack into one neighborhood block party, the community is going to have to help Blizzard test what their limits are before the servers catch fire.
The philosophical approach to housing is to let players do what they think is fun. Decor doesn't have many rules - you can flip it, put in a wall, float it in the middle of a room, turn off gravity, doesn't really matter. Some people are going to use that to build the ugliest, craziest houses, but others will build majestic things.
Likewise, they don't want to artificially limit the number of people who can hang out in a house or neighborhood, as long as performance can support it.
The other side of the equation is engineers working on improving the ability for a lot of players to be in one space at the same time. That has improved over time, and they continue to work on it both for players as well as supporting better creatures, spells, and cool events.
Guild neighborhoods are currently restricted to either Horde or Alliance, rather than mixing and matching different sections. In the future, Paul can see the desire for large guilds to have multiple subdivisions, but it's a matter of taking the time out to build and prioritize it against the 999 other really cool ideas.
