Nobbel Gamescom Interview on the War Within - Storytelling, Story Mode Raid & Xal'atath

wowhead.com:

At Gamescom 2024, Lore expert Nobbel sat down with Lead Software Engineer May Flores-Garcia and Associate Design Director Maria Hamilton to discuss the storytelling of the War Within and the Worldsoul Saga as well as our new antagonist, Xal'atath.

We've highlighted some of the points below, but check out the full interview for more questions on storytelling, delves, roleplaying, Xal'atath, and more!

Storytelling & Narrative

• Blizzard is aware that it can be difficult to get into 20+ years of lore, but they're making strides to make the War Within and the beginning of the Worldsoul Saga a great place to start. Players may have noticed the story catchup video starting with Sargeras stabbing Azeroth so that newer players can follow the major story beats.
• Delves are a new toolkit for the entire team, especially in terms of creating special places for narrative that were typically reserved for dungeons and raids. How they'll be utilized is certainly still evolving, but are a part of the level-up and max level story campaigns.
• It's hard to balance the need to test content versus wanting to save the storytelling details and surprises for launch. They'll continue to utilize encryption for major story spoilers while still offering glimpses to hype up the playerbase.
• Developers occasionally take part in a hackathon, where they're allowed to prototype things they're interested in with many projects inspired by roleplaying. They have nothing to announce right now, but they're continually looking at creating opportunities and fit them in when they can.

Story Mode Raiding

• Story Mode Raid is currently planned for 1 week after Heroic/Normal launch to allow the community's first look at the raid finale to not feel «weird» with it being done by a solo player. Want the finale to still feel epic for raid teams, but still allow a part of that experience for solo players after a week.
• Story Mode raiding is