Gear with biome buffs, and a server that remembers who you met

Lead Game Designer Tim Jones and Senior Game Designer Michael Nuthals spoke to IGN Nordic at BlizzCon about keeping level 60 interesting without raising item levels forever. Nuthals’s answer is horizontal: some items carry biome buffs, his example a raid piece that speeds you up in a desert, and others add damage against a creature type such as dragons or dwarves, so a trinket found early can matter later in one particular raid.

Raid tiers will still improve gear, but carefully. Nuthals called Season of Discovery a case of going too far, with players in Naxxramas dealing damage at Wrath of the Lich King levels, and said gear from earlier raids should stay useful, naming the Onslaught Girdle.

Jones added that the realmless servers quietly steer you toward players you have already met, so someone you saw in Elwynn Forest might turn up thirty levels later in Desolace. New content also fills quiet corners of the old zones; his example was the questless kobold cave in northern Elwynn.

Why it matters: the gear chase at 60 runs sideways as much as upward, and the crowd around you is less random than a giant shared population sounds.