Dragonflight Developer Interviews

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Dragonflight Developer Interviews
In a group interview with several other media outlets, we had the opportunity to talk to Jeremy Feasel (Associate Game Director), May Flores Garcia (Lead Software Engineer), Steve Danuser (Narrative Director), and Maria Hamilton (Lead Quest Designer).

Character Customization
  • The team went crazy with the number of customizations for Dracthyr, and players responded very positively to the new options.
  • The developers are looking into adding more customizations to other races in the future, TBD when. Boomkins are not forgotten!

Class Fantasy
  • Making class armor sets that really make you feel like that class has been a lot of fun.
  • The team really wants you to feel like you are part of a profession. You’ll have profession things to wear while doing your profession. That was a large focus of the profession revamp.
  • Retaining class identity was important to the team as they revamped things for Dragonflight.
  • The talent tree was split so that you can keep a core class fantasy with the class tree, but also still have the spec specific things.

Playstyle
  • Dragonflight allows players to carve out a unique identity for themselves. How you spend your game time is up to you.
  • The weekly bonus allows you to do lots of types of content, so you aren’t forced into one specific thing.

Dragonriding
  • The idea for dragonriding came from a discussion with the lead animator. They were looking at making flying feel a little bit different, adding banking to existing mounts. One of the pillars was making flying feel fast, fun, and fluid. The team took examples from movies and other existing content that has done cool flying.
  • The existing movement system wasn’t designed with physics and math in mind.
  • The team started to prototype dragonriding, adding momentum and physics, but directly adding it as you would in another game wouldn’t work easily.
  • The existing movement system is very responsive and the team wanted to keep that responsiveness, so the math had to be implemented in a very specific way.
  • The dragonriding system does use real physics.
  • There were a few tweaks to the existing movement system to support dragonriding, but no huge refactors.
  • Dragonriding needed to feel like a World of Warcraft system. It should be an evolution of the existing mount system. Control is king, gameplay first.
  • Dragonriding makes you feel more connected to the world, as you are interacting with it a lot more.
  • Dragonriding may not be for everyone, it can be relatively difficult to control for some people, so players can turn into a whelp and ride with other players to get places.
  • The team isn’t sure if they’ll bring existing mounts to the dragonriding system yet, they will see what player feedback is like.
  • The overworld in Dragonflight is huge, it contains some of the biggest zones the team has ever created. These zones were designed around a fast and fluid movement system.
  • You’ll be able to use Dragonriding in the Nokhud Offensive dungeon. Wind gusts guide you a bit through the dungeon, so it has the same vibe as the overworld.
  • You can go and fully upgrade Dragonriding from the beginning, nothing stopping you from doing that.
  • Dragonriding is 830% speed, much faster than flying mounts at 310%.

Progression / Alts
  • Everyone should be able to experience the cool parts of the expansion quickly and easily. You’ll be Dragonriding halfway through the first zone.
  • The team learned a lot from 9.1.5, hopefully will be alt friendly right out of the gate this time.
  • There are a number of different quest lines that will unlock as you progress into max level Renown.
  • The new Renown content is encrypted this time, so players don’t know exactly what to expect.
  • As you progress your main Renown track through weekly activities, you’ll pick an activity to spend time on and the system will be fairly open ended, so you can progress at your own pace.
  • As you make progress on each track, you’ll unlock progression speedups for your alts, along with other stuff for your alts. This system should be alt friendly from the start.
  • Dragonriding unlocks will be account wide as well, so it’ll be alt friendly from the start as well.
  • There are a number of different side questlines unlocked at max level, with a variety of sub-factions. On one character, you may unlock some of these questlines earlier than on another character, so you may have a slightly different experience than other players.
  • The team wants to tell strong stories with all of these factions in the world, so it has been split up rather than just having one main storyline.

User Interface
  • The team wants to keep revamping different elements of the UI in the future.
  • The team talked about how to keep the heart and soul of WoW while also revamping things in a way that felt new and fresh, and providing more options for players, especially on the UI and Talent side of things.

Accessibility
  • The team has been working on adding controller support since Patch 9.2(ish). They want to make the game more accessible to players.
  • Controller support is still an ongoing effort from the engineering and UI team, with testing being done for dragonriding with controllers.
  • The team has looked at fonts and colors to make sure those are accessible

Professions
  • The high level of professions should be fairly competitive into the Mythic+ ecosystem as far as feels appropriate
  • Cooking and Fishing went down a different path than other professions that got specializations. They are entwined with the Tuskarr stuff, you’ll see group scenarios where everyone gets together and makes a feast or all play a little tug of war with fishing lines.

Questing and Lore
  • This expansion feels very classic Warcraft. It’s a chance to tell dragon stories and delve into their history more.
  • We’ve only seen glimpses that the dragons wanted to show us so far, but they have some skeletons in their closets that we are going to learn a little bit about.
  • We’ll also learn a lot about the dragon’s history with the Titans and the oaths that they made, as well as their future.
  • The max level activities should feel very faction based. You should feel like you are a member of the Tuskarr after doing Tuskarr things. It’s all about feasts, fishing, and family!
  • There are lots of additional max level questlines that will be coming out to add to the story.
  • The zones are designed for exploration and should feel full of life and activity. You’ll find rock climbing, creature cataloging, and lots of new gameplay elements while leveling.
  • Death is still an uncertainty to most citizens of Azeroth, they didn’t come to Shadowlands with us. Not everyone came back from Shadowlands.
  • We have not have found all of the afterlives yet.
  • The most interesting villains and characters aren’t necessarily the most powerful. Crafting interesting villains with nuance is a big part of the future of World of Warcraft.
  • Arthas wasn’t interesting because he was powerful, he was interesting because he went through a really meaningful character transformation and became a tragic hero, same with Illidan.
  • Making interesting characters that make interesting choices is more satisfying than just destroying the world.

Valdrakken
  • Valdrakken should feel like a dragon city, alive, populated with all the different dragons, with lots of little story vignettes hidden around.
  • Valdrakken should feel like it’s part of the dragonriding system, with lots of cool ledges to land on, because that’s what dragons do.
  • Lots of profession activity should be taking place in Valdrakken, the team learned from past profession hubs
  • Valdrakken is the center and high point, so you take off from there and go down to the zones.

Misc
  • There are still plans to allow players to transmog white and gray quality items, but there is still tech work to be done.
  • The Mythic+ system was great in Shadowlands by Season 4, the changes made were well received.
  • The team would like to make it easier to make it easier for players to start with Pet Battles. Nothing specific to announce right now, but there are things they will look into.
  • The team started working on Dragonriding last April and has been iterating on the system since then.
  • There is nothing to announce right now regarding soloing older raid content, but the team wants feedback if something feels broken when it comes to this old content, especially in older expansions.

Interview Two

Questing
  • The quest team wants to support the new class/race combo and their story arc will span all of Dragonflight and beyond. Drakthyr and Evokers will be a bit of a star, but the team is thinking about everyone when they are building out the quest content. Everyone should be enjoying the quest content.
  • Local stories in zones can feature different things that might be of interest to people.
  • The team leaned hard into local stories for Dragonflight, taking advantage of the huge zones.
    • There is a quest where a whelp is distressed because their stuffed duck is broken and it needs your help.
    • There is a dragon that comes home and it isn't quite what they remember, they have some regrets.
    • Dragonmaw Orcs come back, one elderly Orc feels bad about the things they did to whelps in the past.
  • Bread and butter questing in WoW and most games is the standard kill, collect, escort, and delivery quests. You are trying to tell a story through questing gameplay, so the gameplay should complement the story.
  • There are other quest mechanics used from time to time, saved for specific cool moments where players should have a particular feel. You may be firing a turret, doing a bombing run, having an extra action bar, driving a vehicle, and other similar things.
  • One of the biggest changes to questing in Dragonflight is dragon riding. The team knew from the start that everyone would have access while questing, so quest objectives can now be located in difficult to reach places. You might be sent to a vista with an amazing view. This allows for huge zones with interesting quests all over.
  • It’s about finding a cool way to pace things and tell the story and complementing gameplay with quests.
  • Once you’ve played the main campaign on one character, you can play the campaign in any order on an alt if you’d like.

Timeline
  • A few years pass between the end of Shadowlands and the start of Dragonflight. There will be small references to this in the world.
  • This time period was just used to let Azeroth breathe for a moment and have some of the younger characters age a bit so that they can play a bigger role in storylines to come.

Lore
  • The books in Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr reference waters that are touched by the energies of Azeroth. These energies are a force of change and the Titans don’t like uncontrolled change. Part of the reason Tyrhold was built where it was is to control the waters. The Halls of Infusion let them feed order magic into those water, which they fed into the life pools of the red flight. It’s good water for them, helps the eggs grow strong, but also has a dose of Order, so the eggs would be inclined to be more orderly. The Titans serve their own agenda, an orderly outcome. The dragons aren’t directly mind controlled, maybe influenced.
  • Raszageth plays a prominent role in the level up story in Dragonflight. There’s a lot of scenes that haven’t been datamined. If you watch the cinematic after the pre-patch when the aspects gather, you get a little more information about the shared history between them. Her presence will be felt elsewhere, with a big moment in the Waking Shores where Raszageth and Alexstraza have a moment together.
  • Khadgar has a pre-existing relationship with Kalecgos. Kalecgos was on the Dalaran council with him and spent a lot of time together. When Kalecgos is facing the fact that there aren’t many blue dragons anymore, he turns to a familiar face to help him. Khadgar gets to hear the story and experience what Kalecgos is feeling, so that we get to experience it. Khadgar is in the Azure Span during the level up campaign and may appear in other places in the expansion where he needs to fulfill a similar function of being there for a friend.
  • Since the Battle for Darkshore, you got to see Malfurion angry. A lot of the events that followed were focused on Tyrande and what she was doing, somewhat because there is only so much story you can tell at once.
  • In order for Ysera to come out of the Shadowlands, someone has to take her place. Her story will continue when it makes sense to do so.
  • There is a short story coming that touches on Lor'themar Theron and Thalyssra’s wedding. The team wants major events and drivers of the story to take place in game, but they want to use the right medium for each story. There has been some wedding stuff in game before and it isn’t super compelling gameplay. The average player doesn’t enjoy that gameplay experience. It would just be a lot of clicking, standing, and listening to show the wedding in game.
  • The team devoted a fair bit of effort to smaller and local stories, which may or may not be related to the main story. Knowing what the experience of characters living here is, especially with everything suddenly changing is what makes the world feel real and tangible.
  • You might have to wait a little while, but you’ll find out more about the copper coin in the adventure guide.
  • There’s a lot of love for Tuskarr in the community and the design team. There will be lots of Tuskarr content for players to enjoy. Fishing, family, and food, the magic triad of Tuskarr life.
  • Shadowlands was built up to for a while, with dark stuff happening in the world and to characters, with story told in the realms of death. It was heavy stuff.
  • When conceiving Dragonflight, the team wanted to tell a story rooted in adventure and optimism. We’re back on Azeroth, seeing the effects of stuff that happened in the past in a positive way. It’s a time of hope and optimism.
  • With Shadowlands, we went to a place that wasn’t previously established. Players had to be guided around and shown why things were the way they were. Now we are back in Azeroth and seeing things that are familiar (mountains, forests, grasslands). It doesn’t need quite as much explaining.
  • The expansion should end on a strong note, hopefully we have helped our allies out, achieved some things, and made the Dragon Isles a better place.

UI and Addons
  • The UI rework was to bring us to a more modern look across the board.
  • Experienced players use addons to customize their experience, but newer players don’t know how to do that as effectively.
  • The team wants to get a nice baseline UI in place and then build off of that. The UI team is continuing to look at what they can do to improve the experience for people.

Content Release
  • The last couple of expansions had weekly content chunks because the team wanted to control how they were unlocking other gameplay. Often the raids were part of these content chunks. It gave players an opportunity to be prepared for these moments. Zerith Mortis was a little different, players had more choice.
  • In Dragonflight, there won’t be weekly content unlocks at launch, the team is experimenting with different things. Game design is about trying things and iterating.

Misc
  • The team talks about Timewalking a good bit, and in an expansion with Bronze Dragons there is an opportunity to do some timey-wimey things, but no spoilers!
  • There are other race/class combinations that may be added in the future. Sometimes a story is needed to build it up before it is added. Paladins have a lot of history, so adding more Paladin race/class combinations might need some story first.

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