Group Interview with Ion Hazzikostas and Josh Augustine – Design Philosophy and Dragonriding

Game Director Ion Hazzikostas and Lead Quest Designer Josh Augustine conducted a Dragonflight Patch 10.1: Embers of Neltharion group interview with MMORPG, MMO-Champion, Dot Esports, Dexerto, and Wowhead, discussing design philosophy, computational addons, and taking dragonriding into the future!

Design Philosophy

Dot Esports – Regarding development philosophy in Dragonflight, it feels like the elements of transparency and responsiveness to player feedback have been elevated immensely. From the developer point of view, what sparked that change in mentality, and what is the driving factor behind that alteration in mindset?

• Glad that comes across. It has been a shift, sparked by realizing their old approach wasn’t working anymore. They were failing to connect with their player base, and people were unhappy with elements of the game that the developers saw as just continuing with 20 years of tradition – the way they’ve always done it.

• Not undermining character investment is just one of those things they’ve always done, but it led to not making things too broadly accessible, and it took a couple wake up calls to realize that none of that investment matters if they’re not connecting with the playerbase.

• The answer was a conversation – working through possible changes, running them by the community, and establishing a new norm. Once that becomes the expectation, perhaps there’s more room to give each other the benefit of the doubt. The development team is not perfect, they’re going to get things wrong and make mistakes, they’re going to aim for a goal that turns out not to be something players want, or aim for something players do want but miss the mark.

• Their hope is that through communication they can more quickly understand how they’re off, while building trust that it’s not going to stay that way forever – if they get something wrong, it’s because they’re fallible like everyone else, but that their greatest desire is to understand how its wrong and fix it.

Dragonflight Response

Dexerto – How has Dragonflight felt for Blizzard? It’s gotten great reviews, but do you feel that momentum has continued into 10.1?

• It’s felt incredible, even refreshing to listen to player feedback, adjusting, and questioning some things they’ve taken for granted. Several designers have felt the opportunity to pitch new ideas as well, such as the Centaur hunts and Tuskar feasts. In that sense, it’s been really rewarding to see players get excited about it. Seeing the players love the game is a huge uplift for the team in general.

• Leading into Embers of Neltharion, it’s great to take the lessons of Dragonflight into a full .x update. They’ve tried a lot of new things and gotten a lot of feedback of what players did/not like, and this is a new chance to refine and try new ideas.

• Coming up soon on the halfway point of trying to deliver on new goals in Dragonflight, Ion is so proud of what the team has accomplished and it’s been great to see the reactions of everyone playing. Once Embers of Neltharion is out next week, stay tuned, because that means the Patch 10.1.5 PTR will be right around the corner!

Reviving Old Dungeons

Dot Esports – Last year it was mentioned that Mists of Pandaria would be the cutoff for throwback dungeons, but now we’re getting Vortex Pinnacle. How far back are you willing to dive in terms of technology, and with 20 years worth of code, what are the complications there?

• Lesson learned for trying to draw a line! They want to be flexible, and at the time they were just guessing. Internally as a team, they think of Mists as a large turning point in terms of artistic fidelity, especially for creatures and visual effects that still feel like they can hold up in the modern game, whereas before that things look much more low poly and dated.

• As seen with Vortex Pinnacle, going earlier than Mists is possible, but while Timewalking is supposed to be revisiting old content, making a dungeon part of the main Dragonflight content invites players to spend a lot more time there and they don’t want it to feel lifted straight out of 2007 or something without presenting the best picture of what World of Warcraft is or what they want it to be.

• Alongside visual fidelity is mechanical complexity. At the time, Mists was also when Challenge Mode was born, that’s when they started thinking about timers, enemy forces, and routing through dungeons in a way tehy didn’t before. If you go back far enough, most of the dungeons were incredibly simple by modern standards, resting more on class mechanical challenges that no longer apply.

• In 2007, Shattered Halls was legendary for being a very hard Heroic Burning Crusade dungeon, but the reason it was hard is because there were packs of 6-7 enemies and Prot Warriors were the only real tank at the time. Tanks didn’t have very good tools for keeping aggro on that many things at a time, so trying to manage that was very challenging, but that’s not a thing anymore. Same with bosses, who typically had less abilities in that era than many trash lieutenant enemies do today.

• If creating a compelling experience that holds up alongside the rest of the dungeon pool, requires remaking the entire dungeon, including all the bosses and all the pulls, at that point they might as well just make something brand new since they’re not really delivering on the nostalgia anymore.

• A hybrid version like Temple of the Jade Serpent and Vortex Pinnacle have some revamps but still feel like good representations of the original dungeon had been, so as long as they feel like it’ll be good, potentially anything is fair game.

Computational Auras & Addons

• It’s being used very conservatively in a couple places in Aberrus. They don’t want to set unreasonable expectations for players, but the overall intent is to reclaim a bit of territory in the arms race between designers and the community.

• It also goes back to the broader discussion over informational versus computational addons and weak auras. Informational ones customize how and where information is shown on the displayed, tailoring the user interface to personal preferences, and they don’t want to change that.

• Computational ones do things that might have otherwise required raid calls or pre-planned assignments for – in the past, three people getting targeted to explode was spread out on the fly with some rough assignment of ranged go one way and melee go another, but now a weak aura or addon turns this into set markers with set locations for each without any communication or decision making. Trying to tune around allowing time for communication and coordination to solve that problem results in the mechanic becoming trivial, because the addon solves the problem at superhuman speed and the mechanic feels non threateningly pointless. On the other hand, trying to tune around the existence of those superhuman addons effectively requires them, since no team could solve the problem that quickly without them.

• They’d rather be able to provide players with problems to solve via coordination that requires using their brains to solve, rather than an addon author solving the problem and algorithmically spreading the solution for everyone to automatically implement. The ability to flag a debuff in which three people need to run and spread out from each other as a private aura will cause the default UI to show its there, but WeakAuras/DBM/etc won’t be able to automatically query and interact with it to automatically mark players and solve the problem.

• They also understand that doing this requires ensuring the readability and time affordance is appropriate. They need raid warnings and strong visuals, rather than just taking away a tool that feels like the only way to reasonably respond to the mechanic.

Dragonriding into the Future

Dexerto – Is there a world where Dragonriding becomes universal across Azeroth? Would you have deeper concerns about this and what would become of traditional mounts?

• Ion thinks those are all great questions, and he would call that world the World of Warcraft. They’re almost certainly headed that direction in some form. From week one of the expansion it was immediately apparent there was no way they could just take away Dragonriding and just ask everyone to go back to the way it was in the rest of the world before this expansion – Blizzard would have people with torches and pitchforks outside their campus in Irvine.

• Those questions still need to be answered though – how does it coexist alongside traditional flying, what does it mean for mount collections, what mounts could be able to dragonride, how does all of it work holistically. Yes, dragonriding is awesome, but they don’t want to make 99% of existing mount collections obsolete either.

• Part of why they’re being conservative (a lot) is the same as faction stuff – they understand that anything they do here is likely to set a forever precedent, and they want to be sure they’re being thoughtful about all of the long term implications, but it is safe to say that once Dragonflight is said and done and you’re moving onto new adventures, you’re going to be dragonriding or have the ability to do so in some form – it’s too cool a system to leave behind.

Encouraging Alts

MMORPG – I’ve never managed to keep up with alts until this expansion, and I’m curious if you have data showing any significant increase in the playing of alts.

• They’re seeing an increase, though not sure if it’s especially significant. They do tend to see a rise of alts over the course of the expansion, but they’ve also been releasing more and more content, which pulls players back onto their mains rather than just raid logging or switching over to their alts, and they think it’s been a healthy balance overall.

• The goal is less about increasing the number of alts that the average player has, which isn’t inherently valuable – you may have had an army of garrison alts generating gold in WoD, but is that inherently healthy? The question is whether it feels fun and empowering to play alts or if it feels tedious, and all of their efforts are aimed towards the former.

Solo Shuffle

MMO-Champion – An earlier update mentioned making Solo Shuffle more appealing to queue for as a healer, any update on that?

• Still working on it. Queue times are also a thing, so some of it is just the natural flow of a heavy priority on PvP healers. No immediate plans for 10.1 though.

Loot & Transmog

MMORPG – We haven’t seen much info about the Catalyst in 10.1. Will it go dormant, will we have to unlock it again, what will happen to our current charges?

• There’s a blog going up in the next couple days that should lay it out, but yes the Catalyst will go away. It’s coming back in 4-5 weeks in early June (exact date to be in the blog).

• Unlike the last time, you won’t have to do anything to earn the charges – no quest, no currency – each week all players will accumulate an account-wide charge which can be spent on any character without any extra cost, but they won’t be character specific.

• The old catalyst will effectively become unavailable. In a later update, likely in a 10.1.5, they’re looking to provide a way to use the new catalyst to convert Season 1 gear without consuming a Season 2 charge, since they know some people would still like to unlock those cosmetics, but don’t want them to burn a precious Season 2 charge to do so.

Wowhead – Regarding the new Sparks of Shadowflame coming in Patch 10.1, what is the unlock schedule looking like, and what’s happening to previous (Season 1) sparks?

• Players will obtain a half a spark each week starting with the launch of 10.1, combining two to make the first full spark with the release of Season 2 on May 9th.

• From there on, players will continue to gain one half each week, for one full spark every two weeks, and that will continue forever. There’s no more Bottled Essence, no more “you hit your cap, and now good luck winning the lottery getting extra ones,” it’s just one spark every two weeks.

• The quest to earn the original five Season 1 sparks still exists, but no more Bottled Essences will drop past that. Season 1 Sparks can still be used to craft Season 1 gear, which you can then recraft to Season 2, or you can just make Season 2 gear straight up.

Wowhead – Old Mythic loot is still available from past raids, but previous elite transmogs from PvP are not. Are there any plans to make those available as well?

• There are no current plans, though it maybe something they revisit. Philosophically they try to find ways to bring back unavailable cosmetics that cycled out and can’t be obtained anymore. Cosmetic options are cool, and there’s a short-short list of things that were setup to be permanently exclusive accomplishments – original Challenge Mode weapons and armor have deliberately been kept exclusive.

• Elite armor is in a middle-ground, where it’s not quite as exclusive as past things, but still hard to get at the time, so it’s something the team will periodically revisit and discuss, but no plans right now.

Wowhead – Legendaries are some of the most exciting items for players, but while we were flooded with them in the past, we haven’t seen any this expansion. With the addition of very rare loot and more awesome cantrip items in the regular loot pool, are they now a legacy of the past?

• Other than times where there’s a systemic role for legendaries like Legion or Shadowlands, legendaries have been done on an adhoc basis – a specific item tied to a specific enemy or place in the world, when it’s an item of legendary stature being turned into something bigger.

• They haven’t formally decided to change that approach entirely, but they are moving into new territory, digging into new lore, and haven’t yet hit upon the thing they feel needs to be a legendary, but it’s something they’re confident that they’ll return to in due course.

MMORPG – One of my frustrations has been rolling for loot in LFR, especially as a high item level raider trying to get the LFR set for transmog purposes. Do you have any thoughts to address availability of tier sets for people who only want them for transmog purposes?

• The new roll for transmog option has higher priority than greed rolls to help alleviate this frustration, but need rolls for power upgrades still have priority over people who would just disenchant or vendor it.

• It’s a problem they know they need to do more to solve. Feeling that you’ve already earned the piece at a higher level and only want the cosmetic, without having to wait to solo farm the activity a few years from now, is a very valid thing to want. Nothing to announce right now, but in the future they may explore a way to purchase the lower level appearances outright.

Mounts

MMO-Champion – We’re curious if your philosophy on mount acquisition has changed in Dragonflight. it used to be a lot of RNG drops, but that seems to have been kept to a minimum and they’ve become more exciting this time around. Is that on purpose?

• A little on purpose, a little bit random. Sometimes there are more or less just based on the ideas which strike rewards designers at the time, but they’ve definitely heard feedback regarding RNG and long-tail random chase. They have their place in the game, but in a sparing way.

• Ideally, they want every mount to signify something to signify something you did to get it – saving gold, a test of skill, or even getting lucky. The ones that feel like they’re most reliant on luck should be in the minority – they still want to keep “winning the lottery” moments, but only on occasion.

MMO-Champion – The unavailable Big Blizzard Bear and Tan Camel have been in the mount collection tab for a decade now, and since several TCG mounts have been re added lately, will these two make another appearance again or can they be removed if not?

• That sounds like a bug, and those two mounts should be flagged to be hidden until they’re obtained. Things may change in the future, but the general rule is that if it’s not actively earnable, it shouldn’t be shown as unlearned in the list.

Impact of Cross-Faction Guilds

Dot Esports – Throughout WoW’s history, it’s been pretty evident that certain servers have been community designated as faction server – Stormrage is an Alliance server, Illidan is a Horde server. Do you expect that kind of faction wall to break down or shift now that cross-faction guilds are in the picture?

• It’s hopeful, it’s possible, but not something that will happen very quickly at all. It’s not like this is reason for 96% of the players on a one-sided server to suddenly change to the other faction, it more that in the long run it becomes more viable to play on that server if you play in the minority.

• You don’t have to worry about not having anyone to play with if or having a desolate auction house if you’re on the underpopulated faction. They want to continue to chip away at the things that create barriers, but don’t think it’s going to cause any change in existing populations overnight, but it should lead to more flexibility in the long run.

Dexerto – Cross-faction guilds are going to bring down the wall between Alliance and Horde even further, but is there a world where those walls are brought down entirely? Will Orcs ever be able to walk freely through Stormwind, will RP players ever be able to play seamlessly with their friends on the other side of the split?

• Anything is possible, and they’re slowly, conservatively headed in that direction. They’re looking to tear down barriers to playing with the opposite faction and updating the choices available to players to reflect the shared experience with real-life friends and in-game stories. If Thrall and Jaina can choose to work together, why can’t you and your opposite friend?

• One reason is simply technical – it’s 20-years worth of code and content built never imaging someone of the opposite faction would be present at the same time or doing that content. Delivering a good, polished experience there would require a lot of untangling and double-triple checking all of that to make sure it works. That’s part of why they started with instanced gameplay last year, due to it being one of the most self-contained spaces and often built to be the same raid/dungeon/experience for everyone. Outdoor world questing is on the opposite end of the spectrum, with entirely different questlines, mechanics, and logic between factions, but rather than wait until it can all be delivered at once, they’re working on doing it piecemeal – instanced gameplay being one of the biggest in order to allow players to find a Mythic+ group or raid with their friends.

• The other reason is recognizing that players have different feelings about the faction conflict. It’s a long-held part of Warcraft lore, and some find it preposterous to have Alliance and Horde working openly together. They want to keep it opt-in and want to understand the ramifications of social changes as they go down that path, because they know it’s a one-way path. They’re never going to allow any form of cross-faction play and then decide it was a mistake and disallow it.

• So they want to proceed very cautiously, very carefully, but steadily in that direction – time will tell what lies at the end of that path, but they want to tear down barriers and reframe factions as something that’s a reflection of cosmetics, values, theme, and what place you want to take in WoW, rather than who you can and cannot play the game with.

DoT Esports – With the introduction of cross-faction guilds and the last two expansions bringing more focus on the Alliance and Horde working together, will there be another moment in the future game’s story where we get back to the faction conflict, and will it be more difficult to navigate that with the factions becoming more interlocked?

• With a game like WoW, there’s never a never. They think it’s a different opportunity – in the past, the Horde and Alliance were so cutthroat that it was difficult to tell stories about them working together. Dragonflight is showing them working together, but there are still opportunities to show that not everyone is getting along.

• Anduin and Baine can be out there holding hands, but it doesn’t mean the grizzled war veteran out in a cave somewhere has changed his mind. There’s lots of opportunities to still tell those stories, even immediately in Dragonflight, and War Mode also gives another avenue to explore that with special world quests and such.

• It’s just a matter of finding the right context. Dragonflight is a hopeful optimistic endeavor, so it feels right that the Alliance and Horde are working together, but there’s another potential setting like fighting over a scarce resource in Battle for Azeroth that’s a great opportunity to explore the factions maybe not working together as they are here.

Story Development & Lore

Dexerto – WoW has been contending with a lot of villains of its past in recent years, why do you think that is, and do you think the game’s two-decade history is an asset to the game?

• It’s a huge asset when looking at bringing in characters. Part of this content update is going underground and exploring Neltharion’s history, so we get the opportunity to go with Wrathion and see through his eyes. That sort of depth and storytelling is awesome, but it’s also valuable to have new stories as well.

• They aren’t limited by the past, but it’s a great treasure trove to pull from when it’s relevant. They don’t feel like they’re limited in the new stories they can tell.

MMO-Champion – In Patch 10.0.7 we saw the Baine side story and on the PTR there’s one about the Drakonid rebellion. Should we expect those kind of significant side stories as patch content going forward, and what makes you decide what stories to tell in that medium?

• There’s no set rule for a specific of side stories, but two pieces they look at – one is continuing story threads, like the Tyr storyline that started in 10.0 and continues in 10.1. Another is opportunities for individual one-off stories, of which Baine is a great example due to the natural hook with the Centaur. That originated from a designer on the team who recognized the opportunity, and so they approached it as a one-off story.

• 10.1 will have its own surprises, but looking forward, they have a rich history of Warcraft. Whenever they go to a new place or meet new people, they want to think about “who would care about this? What stories that were left hanging could have their next chapter here?”

MMORPG – In some of the Patch 10.1 story we see Wrathion, Ebyssian, and Sabellian struggling with whispers – didn’t Wrathion do something to Ebyssian to make him more resistant and don’t we have legendary cloaks that we can hit them with? Narratively, is it just because those things were useful against N’Zoth specifically, or is there something else going on that way?

• Probably can’t give you a full answer on the narrative of the cloak since Josh wasn’t there when it was made, but a lot of the story is the characters wrestling with the same things that undid Neltharion himself, turning him into Deathwing.

• Can they work against that outcome, or is it destiny that every black dragon will succumb to this? Can they find a way to overcome and find a new direction for their flight? Sabellian came back in Dragonflight believing in the best of Neltharion, so experiencing these moments allows him to see what Neltharion becoming Deathwing looks like, and giving him a better sense of his dad, whether he does want to follow in those footsteps or take a different path.