EXCLUSIVE: World of Warcraft: Dragonflight interview – a deep dive on Dracthyr and Dragonriding
We sat down with World of Warcraft senior designers Graham Berger аnd Jake Miller to discuss Dragonflight’s new features.
I’ve seen just about everything in MMOs. I began playing World of Warcraft shortly before Ahn’Qiraj launched way back during the vanilla days, and have played it off and on ever since. WoW’s history definitely has its peaks and valleys, but the highs are extremely memorable. Exploring Northrend on launch week, the entirety of Mists of Pandaria, and the Assault on the Broken Shore are personal highlights.
It’s no great secret, however, that Shadowlands, the most recent expansion, had more than a few fumbles — which is why I’m pleased to report that Dragonflight, the upcoming expansion, looks to shuffle out the old and usher in the new. I had the immense pleasure of sitting down for a brief Q&A with senior game designers Graham Berger (Dracthyr, the new dragon race designer) and Jake Miller (Dragonriding designer) to dive deep into some of the new systems.
Note: The questions and answers have been edited slightly for clarity.
GLHF: What were some of the difficulties you faced when designing Dracthyr combat to retain dragon-like qualities while also still being functional for players? Deep Breath (an attack that moves the player forward while spitting dragon fire) in particular looks to be a little odd if that has to fit into a rotation somewhere.
Berger: Our goal was that we wanted to make players feel like a dragon. “What is going to sell that fantasy? What is going to evoke that emotion?” Deep Breath is a great example, because if you’re in the outdoor world or if you’re in a dungeon, flying over and strafing everything feels raw, physical and draconic. But in certain scenarios, that’s not going to be ideal movement.
When it comes to balancing those sorts of things, there are a lot of considerations for Deep Breath specifically — for example, it might be best to use in Area of Effect scenarios. On a single target raid boss, it probably isn’t something you try to fit into your rotation exactly on cooldown. But even if that’s the case, or if someone wants to play that way, we tried to add talent options to make that easier.
Designing those has been a journey to figure out. We like the feeling of that charge-up mechanic — the press and hold feature, and the sort of anticipation and build-up it gives. Trying to build spells in a more modern mindset, using this new type of movement but having it be applicable to existing WoW situations and combat circumstances was a challenge.
GLHF: From the beta we learned that at least one dungeon, the Nokhud Offensive, will feature Dragonriding as a mechanic. It evokes memories of The Oculus, a dungeon in Wrath of the Lich King where players had to use a mount for flying combat — players loved it at first, but eventually grew to despise it whenever it popped up as a random Heroic. Did you refer to dungeons like The Oculus when designing Dragonriding dungeons, and if so, what lessons did you take away from it to make Dragonriding feel as good as it does?
Miller: When we developed Dragonriding, it was a big team effort in terms of feedback and doing play tests, iterating on each test and so on. The inclusion in the Nokhud Offensive has a lot to do with the encounters team seeing Dragonriding and going “this is part of the base Dragonflight experience — an excellent, well-supported functionality that we’re doing throughout the Dragon Isles — let’s see how we can use this in fun and interesting ways.”
I think that what we’ve leaned into with the Nokhud Offensive, and Dragonriding overall, is to emphasise locomotion. You’ll find that in Dragonriding, there are not a lot of specialised or complicated mechanics, like navigating while also targeting off the Drake. That’s part of why we brought Dragonriding into the Nokhud Offensive — because we felt like we could focus it on traversal, and it would be supported throughout the expansion.
GLHF: Were there any thoughts about the balance between the different roles given to Dracthyr when designing Evokers (the new class)? For instance, Preservation appears to be an extremely capable healer for any content with Tip the Scales and Spiritbloom or Rescue.
Berger: Definitely, balance is a consideration for us, especially if it is something like exactly how much healing or damage things deal. Earlier on in the design process, it’s much more about ‘what do we want to do’ over broad strengths and weaknesses of a specialisation or playstyle.
For Devastation and Preservation, it is about burst area of effect, damage or healing. It is about rapid mobility to counteract the shorter range that those specialisations have. Especially in the healer’s case, the way they fit into a raid group and being able to function in smaller group content like a dungeon or three-man arena team were heavy considerations for us.
If they’re only good at AOE healing and can’t do single target healing, they’re gonna really struggle because they have to keep the tank alive, right? For Preservation, we wanted them to shine in larger group content with those strengths of clumpy, heavy healing alongside high mobility. They have the toolset to play well in dungeons and keep the tank alive based on how they spend their resources, such as spending their essence on more Echoes rather than Emerald Blossoms, for example.
GLHF: Not trying to toot my own horn here (I’m actually a little disappointed in myself when I think about it) but I’ve played a lot of MMOs over the course of my life. Dragonriding is unlike any other MMO mount aspect I’ve ever experienced. It’s fast, fluid and fun, which is something that I’m not really used to when trying to get from Point A to Point B. Did you have any direct inspirations from other media or games when it came to designing the mechanics of Dragonriding?
Miller: When we’re looking at an expansion in terms of blue sky thinking, we ask ourselves ‘Where are we going? What do we want to do when we get there?’ So being able to have a new Drake to move around and partner up in the skies with was quickly pushed to the top of our list in terms of what we wanted to do.
As we explored that, we did a bunch of brainstorming sessions with various groups, like artists, animators, coders, to ask: “What do we think would be vital to this experience?” A lot of inspiration came from other media in terms of how the Drakes interact with humans, as well as stuff like hang-gliding. In fact, one of the very early versions, for instance, was so tuned toward hang-gliding that we ended up having a big playtest and trying it out.
It was before we had active abilities or resources, so all we had were mouse controls. Overwhelmingly, the feedback was “This doesn’t feel like WoW, and this doesn’t feel like I’m working together with a dragon.” So for the next iteration, we introduced more “wild” style abilities and resources. After that, it started to feel new and inspired by all the things we mentioned in brainstorming, while also fitting comfortably in the wheelhouse of World of Warcraft.
GLHF: Dracthyr have wings, a long tail — basically several extremities that other races don’t have. Modelling gear to work for Dracthyr must have been a pain. How difficult was designing a new race with such different features than previously new entries?
Berger: With the Dracthyr and their Visage form, one of the decisions we made early on was to restrict a lot of gear from showing while you’re in your Dracthyr form. In Visage form, you get to see all of your armour, all your transmogs, your weapon, etc. Part of that does have to do with their physiology being a whole lot weirder than all the other races, but it also opened up an opportunity for us to do the custom armour that players get to pick at character customisation.
The original pass on that was just a few pieces of armour and a few colours. When we went to alpha, we got feedback from both ourselves internally and from players being like, “This is really cool. Can you do more please? We would love more.” So the artists took that feedback, went back and made a ton of different colour versions that turned out extremely cool. A lot of that gets to shine, however, because we aren’t showing other pieces of armour on the character.
GLHF: Are there any plans to make some Aspect-styled armour? Like, say, Alexstraza’s armour set or perhaps Wrathion’s turban?
Berger: With the customisation options, you can certainly make yourself look a lot like an aspect by having your scales match the different dragon flights. I think for Dragonflight’s launch, what’s currently available in beta is pretty much what we’re going to ship with. Certainly though, if that’s something the community is excited about, we’re always looking for more opportunities for customisation or awesome inspiration for armour sets. We’ll see in later patches what the future holds.
GLHF: I keep saying it, but it is true — Dragonriding is literally the best flying has ever been. I really appreciate the efforts that your team went into customisation — in terms of choices, you have Drakes, Proto-drakes, you have Dinosaur Drakes…what were some of the design questions and choices you ultimately had to make when it came to selecting what went into the final product regarding customisation?
Miller: When we initially started concepting with our team, it’s effectively was, “let’s do as much as we can.” So the questions and challenges were less around, “What do we want to do for specific use cases,” and more, “we have all of these assets, so what are we going to do with all of them?”
It was really cool to see the way that we were able to pepper in all sorts of customisations from all sorts of different content. We’re super stoked for players to be able to go and see what sort of Drake customisations they want and then hunt them down using the Rostum of Transformation item.
GLHF: Something one of World of Warcraft’s competitors does is allow players to customise their bird partner with armour from specific bosses. Since Drakes are our partners for the expansion (and hopefully beyond) would we see a similar system? Spitballing here, but if I go take out Garrosh from Siege of Orgrimmar, would my Drake be able to wear Corrupted Garrosh gear on its sides?
Miller: Nothing to announce specifically in terms of Garrosh! (laughs) I will say, and I think players are just seeing this on the beta — we do have a concept of prestige mounts. For high PvP ratings, as an example, you’ll see a mount that denotes high PvP skill, so we wanted to keep that idea while letting people show-off during Dragonriding. So in that vein, the unlock is a full transformation for the entire Drake — it’s transformed using a custom new visual that is stunning and prestigious.
GLHF: I’m sure many of us remember dragon cleaves (claw swipes that deal damage in a conal area) being a thing. Were there any thoughts towards opening up Evokers to a tank role or perhaps a secondary, more melee oriented damage-per-second (DPS) role? What might that have looked like?
Berger: During our brainstorming sessions with the team, we came up with themes for what we wanted this class to be — what we would want to highlight as being a draconic character. One of the main things that came out of that is their sense of family and togetherness, which is different from dragons in a lot of other media, [where they] are loners at the top of their mountain.
Dragonflight magic, like Red, Blue and Bronze, are very different from the magic that Mages and Warlocks cast, so we wanted to embrace that. Which led us to creating a ranged damage dealer. We haven’t added a new caster class since Classic, as many are aware — we’ve added a lot of melee, we’ve added a lot of tanks, we’ve added one healer, so it felt like it was time for a ranged DPS.
Looking at those flights again, we figured that Bronze and Green could easily have a lot of healing applications. We’ve never let players mess with time magic before — Mages touch on it a little bit, but not a whole lot. So we asked ourselves: “wouldn’t it be awesome to go all in?” So Healer ended up being the second specialisation.
GLHF: I’m sure you’ve seen this question before, but are there any plans to bring Dragonriding to locales outside of the Dragon Isles? Expansions tend to create an idea and then move on when the next expansion rolls around, so it would be a horrific shame if Dragonriding goes away in the next expansion.
Miller: I certainly didn’t expect such positive, warm, resounding feedback around Dragonriding, so I will say that while we are laser-focused on the Dragon Isles — the feedback is absolutely being heard. We’re excited to see how we expand on the system inside the Dragon Isles, and how it plays out over the course of several content updates. I think as we move through those updates and continue to get feedback from players, it’ll help us chart a path toward the future.
GLHF: Who do you think would win in a six-way race between the Dragon Aspects (Including Wrathion and Sabellion)?
Miller: Ever since the Visions of N’Zoth update, I’ve been a huge Wrathion fan, so that’s who I’m pulling for.
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Berger: Nozdormu. He won it already!
A big thank you to Miller and Berger for sitting down with me to talk shop about the upcoming expansion, and to the PR team for getting it all organised. You can pre-order Dragonflight now via the Blizzard Store or your Battle.net client to prepare for its launch later this year.
Written by Junior Miyai on behalf of GLHF.
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