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Ahead of WoW: Dragonflight's patch 10.1, I had a chance to speak to Ion Hazzikostas and Josh Augustine. Ion is the Game Director for WoW, while Josh serves as the Lead Quest Designer for Blizzard's hit MMO. The focus is on the next major update for World of Warcraft, how the game is going so far, and some potential changes that could one day happen in the MMO, depending on player feedback. We also discussed at length one of the upcoming factions entering the game in this update, the Niffen, and the activities players will get up to by helping these mole people.
There's a lot to be excited about in patch 10.1, as one of the major updates to WoW: Dragonflight. We appreciate both Ion Hazzikostas and Josh Augustine taking the time to speak with us about the current state of the game. WoW has never felt like it was in a better position, and with all of these great content drops along the way, it's a great time to be an MMO fan.
Ion Hazzikostas and Josh Augustine of WoW: Dragonflight discuss the upcoming 10.1 update
Q. One of the more welcome changes was giving players the freedom to approach and play the game however they'd like, from when/where they quest to in-game activities. Can we expect that design philosophy to continue in future patches?
Ion Hazzikostas: Absolutely. You know, I think that's something that we've been moving towards steadily over the last couple of years. I think there's a pivot there in the middle of Shadowlands where we realized, you know, what you need to listen to much more clearly about what our players were telling us about how they were looking to play the game, how they viewed their experiences as one character versus their collection of characters.
And I think, you know, from the ground up when building Dragonflight systems, we've tried to keep things like alt friendliness and catch up in mind, be very respectful of players' time to think about which activities are going to lend themselves more naturally to being repeated on other characters and giving a satisfying progression and a fresh experience versus which you should be able to opt out of. So that's something that we try to carry forward through everything we do.
Q. The Onyx Annulet is a familiar type of armor in WoW - something akin to a Borrowed Power piece of old (Necklace, Weapons, et al). Is this piece of gear going to be replaced or made obsolete in 10.1, or will players continue to invest in it as they go forward?
Ion Hazzikostas: Neither. I would say it's not going to instantly be obsolete. But no, we don't plan to keep adding new gemstones or upgrades to gemstones. I think ultimately, you know, I think borrowed power is a term I think was used for like a parallel progression, tier or expansion spanning systems where it's like, all right, you're done collecting experience, you've hit max level.
You have this alternate advancement path where you're going to get Artifact XP, you're going to level up your Heart of Azeroth, or whatever else. And that was something that was meant to be part of the expansion and then be left behind. In the most literal sense, all items are borrowed power, right?
It's like you get a trinket from season one from the raid, you use it for a while, you're going to replace it. But that's just the nature of items. I think at the end of the day, what we were trying to do with the Annulet in 10.0.7 was make an interesting item that had its own little chase and progression as part of the Zskera Vaults and the broader system of what Forbidden Reach was. It's, you know, tuned to be, for some very powerful specs, something people are going to carry into Season Two with them.
They will use and have an advantage from having it early on. Some will replace it, others may not for a bit until later in the season. Eventually, though, there will be lot better rings down the line for everyone. And, you know, it's just a fun reward that was tied to this late-season content update.
Q. The rafting, camera, and climbing segments were awesome in Dragonflight. Are there any other significantly different quest designs we can look forward to in 10.1?
Josh Augustine: Yeah, absolutely. It's great to hear you loving those. Those were some of my personal favorites as well as a player in Dragonflight. And that was one of the things we tried in Dragonflight, right? Like trying to help tell the story of the culture through a special game system for each of the cultures.
Like Centaurs had Hunts, Tuskars had the Feast. Explorers, as you mentioned, had the rock climbing and the cataloging. We've seen players react really positively to those. So that's definitely something we're kind of doubling down on in 10.1. So when we go down to the 10.1, there are two kinds of large friendly groups down there.
One is the Dragonscale Expedition, who we know from up above, and so we have a Public Scenario with them called the Researchers Under Fire. And that's like a large-scale Public Scenario where it's like, Hey, it's active, the whole zone, get in here and help them try and get their research, survive and push deeper into the different areas and survive the Djaradin waves and kind of accomplish that together.
And then the other big culture that we're going to meet down there is a brand new group called the Niffen, which are kind of like mole people underground. They love to dig, they love to sniff things out, and they love to trade and barter or find things. And so the special activity that we've built for them will be a weekly activity you get to do with them is called Sniffen Seeking, and it's kind of like cave dives.
And so you meet Merritt, who's like a happy little Niffen, but he's sad because when you go digging, you have to go with a buddy. You need to be safe, you need someone to help you get out of a jam. But his buddy can't go digging with them anymore, so he's looking for a new buddy.
And, hey, you, the player, look like a convenient new buddy. So why don't you try going on a dig with him? And it's a brand new activity and something we're trying to throw out for the first time here where it's kind of it's almost like an escape room, kind of. You go with Merritt digging, dig underground and you pop out in a cave together. And it's a contained little cave in there.
And there will be some puzzles you need to solve, like, Oh, there's a treasure chest over there, but it's caught in a bubble, and there's this thing you have to get by, and you have tools with Merritt where you can use them and help sniff out clues or dig underground with them to bypass hazards.
And so it's like solving the puzzle of how do I get the treasure in this cave with these clues? And so every week you can go on some dives with him, explore new areas, and kind of learn more about the area, learn more about the Niffen, the secrets that are buried underground in the zone, all sorts of fun stuff.
Jason: The Niffen are so cool, I can't wait. That stuff all sounds like a lot of fun!
Josh Augustine: Thanks. Yeah. The Niffen are so fun. That's like, that's really what gets me excited when we're working in new zones, right? Is like when you go to a new zone, and you start thinking about like, okay, who would live here? What would they do? What would they care about? And it starts leading in fun new directions like this, right? Like we've never had the Niffen before. So like, yeah, of course, they're going to dig underground and go exploring, and they're going to love smelly cheeses because they love smells. Yeah, all sorts of fun stuff too, to try.
Q. Of course, I have to ask - there's been a lot of rumor and discussion around a third spec for Dracthyr Evokers. While I'm sure the answer to "if" would be "only time will tell", but if you had your way, would you give them another DPS build, or treat them like Druid/Paladin, and give them a tank build?
Ion Hazzikostas: I'm not. I mean, this is kind of an off-the-cuff answer. This is really 100% hypothetical. We deliberately didn't go in the direction of melee when thinking about Evokers from the start for a couple of reasons. One was that we've had a lot of melee in the game. If you go back to compare the then versus now, where World of Warcraft started and what we've added over the years, Death Knight, Monk, Demon Hunter, like these things have something in common.
Melee range is getting a little crowded, and we want to be mindful of who else we put in there. But then also a lot of it is just the fantasy, the visuals of being a winged being that can do deep breaths, that can be highly mobile. You lose all of that. The second we say this combat style requires that you're planted next to your opponent, and you're just, you know, clawing at them. You're doing stuff to them. It, I think, clashes with the fantasy of what it means and how it would make sense for an elite, winged being to fight.
And so that's kind of what led us down that path for Evoker. And regardless of what the future may hold when it comes to thinking about extra specs for any class, and still get asked questions about Demon Hunter, about, you know, people want to tank Shaman. I totally get it. We still want to stay true to the core of the class fantasy when we think about what direction we might go. But yeah, and again, just to restate, there is no hidden third spec in 10.1.
Jason: [Laughs] I didn't expect one to come in 10.1. Not gonna lie though, it'd be interesting to see something else added to them.
Ion Hazzikostas: I wasn't, you know. I know. I'm just mentioning extra specs for classes. It's not something we generally have discussed when brainstorming multiple future expansion feature ideas. It's something that you know, like truly no announcements, no promises, but it's an extra dimension of expanding and adding depth to our class gameplay that does come up.
It may be something that we pursue down the road at some point because it's a fun idea. You know, I've seen community brainstorming for internal, you know, discussions like what might a mage heal spec look like or whatever else. Like there are fun fantasies there to chase.
Q. I'd like to go back and talk about the Niffen a little more. I'm curious about how you guys decided to make that a puzzle, and like, a series of puzzle quests. Are they randomized? Is there going to be a set amount of them already created? How is that going to work?
Josh Augustine: Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to talk about Sniffen Seeking, one of my favorite names in the patch. Yeah. So we started early on with like, actually how a lot of our concepts are like a designer is just really excited about an idea. So when we started seeing like the art come in from the artists about what the Niffen are going to look like, right? That's what inspires design, right?
We're looking at this art. We start thinking ideas, and one designer in particular just got really excited about this idea of like, Oh, they'd go burrowing like, Can we go burrow with them? What would we want to find? Right? And so it started with just that nugget. But then, like, like everything else, you look at like this cool idea. Okay, what's the best way to express that idea in gameplay, that's fun for players, right?
So you kind of mentioned earlier that, like you really enjoy the new types of gameplay that we're trying and that's like we're always doing like looking for new things because we don't want the special new feature to be "Go Kill 20 Bears in a cave with a Niffen". And that's it, right? Because that's not exciting. We want to try new things all the time, find new ways to like surprise players.
And so when we're looking at like, okay, what does it mean to go exploring in a cave, right? You think like it's usually like the challenges you're overcoming, you're trying to be safe. You're usually trying to find something, at least in our sense, that you could do just exploring. But that's more Dragonscale expedition. Niffen, who are traders love looking for thing things bartering like, okay, so they're going down there to find something to scavenge.
And so okay, so let's start thinking about that and then work from there and just start play testing, right? Just try a version. See, it's fun getting feedback from people. So this feature in particular, I mean, it went through a lot of iterations. A lot of times special features like this go through more iterations than normal, right? We're trying new things, seeing what's fun and what's not, getting players on the team to jump in and playtest.
And then it's great now that we're doing these PTR cycles, you know, much longer earlier, right? We got a lot of time on the PTR for people to give us feedback so that we could get player feedback. Okay, start iterating on that. And so it was a lot of iteration going through, trying to find the right balance, to be honest. On what's a fun puzzle.
Is this a fun puzzle? That style maybe wasn't as fun? Okay, let's try this other style. Okay. This one people are loving. Okay, we do more like that. And so, yes, there's a lot, there are lots of different caves you can go through by default. You're going to able to do three a week. You get kind of one key. It's not a key, it's a map. But yeah, one map a week and you can go with Merrit for free and do a cave.
And then you can earn two more by doing like the weekly wrapper, trading with the merchants in town. And so you can get up to three a week where you can go do them, and those will be three different ones every week you can go do. Yeah.
Jason: What sort of rewards are they going to get?
Josh Augustine: I mean, rewards are on the PTR, so we can definitely talk about that. So one of the cool things they're doing with rewards in, with the Niffen in general is there is, oh man, I'm forgetting his name. But there's a merchant in town [Ponzo] that sells a bunch of different things using barter tokens.
And so barter tokens are kind of a currency around the whole underground Niffen culture of if you can get these barter tokens through different means, then you can go trade with this trader guy and buy different things, and there are cosmetics and rep and all that sort of stuff that you can buy on there. And so you get those. You can get barter tokens through here and go do that. And then, along the way, you also get the usual, so you can get that. And then every time you do a cave, you get some faction, some of the currency that sort of, you know, usual thing as well.
Jason: Awesome! I'm looking forward to it.
Josh Augustine: Don't forget, one of the best rewards in the entire patch is you can earn the title "Smelly" by recognition. One of my favorite titles we've ever put in the game. It's so good.
Jason: [Laughs] You've got The Undying, Hand of A'dal, and Smelly. [Laughs]
Q. One comment players have had in 10.7 is how some classes have to do less work in end-game content. An example is how Unholy DKs and Ret Paladins have single-target and AOE/Cleave damage that is competitive in one build. Some classes, like Monks and perhaps Hunters have to constantly swap specs to keep up. Is that something the team is looking at in the future, for helping classes that are falling behind on DPS charts?
Ion Hazzikostas: It is. It's to some extent, balance. It's also just the health of the talent system as a whole. Um, you know, I think, in the long run, obviously, we massively, massively changed the entire system for Dragonflight months ago, but that's a foundation we're going to continue to build upon and iterate. And one of the things that we're looking at is talent diversity and just the health of a given spec, a given classes' tree.
If it feels like there are a bunch of dead talents, like, all right, there is just one dominant build that everyone uses versus other specs that have multiple options. Situationally, the latter feels healthier than the former. That may be a less critical issue in the short term versus, you know, specs that have core problems and negative feedback about their rotational gameplay.
That's the stuff the team is going to prioritize fixing. But in the long run, we very much want talent trees to be all sets of interesting choices. And if what we're hearing is that for some specs, there really isn't much of one and you just kind of settle into one all around build that works well for everything - that's going to be the sort of thing that we look to vary up over time and yeah, exactly.
And then the balance, of course, kind of flows from that to some extent. That's more about, you know, the wide range of activities that exist in the game - getting from Mythic+ to different types of raid encounters to PvP and then just doing what you're doing in the outdoor world and making sure that it feels like all aspects are at least viable in each of those situations.
Patch 10.1 drops for World of Warcraft: Dragonflight on May 2, 2023, with May 9 beginning the more competitive content for the game, with season 2. The May 9, 2023 update will feature the beginning of the Aberrus raid, Mythic+ Season 2 rotation, the new PVP season, and more.
