As more people get to try out World of Warcraft‘s next expansion, Dragonflight, for themselves, one does wonder if its release date is coming up very soon. Whatever the case, there are many moving parts to consider, so today we have Graham Berger and Jake Miller, both Senior Game Designers for Dragonflight. Berger is more on the dracthyr design, while Miller is for the dragonriding systems. Let’s get right into it!

Interview has been edited for clarity. 

DESIGN, DESIGN, DESIGN

What were the core elements / principles in designing the dracthyr?

GRAHAM BERGER: Visually, the model and customizations drew inspiration from our existing dragons and dragon kin in WoW, and to interpret them in a new way to make it feel fresh, stand out, and speaking to the way these characters do battle. A lot of our existing dragon kin are bigger, burlier, melee combatants, but the evokers are spellslingers, fast and flitting about the battlefield. It was about pulling from existing WoW then levelling up to something new and exciting.

On the mechanical side, we brainstormed about making a playable draconic character, asking our teammates what was cool about dragons, what compelled and resonated with you about them… the things unique to WoW were the visage forms, transforming into humanoid beings to interact with mortals and appear less scary. Then, the five flights of magic – red, green, blue, black, bronze – and how they are uniquely intertwined into the story of Azeroth and Warcraft. Last but not least, the sense of family. Most dragons in WoW aren’t loners; they’re working with their flight to accomplish shared goals and live up to their ideals.

How could we embody that into a playable class? We knew we wanted to do spells in those schools of magic, specializing into red and blue for Devastation, green and bronze for Preservation, but the class as a whole as spells in all five colour families. Deep Breath is one of our most iconic spells and it’s very much a black dragon spell. In the theme of dragonflights and family, evokers have unique new utility that help out not just yourself but also party members: have them hover in the air, reset time, pick up our friends. We really wanted to lean into them being part of a unit, a family.

What was it like designing something like ‘free flight’; the allowances, the inner workings?

JAKE MILLER: In our brainstorm sessions, we had to ask what it would be like to partner with a Dragon Isles drake, what everybody finds compelling, and what we could do with a WoW drake. You’ll notice we have a resource system familiar to the game, Vigor points, that enables us to to aerial movement on launch that we’ve not often done in expansions.

Then, we make sure to tune the quest and combat to give the player a compelling experience, the resource system for dragonriding working in tandem to enable players to move through the air and get the feeling of freedom, but still be able to experience the story of the Dragon Isles. It used to have fewer active abilities and more hand-glide-y as we moved through the iterations of the system to now having these active abilities, resource system and a progression system that rewards exploration.

On the art side, I’ve seen fans wanting bigger, buffer dracthyr. How much does the model affect the mechanics?

GRAHAM BERGER: That feedback has been heard loud and clear. I think the art team did an awesome job adding a bigger and buffer customization option while maintaining the lean silhouette since they’re mobile spellcasters that move around the battlefield a lot. In terms of technical gameplay mechanics, it doesn’t affect anything; it’s just a visual change for personal expression and representation.

With all these new mechanics, what have you implemented so that people can take full advantage of these features?

GRAHAM BERGER: For the dracthyr, Empower is something we prototyped specifically for them and really fell in love with. We knew early on, we wanted to have you feel like you’re breathing fire, where it’s not enough to just fill a cast bar and have it happen. Having to hold down the button gives you this physical connection to your character. We got feedback from players who didn’t want to press and hold, so we have the press and tap option where you still have to make that second action. Empower is only going to be for evokers as they’re very draconic and can get that fantasy across for now, but if players are super excited, who knows what can happen in the future?

JAKE MILLER: We’ve added a variety of time trials for players to really test their traversal skills in this aerial movement type. We’ve also introduced skills such as the capability to dismount enemy players for some excellent mayhem in the open world for the world PVP player.

The visage form is only usable out of combat, but I’ve seen players who wish they could use their visage form in combat as well. Could you talk more about that?

GRAHAM BERGER: We did add the Chosen Identity feature to toggle a setting to put you back into visage form when you leave combat or finish soaring. There’s the driving idea of the dracthyr being what you use in combat: anytime you use one of your draconic abilities, you turn into a dragon, because you need your physical capabilities to pull off these feats. Chosen Identity is to turn you back automatically as soon as you end combat or land from Soaring so you don’t have to remember to click the button every time.

TECHNICALITIES OF FLIGHT

There’s a lot of physics involved with the evoker combat, dragonriding, so what’s it like to work with those new systems?

JAKE MILLER: Working with new forces in our movement code is an incredible challenge we’ve been on a journey with. Our engineering team revamped movement code, and our animators worked hard to create more immersive physicalized animations for this aerial movement. From internal testing to beta, we’re refining how these forces are impacting the player and how best to give the player tools to work with and against those forces.

GRAHAM BERGER: On the dracthyr side, their racial ability, Soar, works just like dragonriding. Their class abilities like Hover or Deep Breath is a lot of incredible work by our animation team: it’s plenty of smoke and mirrors in terms of what the characters actually do with a different system from dragonriding, but hopefully feels just as good.

Now that we’ve established that there’s new physics in play, how challenging has it been to ensure players don’t just bump into invisible walls etc.?

JAKE MILLER: Our team, level design and quest design team were constantly, and continue, to iterate with each other, comparing notes as we build new areas and routing quests. We make sure we have really cool spaces to move through but not overly tax our players in terms of speed, or drake turn rates, for example.

Just to confirm; the dracthyr Soar / Hover abilities can be used outside of the Dragon Isles?

GRAHAM BERGER: Yes. The racial ability, Soar, can let them move through the air like dragonriding drakes anywhere where flying mounts can be used. It does move a little slower than a drake’s top speed, and is not affected by the dragonriding progression tree.

In that case, I’ve seen many finding it disappointing that dragonriding is currently limited to the Dragon Isles. Could you talk more about the technical aspects in implementing that?

JAKE MILLER: As we’re working on Dragonflight, we’re really focused on these specific landmasses that were built with dragonriding capabilities and speeds in mind, because we’re so focused on making sure the new expansion’s area and capabilities are the best that they can be and continue to iterate there. Right now, we’re making sure we learn the most about dragonriding in these areas built with it in mind. We’re definitely super grateful for all the positive feedback from players hoping to see it elsewhere.

Speaking of that, what was the most common feedback you got with regards to both the dracthyr and dragonriding?

JAKE MILLER: The feedback that has been the most useful is hearing the different ways people engage with World of Warcraft, understanding how a feature affects any given person. We had feedback where players told us we broke the Follow feature that they relied on to get around and engage with the game. That was incredibly valuable: we were able to prototype and implement a new feature wherein a player can make their Dragon Isles drake interactable, so that if they’re used to guiding a player around WoW, they can now do so on a Dragon Isles drake, to transform into a whelp to fly alongside your buddy.

We’re always looking for feedback like that to build more robust accessibility features for dragonriding.

Since you did mention some accessibility features with regards to the new mechanics, could you talk more about them?

JAKE MILLER: Right from the beginning, we knew that anything that controlled in the way dragonriding does might provoke motion sickness in folks. From internal studies, playtests and feedback, we’re able to give stuff like the ride-along, and also changing our existing camera accessibility settings.

The alternate fullscreen effects checkbox will also disable the maximum speed fullscreen effect. We’re continuously looking at feedback to make the changes, making sure the reduced camera motion works so the field of view doesn’t change for players it might cause issues for… it’s an ongoing project to make sure dragonriding, and WoW, is as accessible as possible.

GRAHAM BERGER: Absolutely. On the evoker side, the press and tap alternate input was a big one for empower. We’ve also gotten feedback about wanting more information about empower spells and what level of charge it’s at. We’re working on solutions to give as many different ways as possible to give you that information to find one that works for you.

I’m also really excited about the “hold to continue” casting that recently got introduced. It’s for all player characters, not just evokers, where you can hold down a button to chain cast until you release the key. For those unfamiliar with WoW, we have what we call a global cooldown. Abilities you activate will have a delay before you’re allowed to press any other ability. Normally, you’d have to repeatedly press a key to cast the same ability repeatedly, but this functionality will let you hold that button down until you press something else.

A TIME TO GUSH

To close off, what’s your most favourite thing designing your respective things for Dragonflight?

JAKE MILLER: I think for me is watching someone experiencing dragonriding for the first time, watching it click in a player when they realize they’ll be subject to forces of gravity and momentum. There’s a sense that it recontextualizes the level design. What used to be pretty set dressing is now a play space. Can I get up there? Can I do what Alexstrasza did in the cinematic and swoop around? Seeing that change in a player is what I think has been the most exciting and fulfilling about working on this feature.

GRAHAM BERGER: I can say that I was on a Zoom call with Jake as I tried dragonriding, and I just started giggling because it was just fun, and for a very early version too. It completely changed my view of the game world, and I work on it.

As for designing the evoker, I think it has been the Deep Breath spell. We had this in our heads super early on, this iconic ability from Onyxia from back then, and we wanted players to feel that moment of the dragon flying in and breathing destruction. When we had all the pieces in place – model, animations, visual effects – all I can say is, it was awesome.

Thanks to Graham Berger and Jake Miller for answering my questions! One could say that there’s enough familiar within the new expansion, while having a whole new world quite literally open up to you through dragonriding.  How will the whole thing work together? I’ll leave it to you to find out.