A few hours ago we live one of the most magical moments for a World of Warcraft fan. Blizzard presented in a small video starring several of his key developers, the new expansion of the successful MMO. DragonFlight will be the name of this new content for WOW, and will include many additions such as a new race and class, reforms to systems such as talents and professions or a whole new region such as the islands of the dragons.
- A return to high fantasy
- WOW and the renewal of open worlds
- Evocadores Drachtyr and Fantasy after them
In addition to telling you the news and presenting the trailer yesterday, at MGG Spain we have been able to attend a joint interview with ion Hazzikostas , Director of World of Warcraft and one of the key workers inside of Blizzard Entertainment. For an hour, we were able to ask him during a multitude of themes about Dragonflight, an expansion he qualifies from “return to the origins of high fantasy”, as well as some additional affair. This is what told us.
A return to high fantasy
We start with quite necessary questions and that you can all suppose as the estimated date of launch or the size of the new region that arrives with Dragonflight. Regarding the first topic, Hazzikostas commented that they did not want to compromise for what happened with Shadowlands , which in the end needed a last minute delay that did not like fans, and seek that Dragonflight passes through all Filters of the alpha and betas phases until you are ready.
If we go to the second topic, here we have a somewhat diffuse answer, but that it was the thread that I tried to throw in some of my interventions. _ “It is complicated to talk about sizes, because it is not the same general size, which playable size or takes advantage of in the game. But I think we are facing one of the largest regions of all expansions, although I repeat that we have focused more In content density “_, confesses the director of World of Warcraft.
This is really interesting, because Wow is a game whose technological base dates back more than 15 years ago, no matter how much it has been updating and improving. We have lived several generations of consoles, and what is more important, the boom of open worlds and gender remodeling with The Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption, Assassin’s Creed Oddysey, Breath of the Wild or more recently Elden Ring.
WOW and the renewal of open worlds
In that sense, I realized two questions to Hazzikostas. The first was about how can it be innovated or improved matters such as systemicity, interaction with the world or make it feel more alive, taking into account the most logical technical constrictions of World of Warcraft for his longevity and also for his facet of MMO and shared world.
_ “We are aware of the technical limitations we have, even though I think the technical team has done a great job bringing news as the Raytracing from very early, but the important thing is that Wow is not a game for a player. What It makes us feel that the world is alive are the stories and sharing them with other players, and helping them to shape their own stories is key “_, it tells us.
And the second was beyond. Since the last patches of Shadowlands, It seems that World of Warcraft becoming more calenders than ever to players , raising changes to static wearing systems from always, even with the imminent arrival of the cross-faction. According to Mazzikostas, it is not so much “taking ideas from the community”, as take into account your opinion . Well, there is a system that takes a long time looking to be improved by the players and that with Dragonflight will change.
Specifically, I talked about the proposed improvements for the professions such as orders, and if they had the fear of converting World of Warcraft into a more menus-based experience and that took you out of exploration and role. This is what I told me: _ “To begin with, we are making efforts to eliminate text on the screen and make the world more visible, as it will happen with the adjustments to the interface. What you mean, it is to the professions, it will go through Enable areas in each city where the different workers of each profession are. It is a balance between quality of life adjustments and continue to keep the world alive. “_
Evocadores Drachtyr and Fantasy after them
Although if this goes novelties, there is one that takes the palm. Not all expansions have a new race and a new class, and that is what will happen with Dragonflight. Evocatives Dracthyr are new beings on whose scales we can put ourselves from this expansion. Hazzikostas believes that he will end up finding his space in the metajame thanks to his novel characteristics of DPS / Healer character in Rank, but I wanted to go a little further. I asked him about the fantasy behind the evocative drachyr.
Fantasy, in the slang of video game design, are the last concepts that guide the design of that character, class or race from its preproduction to its release and later balance.
_ “We wanted to fulfill the fantasy of a dragon, this implies from wings, some flight, fire, claws… but with some humanoid. As we were developing, we saw that it was not a perk and it is already, but that
It was a whole new way of playing. “_, explains Hazzikostas.
Within a while we can try these evocative drachyr in the different tests and previous phases, but the director of World of Warcraft wanted to tell us some details such as this race is a kind of experiment to get a cross between dragons and humanoids.