World of Warcraft Dragonflight IGN Developer Interview

[Stoy]

World of Warcraft Dragonflight IGN Developer Interview
IGN interviewed Ion Hazzikostas and Steve Danuser about Dragonflight.

IGN Interview

• They have been laying the groundworks for this expansion since even before Shadowlands.
• The zones of the Dragon Isles are not particularly themed after each specific flights like in Dragonblight.
• Each zone, however, has powerful links to a particular flight.
• The Dragon Isles are very vertical.
• The dragons were forced to leave this land during the Sundering when the elemental energy waned, but recent events have caused it to surge and the time to reclaim their homeland has come.
• There will be a lot more exploration than in Shadowlands, but the zone order will remain the same for everyone on their first character. Telling a linear storyline is not easy utilizing the Legion and Battle for Azeroth "choose your zone order" methods.
• Each individual zone will have a lot of freedom.
• The continent encourages exploration. Different reputations will unlock new stories as you progress.
• The team thought of the new race early in development.
• The team realized early that none of the existing classes fit the theme of the race very well.
• The new talent system was a way to address the constant new systems without adding new systems every expansion.
• The new talent system was a way to return to the roots in a sense. The goal is to allow maximum customization and the ability to be an actual hybrid.
• The talent system will easily allow you to customize your talents based on the encounter.
• As you level up your Dragon-riding you will be able to reach certain locations and do things you couldn't do with normal flying.
• They wanted to create a sense of aspiration for unlocking areas you can see but couldn't reach with simple flying.
• The profession revamp allows players to have work orders and collaborative crafting to work together for rare crafting materials.
• The new work order system allows crafters to post items with materials and commissions.
• The UI revamp was done to bring the UI into the modern era of large monitors.
• The team doesn't want to take away your addons, but give you the ability to play the game without having to rely on so many of them.
• The Horde and Alliance are working together in Dragonflight.
• The Dragonscale Expedition is the name of the Horde and Alliance expedition.
• The team isn't perfectly happy with personal loot and knows there is room to improve. They have nothing to announce but want to improve collaborative loot.
• Tier sets will remain in Dragonflight.
• The team will improve on the Great Vault from Shadowlands.
• The Bronze dragons will allow us to see unique stories involving timelines.
• Wrathion is a big part of the story. He has never seen these lands before.

[cityguy193]

So whats happening with classes we have now? Kinda disappointed that new ways to play them such as class skins or 4th specs were not introduced in any capacity. I would also like to see racials revamped to some capacity, and maybe the new talent trees can be expanded towards racials as well.

[Illuminance]

@19:46: "Is Wrathion coming back, and is he still hot?" - imagine this question being asked about any female character

[Qnubi]

No talk of Legendaries, Garrisons, Anima-ish systems has me cautiously optimistic this expansion will FINALLY be Alt-Friendly where you can simply enjoy leveling up a character, do some professions and gear farming without the constant worry to fall behind on idiotic power systems on your main if you don't do them.

[Magenugget]

Get the talent trees right and I will come back.

[Frozen Death Knight]

@19:46: "Is Wrathion coming back, and is he still hot?" - imagine this question being asked about any female character

Standards for thee, not for me seems to apply here.

[artam]

Great Vault - Shit, just give us badges.

[Inukashi]

> he goal is to allow maximum customization and the ability to be an actual hybrid.

This is the only thing that gives me hope to have at least something good in this xpac.
Can I customize my warrior to tank with 2h?
Can I be a shaman tank?
Can I be a DK summoner?
If not, then the xpac is as boring as any content patch that gives a new area with some dungeons.

[Menog]

Standards for thee, not for me seems to apply here.

Just wondering since I enjoyed your take on the other thread what was your opinion about the release?

I found the whole endevour to be cringe and the novelty's to be quite lacking. This was probably the worse announcement trailer since it had no action at all aside from alex saving a pebble.

The corporate round table where they pitched their ideas was laughable. The way one of the girls was explaining the lore felt like she was making shit up contrary to being tought through. The new race is bassicly a recolour from the zandalari troll moonkin form. Also they kinda copy pasted dragonriding from GW2 flying mounts...

Overall they will go all in danuservese not revealing the main plot points like they did in bfa and shadowlands wich is another red flag.

I was expecting nothing and still got dissapointed :|

But I am curious if you enjoyed the ordeal or actually got excited about anything.

[Atriel]

So whats happening with classes we have now? Kinda disappointed that new ways to play them such as class skins or 4th specs were not introduced in any capacity. I would also like to see racials revamped to some capacity, and maybe the new talent trees can be expanded towards racials as well.

We almost never see existing class details in the expansion reveal. This all comes later. Class skins were always unlikely since they have been adamant on maintaining clarity of spells and what they are, especially for PvP. 4th specs are even more unlikely as that would have required a ton of balancing (and that would amount to SEVERAL new classes worth of content considering we have 12 classes, 11 if we exclude Druid which would be unlikely to get another spec).

[Kumorii]

So whats happening with classes we have now? Kinda disappointed that new ways to play them such as class skins or 4th specs were not introduced in any capacity. I would also like to see racials revamped to some capacity, and maybe the new talent trees can be expanded towards racials as well.

The new talent system will probably shake things up. Unless I missed something the druid one were separated between tank/dps and a healer section.
The current 3 dps/tank specs were separated into 3 branches but linked up with each other.

To mix the talents together like that (which I assume they do for all classes in similar or different ways) you need to make the baseline kit bit mixed as well. Maybe elemental mage is coming back.

[ninwa]

The Bronze dragons will allow us to see unique stories involving timelines.

This was expected I think, but I am really excited to see how this materializes!

[Woggmer]

So whats happening with classes we have now? Kinda disappointed that new ways to play them such as class skins or 4th specs were not introduced in any capacity. I would also like to see racials revamped to some capacity, and maybe the new talent trees can be expanded towards racials as well.

If this were a single player RPG, then that would work... except this is an MMO, and having talent trees for racials will make some races more powerful than others.... Trolls have a built in haste button, Draenei have a free heal, Humans can break out of any stuns and have 10% reputation boosts, Lightforge Draenei can drop Light nukes on enemies, and Vulpera can build their own camp and have their own separate hearthstone.

We don't need a talent tree that gives Humans even more reputation boosts than they already have. That would make them so OP that if you wanna complete faction reputations, you HAVE to roll a human.

[Segus1992]

> he goal is to allow maximum customization and the ability to be an actual hybrid.

This is the only thing that gives me hope to have at least something good in this xpac.
Can I customize my warrior to tank with 2h?
Can I be a shaman tank?
Can I be a DK summoner?
If not, then the xpac is as boring as any content patch that gives a new area with some dungeons.

Extremely unlikely. You may be able to do holy DPS as a Priest and Shield DPS as a Warrior, but even those are unlikely. Can almost guarantee that what you hope for isn't happening.

[Alcsaar]

So whats happening with classes we have now? Kinda disappointed that new ways to play them such as class skins or 4th specs were not introduced in any capacity. I would also like to see racials revamped to some capacity, and maybe the new talent trees can be expanded towards racials as well.

I'm guessing the talent tree "flexibility" is intended to be the "class/spec rework" overall

[Sicarius87]

The new race makes this game feel like a private server now. I really dont like it.

[Dejo93]

Ok, I call this a good start. Now let's hope they don't mess it up. Plus, I really hope we get something like playable Naga or Mogu in the future

[Kellorion]

The concept art

ugh

the dragon form comes off very hentai rule 34 furry/scaley things
and the humanoid form looks like they just took humans and added scales, instead of putting actual effort into whole new models skeleton skin everything

[TristanTaylor]

The Horde and Alliance are working together in Dragonflight. (But don't worry, we'll put in some silly, forced, reason for them to be at each other's throats again in no time.)

- - - Updated - - -

The concept art

ugh

the dragon form comes off very hentai rule 34 furry/scaley things
and the humanoid form looks like they just took humans and added scales, instead of putting actual effort into whole new models skeleton skin everything

I'm really hoping there's some other form than just "humans" for them, I mean especially if they can join Horde, it's just odd.

[Frozen Death Knight]

Just wondering since I enjoyed your take on the other thread what was your opinion about the release?

I found the whole endevour to be cringe and the novelty's to be quite lacking. This was probably the worse announcement trailer since it had no action at all aside from alex saving a pebble.

The corporate round table where they pitched their ideas was laughable. The way one of the girls was explaining the lore felt like she was making shit up contrary to being tought through. The new race is bassicly a recolour from the zandalari troll moonkin form. Also they kinda copy pasted dragonriding from GW2 flying mounts...

Overall they will go all in danuservese not revealing the main plot points like they did in bfa and shadowlands wich is another red flag.

I was expecting nothing and still got dissapointed :|

But I am curious if you enjoyed the ordeal or actually got excited about anything.

Hehe!

I have watched it now after school and it is everything I thought it would be. Not good.

An underwhelming cinematic that has no idea of what it's supposed to be. Every single cinematic since Vanilla has been centralized around explaining the conflict. In Vanilla it was Alliance vs Horde vs the world itself. In TBC it was Illidan's schemes in Outland. In Wrath we had the Lich King creating an army of the dead to destroy all life. Etc., etc. Heck, even Mists of Pandaria understood how to frame the conflict of the expansion by having the Alliance and Horde realizing the vast potential of this newfound continent and its people. Dragonflight attempts to copy that same premise of a hidden world without a proper reason as to why it had to be hidden and why we the players should care.

The story makes zero sense when you actually start thinking about the old lore. Why would the Dragonflights not know the location of an entire continent when they can fly and have powers to warp space and time? Why would they have a defense system which not even they can find a way to unlock the path back? Why didn't Deathwing crack a way open when he literally controls the element of Earth? He broke the entire world from just writhing in pain and being enveloped in pure wrath, so why the heck didn't he just crack it? How come these islands were not affected by not one, but TWO sunderings, the Great Sundering and the Cataclysm? The true answer is, there is no answer. To any of these questions. They just write without thinking.

Besides a few of the systems (i.e. talent trees and possible flying mechanics) I didn't like this reveal at all. The new playable dragon race feels so out of place. Looks like they came from a completely different fantasy game. Not to mention how the writers justify it with Neltharion/Deathwing being their creator, even though the guy was notorious for creating abomination experiments, so anything he made would have been very monstrous looking. Also, why would he create humanoid dragons when actual dragons are larger, more powerful, and can already turn themselves into humanoids? It makes no sense.

Still, at the end of the day, even if I was positive toward all of this stuff, I have been burnt before. Multiple times. I gave BfA a chance after really enjoying Legion, but with Shadowlands I decided long ago that it was going to be my last chance I will ever give WoW. There are only so many chances I am willing to give and with BfA, Shadowlands, and WarCraft 3 Reforged all being massive duds, I just can't support this franchise anymore.

Anyway, I hope for the people who continue playing that they don't have to get burnt anymore.