WWI ‘08 Notes from the Dungeons

July 1, 2008 | By admin In WOW News |

At the Worldwide Invitational, the Dungeons and Raids panel is about to begin. We’ll be bringing you updates on the anatomy of dungeons and raids straight from Blizzard’s mouths, and of course any tidbits of information about dungeons and raids to come, all after the jump. Stay tuned!
10:45 AM CEST: The panel’s about to begin and the audience’s impatience is palpable. Instead of the panel beginning, we’re treated to a panning camera showing us.. ourselves. Well, it’s better than nothing I suppose. Finally, Blizzard devs take the stage.

10:52 AM: Cory Stockton, lead level designer; J. Allen Brack, lead producer and Tom Chilton, lead game designer are on the podium. They’ll be talking about WotLK plans and theory, with a sneak preview towards the end of the panel.

10:54 AM: What’s new for WotLK? 10 and 25 player experience for every raid dungeon. Probably the biggest change they’ve made - allows them to have a lot of new content, compared to earlier separate development on 10/25 man content. Now they can double the amount of content.

Heroics will return: really happy with the way heroics played out in TBC, want to bring it back. Lots of plans for heroics, more tuning, changing things up from standard 5-mans. Thinks players will like the direction.

More nonlinear content. More choices for players, don’t always have one path to take in dungeons. Give players a bit more of a choice so dungeon is a different experience if you do it more than once. The Occulus is a good example.

New gameplay scenarios. Been trying to do this since shipping WoW. Gauntlets, timed events, nonlinear play. Being able to do things in a different way, so not every dungeon is the same thing that just looks different. Different experience too.

Spirit shard reward system for all raids/dungeons based on Wintergrasp PvP. Whoever controls Wintergrasp can get spirit shards from all bosses in all dungeons/raids in the game. Use them to buy unique items, enchants, etc. Still working on reward system but connects pvp with pve. Help the two merge together over time, somewhat separated, same goal for player: advancement.

10:58 AM: Lineup. 8 level-up dungeons. Similar to TBC. Were really happy with that amount of content. Can always do more dungeons, but would rather keep quality.

4 level 80 dungeons. Heroics for all Lich King dungeons. So total 12 5-mans, 12 heroics. Three first-tier raid zones.

10:59AM: Why 10/25 man raids? Opens up raid content to a larger audience. Takes more organisation and planning but doesn’t mean that content shouldn’t be available. Sometimes the hardest part of a 25 man raid is getting 25 people. So why not give that experience to people in smaller guilds?

Loot separation. Separating loot by a full tier worth of stat points, ultimate endgame content is 25-man so ultimate rewards. Still get great rewards in 10-mans. More loot per boss kill in 25 player raids (because there’s more players). Been talking about giving more loot in 25mans for a while, will see that change in Wrath.

11:01 AM: Lessons from TBC. A big project, heroics were an interesting tuning problem, hard enough to be a challenge but easy enough that people just starting out could do them. Were a great success. But too hard, want to make them more accessible. Don’t want e.g. lacking a prot spec tank, holy priest, etc to bar people from doing heroics. Should be available to more players, open up to different classes and groups.

Some dungeons were too long. Took longer than they planned. Like to keep dungeons to ~1 hour long. Not their intention to have players stuck in dungeon in 3 hours. Going to really check length before releasing new dungeons.

Quests did not feel as connected as they should (kill end boss/kill 10 creatures). Really trying to allow dungeon quests to have interesting goals. Gundrak is cumulation of a long questline encompassing the whole zone. You know why you’re killing the endboss, and what the outcome will be, connects players to dungeons beyond killing bosses for loot. More of an impact on the world.

Summoning changes worked out great. Stones/warlocks summoning into instance (audience applauds). Main reason was to remove barrier to entry to dungeons that were annoying to get to. Wanted to make it convenient.

Patch order. Has an impact on what players have available to do, have to make sure things feel right when releasing patch. They wanted to get Black Temple out asap so Zul’Aman ended up being released later, probably would have been better to deliver ZA first since most players weren’t ready for BT but keen for 10-man content. Learned that lesson with WotLK. Arthas is final endgame boss so delivering content in the order they thinks works best for the players, whether that’s a new 5-man, raid etc.

11:07 AM: Naxxramas… Again? Audience cheers; ‘that’s about the same way we feel about Naxxramas’. Huge labour of love. Always felt it was a dungeon that WoW needed. Most players never got to experience it because of the release timing. Loot was still really great but TBC superceded it. Made sense to come back to it and give everyone a chance to experience it. 10-man accessible. Extremely proud, want everyone to play it.

Lore-wise Naxx fits in perfectly, with Arthas/Northrend, history behind Naxx lends itself well to being a part of WotLK and something players can get into really early. Chance to retune it and make it even better. Huge dungeon with a ton of bosses, over 15 bosses in one raid dungeon, non-linear (wings) giving players a lot of choice.

11:10 AM: Itemisation. PvP gear will be available through PvE as well as PvP. Spirit shard system. Players that want to get started in arenas who love dungeons can get started through PvE. Won’t be the best gear, but will give you a chance. More items per boss kill in 25 player raids. More items desired by more classes, big project. Trying to remove unnecessary stats because there are too many different types of loot, what if a ret paladin item drops and you don’t have one? Merge some of the stats so that items will work across a group of ~3 different classes. Players can get loot that’s more useful and accessible, killing a boss feels better.

11:12 AM: Recipe drops, pretty rare right now. Specific plans only drop off one boss at really low drop rate. Doesn’t mean they won’t put unique plans on hard to reach bosses but want most plans to be accessible, earlier bosses, easier dungeons. Might not feel like such a grind to get that one rare pattern.

11:13 AM: Faction. Want to make it not feel like a grind. Championing — Earn faction outside of your current dungeon. Choose a specific faction to earn rep with, system will use tabards, put tabard on in any heroic and every kill will give rep towards the faction whose tabard you’re wearing as well as dungeon faction. Small bonus if you wear the tabard of the dungeon faction too. Details not final but this is the direction. Don’t want you to feel you have to grind certain dungeons mindlessly.

11:15 AM: Remove faction requirements for heroics. Don’t want people to feel like there are so many barriers.

11:16 AM: PvP rewards will show up in faction too. Similar to current lowlevel pvp faction sets. Will continue this trend. Greater variety of faction rewards full stop. Only a certain amount of items they can make in the time they have. Items that fit different specs and classes. More recipe plans, something done in TBC but not all trade skills were represented in factions. More rewards in general from faction.

11:17 AM: How does the Death Knight fit in? Will be able to tank both raids and dungeons. Not intended to be ‘the new tank’ but is a unique tank and want to make sure they can tank raids and 5-mans, heroics, as well as DPS. Just going to do it in a different way, keeping classes unique. Looked at what players need — people always need a tank. More tanks = more dungeon runs.

11:19 AM: Sneak Peek: The Occulus. Level 80 dungeon located in Borean Tundra (Coldarra). Unique; first dungeon players can fly in. Get a drake partway through the dungeon and do mounted combat as if it were a vehicle, individual spells on different drakes. Tank drakes, heal drakes etc. Nonlinear; started as a high fantasy pitch and has become a high concept design.

Occulus is a series of rings floating in the sky, can pick and choose bosses. Concept art shows circular and frozen themes. Dungeon design shown, they design on paper and try to feel how big the space is, is it big enough to fight the boss, the trash. Layouts turn into concept art and ‘blockout’ phase, turning 2D image into 3D so they can run around it in 3D. Dungeon is complete, internal playtesting at the moment.

11:24 AM: Halls of Stone. Part of Ulduar, located in Storm Peaks. Tied to Titan lore. Level 77-79. Will need a flying mount to access. Nonlinear. Want to make you feel like you’re infiltrating Titan area, feel like it’s something new even though scope is very different. Epic scale. Level 80 dungeon in Ulduar (Halls of Lightning) and raid dungeon too, but Halls of Stone is first dungeon players will experience

Wanted the scale to be big but not annoying (to the level of wanting a mount to travel through it). Showed blockout, walked 5 players through game to see if there’s basic things like enough room to pull mobs, enough room for cameras etc. Platinum Discs quests from Uldaman — this is the next evolution, continuing the story. Location where we can read the discs and maybe find out information about how Azeroth was created, deliver lore to players.

11:31 AM: CoT: The Culling of Stratholme. Player response to CoT was overwhelming, allowing players to play through story rather than just read it. CoT: Stratholme located in CoT, Tanaris. Removing faction requirement on CoT teleport. Level 80 instance. Scripted experience, similar to Old Hillsbrad. Experience “The Culling” mission from Warcraft 3 in the WoW universe.

Fight alongside Arthas (before he falls to the Lich King) to see how Stratholme fell, what exactly went on with Arthas to get him where he is today. Really want players to get to see more of Arthas. Timed encounters, some completely new things. Non-linear. You’re actually in Stratholme, used a good portion of the original Strat dungeon, looks and feels as you would expect and tried to stick as close to lore as humanly possible. Using original voiceover acting from Warcraft 3.

11:35 AM: Infinite Dragonflight storyline from TBC will be continued in Stratholme, popular storyline, this was the perfect place to do it.

11:37 AM: Entrance in CoT similar to other dungeons, entrance reflects Lordaeron art and Strat style buildings. Plaguewood transformed. Really wanted city to feel alive, on the brink of something bad but feeling that the city was fully functioning, player arrives at a crucial moment.

11:39 AM: Player Q&A. Will there be a change in legendary drops? Atiesh-style or random drops?

A: For the most part they like the Atiesh style. Sometimes they have to deliver content and don’t have time to implement quests like that hence simplified drop system. Case-by-case basis.

Q: Attunements lifted in TBC. Any in WotLK, or just gear checks?

A: Plan to reduce any complexity on attunements, don’t plan to add new attunements to dungeons/heroics and entry level Naxxramas, will still have an attunement path once you get into raiding that takes you to the end but goal to make sure it’s simple to understand and not as complicated as the attunements TBC shipped with.

Q: Wipe management - will there be closer graveyards, shorter run times through dungeons?

A: Yes, definitely something we constantly think about. We play all the dungeons too. If we feel like something’s too far we’d move it. In most cases the distance of graveyard is based on difficulty, want to make sure there’s some price for death, but not too annoying.

Q: Being a hardcore raider, you could see content that not a lot of people can see. With 10-man dungeons being the same as 25, will you reward hardcore raiders beyond just loot?

A: Want to make sure 25-mans feel like the pinnacle of raiding, hence the one tier loot separation, so you know for sure someone’s done that raid, they’ll wear different gear. Titles is something we’re looking into working more with, titles from kills, title just from being able to get into one specific area. Definitely aren’t trying to merge the two, like the first kills, videos etc. Want to keep that feeling, if you get that first kill it feels great for you.

Q: Will there be an expansion of the token system or will loot be randomly determined?

A: Don’t plan to move away from token system but some of the randomness can be alleviated by simply dropping more loot.

Q: With all this talk of heroics, there are some people who can’t even manage normal dungeons, is there any idea of bringing in new dungeons for them?

A: I don’t think you’re alone. There are a lot of players who find that first 5-man a barrier to entry, it’s something we’ve been talking about a lot. We’re not going to make everything easier but we do want to make things more accessible. It might not mean a creature is easier to kill but easier to understand, easier for new players to learn advanced techniques.

That’s the end of the panel, some interesting developments in the pipeline for all levels of raiding. Keep checking back for more invitational live coverage throughout the day!

Gallery: Worldwide Invitational 2008