Last week, Icy Veins teamed up with Raider.IO to bring fans an exclusive interview with a dynamic duo behind the highly anticipated The War Within expansion. Production Director Michael Bybee and Game Producer George Velev shared insights and teased what’s to come in the Worldsoul Saga!
Make sure to check out the counterpart of this interview on Raider.IO for more information on George’s and Michael’s thoughts on topics like Private Auras, the effect the RWF (Race to World First) had on the company and development of the game, the new Xal’atath-themed affixes, and many more.
Interview Participants
- Michael Bybee, the Production Director who’s been with Blizzard for about 17 years, working on titles like World of Warcraft’s Legion, Battle for Azeroth, and early Shadowlands expansions, as well as Diablo 4. He is now back at the helm for The War Within.
- George Velev, a Game Producer on World of Warcraft who’s been with Blizzard for over 8 years, with four of them as part of the WoW QA team, and four more years as a Game Producer.
- Stan – Icy Veins News and Guide Writer
- Hulahoops – General Manager of Raider.IO
Interview Highlights
Here are the main highlights of our interview:
Game Production
- Blizzard clarified that the goal is to release expansions more quickly, not necessarily shorter expansions, with no specific season format changes announced just yet.
Classes
- Hero Talents are an evergreen system that will be expanded upon in the future.
- New class options for the Dracthyr are coming, but no specific release time is provided.
- Earthen Death Knights didn’t make it live due to narrative inconsistencies with the race’s origin.
Raids
- Heroic week returns in Nerub-ar Palace to give players more time to enjoy content without feeling rushed.
- Many at Blizzard love following the RWF (Race to World First), and the team now provides around the clock support to fix bugs and solve any potential issues on encounters.
Mythic+
- Xal’atath-themed affixes are designed to reward good gameplay rather than just punishing players for their mistakes.
- They have no plans for a dungeon meta-achievement in TWW, but some achievements are being moved into Feats of Strength.
Matrix Catalyst
- The first Matrix Catalyst charge will be available when Season 1 starts, with a new charge every 2 weeks.
Outdoor Events
- Awakening the Machine has been reworked and is now shorter, better fitting the intended gameplay experience.
The Brawler’s Guild
- Blizzard is interested in the return of the Brawler’s Guild, but they don’t have a timeframe.
Shadowlands Pathfinder
- No immediate plans to remove the Shadowlands Pathfinder requirement for Steady Flight right now.
Interview Transcript
Note: The questions have been rearranged for an improved reading experience.
Raider.IO: Will the stated goal for the 3 expansions in the World Soul Saga being slightly shorter than previous expansions lead to any changes in the Season format we’ve grown accustomed to (being 4 defined Seasons with the last one being Fated/Awakened)?
Michael Bybee: First, I want to clarify: We didn’t say the expansion would be shorter – what we said was we’re going to try and get them out more quickly and I think that’s an important distinction because we’re not ready to say exactly how many patches we’re going to have, or exactly what the cadence will be, or exactly how many seasons we’re going to have. Even though we are trying to get the expansions out and not make people wait two years for every expansion, we really want you to feel like you got value for buying into The War Within, and that you’re getting something awesome during that time frame. And so, with balancing all of those things, it’s going to be an awesome expansion. After we get past launch and into this first Season, you’ll hear a lot of awesome stuff from us, but we’re not quite ready to talk about that yet.
Icy-Veins: Are new Dracthyr class combinations something we can expect as early as the patch after The War Within launches? Can you share more details on that yet?
George Velev: It’s a bit of an open secret at this point that we’re looking to extend Dracthyr to more classes. We can’t really comment on the specific timetable quite yet, but it’s something that we’re definitely working on.
Raider.IO: For each tier of Dragonflight, all 3 raid difficulties were released at the same time, removing what has become known as “Heroic Week”. With Heroic Week making a return in Nerub-ar Palace, what ultimately led to this decision? Can you comment on the decision to delay Mythic+ until Mythic Raid opens?
George Velev: Yeah, certainly. One of the major reasons to bring back “Heroic Week” is the amount of content that players are going to experience in the first week of Season 1. We don’t want players to feel like they’re sort of rushed to do everything with opening Season 1, like having to dive into Mythic Raids or Mythic+ immediately. We want to give more time for the content to breathe. We want players to feel like they have a chance to go through their gearing journey at a more organic cadence.
In terms of Mythic+ and the Mythic Raid unlocking at the same time, we do treat them as sort of analogous player journeys. And, with the change of Mythic 0 being analogous to something like a Mythic +10, we do want to give players more time to get used to Mythic 0 keys, the new Hero Talents, or new class updates before jumping into Mythic+ progression. Mythic+ and the Mythic Raid also offer similar rewards paths, so we like the idea of tying them together in terms of when they unlock.
Raider.IO: The Race to World First (RWF) has grown bigger and better than ever before in recent years, especially with the live-streamed RWF of the modern WoW era. In what way has this growth and development of the RWF and top-end raiding scene affected your work? Has there been a shift in design philosophy or prioritization of certain game systems/mechanics that supports or combats the efforts made by the RWF raiders?
Michael Bybee: We’ve definitely done that in the past, and it’s something we’re looking into. However, we don’t have any plans to announce removing it right now.
Icy-Veins: Did you ever consider making Delves as challenging as Mythic Raids, perhaps creating a world-first race for them?
Michael Bybee: The short answer is no, but I’ll give you a longer answer. We’ve got a lot of content for people who are really into super hard challenges like Mythic Raiding and the high-end Mythic+ keys, and Delves were specifically intended to not be that and be a little bit more bite-sized, for solo or smaller groups. And yeah, they can get kind of challenging as they go up, but they never get as challenging as your top-end Mythic Raid or top-end Mythic+ keys. And you can see, we are also rewarding them in that way because they’re not quite as hard. With all that said, we do have the 13th delve that was added explicitly to be more of that, like, “Oooh, this is going to be a little spicy” challenge, and that’s explicitly why we haven’t actually revealed it. People don’t know exactly how hard that’s going to be. I can say internally it’s going to be very, very, very challenging, and there is an amazing reward. It’s a void-themed version of the Delver’s Dirigible. Personally, The Delver’s Dirigible is the top thing that I want to get out of this expansion because it looks so cool. I think a lot of players are going to get really excited about that.
Icy-Veins: The Awakening the Machine event has seen some interesting changes throughout beta. The latest version doesn’t include awakened powers, and they’re no longer available from the vendor. Were these powers ultimately scrapped, or how will players gain progression or strength to defeat enemies and earn rewards now?
Michael Bybee: Specifically regarding the Awakening Machine – the questions around the changes you saw in the early Beta version that had 50 rounds that you could go through and tons of Torghast-like powers, it took like an hour if you were going to get through that. The real issue is that it didn’t really achieve the goal that we had set out for that specific piece of content. You can think about the content that we put in the game sort of like each piece intended to fit within a specific spot, and it all kind of works together. We had intended the Awakening the Machine event to be more like 15 to 20 minutes – sort of bite-sized content – something that players didn’t feel like they had to do for hours on end in order to get the best rewards. And so we took in player feedback, we looked at what we’d done, and we scaled it back. So, right now, it’s 20 rounds. You get rewards after doing five rounds and the point there is that it’s actually much more bite-sized and if players can’t get to the last round, they can try it over again without feeling like they’ve spent hours already investing in it. The powers are still there on a little more limited basis. You can actually get them through the Snuffling toolboxes out in the world. So, we tried to give a little bit of all of that, but still, we feel like the event as it is designed now is much closer to what we’d intended and we think players will actually engage in it and enjoy it a lot more.
Icy-Veins: What led the team to ultimately decide against introducing Earthen Death Knights?
George Velev: It came down to what made sense for the race narratively. Canonically, Allied Earthen are newly created or are born following the events that players will experience when they play through The War Within, and they’re literally beings made of stone. It just didn’t make sense narratively, sort of similar to why all Demon Hunters are Blood Elves or Night Elves.
Icy-Veins: When can we expect the first Matrix Catalyst charge to be available on live servers?
George Velev: The first charge will be available when Season 1 starts. It’s very similar to Dragonflight Season 3. The first charge is week 1 of Season 1 and then, every two weeks, you get another charge. This time around though, we are also adding a sort of in-game timer on top of the Catalyst so you can see exactly how much time you have remaining until you get the next charge.
Icy-Veins: Would you consider doing a Fated or Awakened Season 4 with extremely challenging bosses, essentially creating a new World First race for them? Maybe just for the final bosses?
Michael Bybee: It’s an interesting idea. We heard a lot of feedback about Season 4 from Dragonflight and why players would like more challenge, more reward, etc., in that Season. What we’re balancing it against is that by that time players have spent maybe, you know, quite a long time trying to progress through each of those different raid encounters. And we’ve also heard a lot of feedback from people that they don’t want to feel like they have to go through the progression in a raid, do the next raid, same thing, do the next raid, same thing, and then Season 4 comes out and they have to slog through re-progressing through all of those encounters again. So, it’s not off the table, but it’s definitely something that we’d want to be wary about. We’ll continue talking about that, and other ways, to make the final season of an expansion cycle feel a little bit more engaging, but we’re cautious about making players feel like they have to go through all the previous progression again. It’s not off the table, but we want to make sure it’s something players would genuinely enjoy rather than something they feel obligated to do.
Icy-Veins: Are there any plans to add a dungeon meta-achievement in The War Within?
Michael Bybee: Not exactly a meta achievement. What we’re going to do, or at least as of around 10 a.m. yesterday morning when we were talking with the lead of the Encounter Design team, what they’re thinking about doing is instead of doing a meta achievement, they’re going to move that into Feats of Strength. The thinking there is, because dungeons are rotating now with Seasons, it really feels like we want players to be able to engage and feel like they they can look back and look at the accomplishments, but also not that they if they missed it during the Season, that they missed out on an achievement that maybe they really wanted to collect.
Raider.IO: Going into TWW you have started experimenting with the Xal’atath-themed affixes. What were your thoughts as you initially brainstormed and played around with these ideas and the general change to how the Mythic+ system works?
Michael Bybee: I’m excited to talk about this. And specifically, I’m excited about the Xal’atath’s Bargain affixes, and just how Mythic+ is going to play out in the Season. Personally, I play a lot of Mythic+. I’m probably not going to be pushing the 12+ keys, but I’m going to be trying to get my portals and all of that.
The thing that happened this time is that we were trying to engage with what we’ve heard from the community quite a lot over the years like, “Hey, can we do kiss-curse mechanics? Hey, we want something that actually gives us a benefit. We want to be able to play really well and get something cool from the affixes and a Mythic+ dungeon instead of just feeling like they’re always torturing us and punishing us all the time.” So, back in June, we pushed the first round of those and we got a lot of feedback. And frankly, what people were saying is, “This isn’t exactly what we’re looking for. It’s not hitting the mark.” So we went back to the drawing board and what you got instead with these four Xal’atath’s Bargain affixes is that, firstly, it’s something much more thematically tied to her. And secondly, the mechanics are really engaging and interesting.
The one that I think is especially cool is Oblivion where crystals come in towards enemies. If the enemies absorb them, they’re harder to kill. If you intercept them, you get a buff. The fact that you can actually play that mechanic badly and it makes the game harder, but you can play it better and it makes the game easier, is really cool. That’s really what we’re looking for…can we provide affixes that let players make interesting choices and, over time, learn to improve, and feel like they’re getting rewarded from that?
Icy-Veins: Is there any chance we could see the Brawler’s Guild return in The War Within?
Michael Bybee: Oh man, I would LOVE that. Right. Nothing specific to announce right now, but I can tell you that it is absolutely on the list of events that we talk about all the time like hey, how can we refresh this? What would make it new and fresh and interesting and when’s the right time? Other than that, there’s nothing specific to announce right now, but I really hope we do because I love the Brawler’s Guild.
Icy-Veins: Are there any plans to remove the Pathfinder achievement requirement for flying in Shadowlands zones?
Michael Bybee: We’ve definitely done that in the past, and it’s something we’re looking into. However, we don’t have any plans to announce removing it right now.
Icy-Veins: The Delver’s Bonus Event is coming in The War Within. How will it work, and what will players receive from the weekly quest?
Michael Bybee: I believe Bountiful Keys are part of the bonus, but I’ll have to check with the team for more specific rewards. We’ll make sure players know exactly what to expect when it’s live.
Icy-Veins: Do you plan on expanding upon the Hero Talent system in future expansions?
George Velev: Well, hero talents are an evergreen system for sure and we’re just getting started with them, so I do expect that, much like the Talent revamp over the course of Dragonflight, there will be revisions and there will be updates. It’s not something we’re just shipping and sort of leaving behind going forward. They are part of your class and spec identity, so I think we can certainly expect updates to Hero Talents. What those updates are, is something that we can’t really talk about right now. Our focus for release is to make sure that they’re as good as they can be for The War Within launch in Season 1, but they are an evergreen feature and they’re going to be around for a while, so I think updates and improvements are certainly on the table.
Icy Veins+Raider.IO: Well, that was it for our questions and we’re out of time!
Michael Bybee: Well, I just want to say thank you! I thought your questions were awesome and it was really good getting to hang out.
George Velev: It was a pleasure.
Don’t forget to head over to Raider.IO for additional insights from George Velev and Michael Bybee!