Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #261 - For Azeroth!: “Dawn of the Infinite"

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#261 - For Azeroth!: “Dawn of the Infinite" · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

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Today I'm getting to sit down with Morgan day and Stephen
0:03
Carvalho to developers involved with the creation of the
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fractures of Time. Mega dungeon dawn of the
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infinite. Let's get into it.
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Pork island or illness us endure for the alliance.
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For Azeroth. First, I want to thank you guys
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for taking the time to talk with me today.
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I know you have a lot to deal with, so once again, thank you
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both for those who don't know, you could you introduce
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yourselves Sure, I'm Steven cavallaro.
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I'm a senior encounter designer on the World of Warcraft team
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and I helped bring the mega dungeon dawn of the infinite to
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life. Hello.
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My name is Morgan day. I am one of the associate game
1:01
directors on World of Warcraft and apparently, I am red /
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purple at the moment. I can't fix my webcam.
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Sorry about that. Oh, wait, there it goes.
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Okay, well, I guess we're here to talk about the mega dungeon.
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I'm very excited. I love Mega dungeons, it.
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And I love the infinite Dragon so this is this is the peanut
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butter sandwich for me, coming together.
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The mega dungeon as we've seen on the PTR.
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We start going right in Hot Pursuit after the current
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thread. So clearly there's some story
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that leads up to that based on that.
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Are we going to see the mega dungeon right on the opening of
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the patch? Or is it something that we will
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need to do some story before we unlock it?
1:45
Yeah. So the goal here is to Be able
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to go into the mega dungeon on on release and be able to
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experience you know the encounters and and and the story
1:54
in there. There is questing content prior
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at least at at this time and Morgan.
2:00
If this is something that you maybe can shut up said light on
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the actual requirement to to to do a breadcrumb Quest To Enter
2:08
the mega dungeon is not something that would prevent you
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from actually doing it. So yeah we want players really
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feel like they can get in that content right away.
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But yeah, there there is some lead up.
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Signs, including involving a one of the characters found in in
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Don of the infinite more Chi and you get to kind of see some of
2:26
her stuff. Early, of course more Chi is the
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evil version of Chrome e the infinite version of chromium.
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So obviously I mean certainly with mega dungeons, I want to
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say all the way back in Legion when we added return to Kara's
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and there was you know kind of like the old-school Attunement
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quests, right? We had to kind of complete the
2:46
quest before you can Zone in but that was something that we We
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pretty quickly, you know, heard feedback on from the players
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that they just want to log in and play with your friends and
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do the stuff, right? So we still have a lot of really
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cool questions, surrounding the mega dungeon, but that stuff is
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all optional. It's not something that would be
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required for you to do before or after you complete it.
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And so with the mega dungeon, obviously those have been very
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story driven. We've been chasing Outlaws
3:12
through cares. Sorry through as of action we
3:15
have been trying to find. Like the answer is in Mechag on.
3:19
But with this one it's a segment of the story, but it's not the
3:23
complete story. There's some stuff that happens
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before and without going into spoilers, it seems like this
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story continues. After the dungeon, are we going
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to be seeing stories? Kind of gated like we saw with
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ten point one point five or so, here are the ten point one with
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the raid where there were story before and after or is it going
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to be just all like, one big chunk that we can eat, right?
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Away. So yeah, you know, certainly a
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following the completion of Donna, the infinite, there will
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be some follow-up, you know, some quests and and some stuff
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that would be, you know, part of future content updates as well.
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But I think we were, we really wanted to make sure that the
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bulk of the story were telling with with this content update
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occurs, you know, before and then into and during dawn of the
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infinite itself. And so you know, kind of as a as
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I guess going back a little bit, there's sort of two main plot
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lines, right? That are sort of Ding right now
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in the dragonflight story and one of them is the bronze
4:21
dragonflights plot line with chromey trying to protect her
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leader as door move from sort of this ultimate fate of becoming
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MERS on and there's the Primal incarnate storyline in
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particular interest to to this content update fractures in
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time, a ridic Ron's plot and what he wants to do, what his
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plan is. And so ultimately with Donna,
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the infinite, we're sort of bringing those story lines
4:44
together and trying to tell more about Riddick runs motivations
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but also sort of trying to really go into whether or not
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chromey can stop those door moved from becoming more has on
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and you'll see that play out during dawn of the infinite and
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we're super excited about being able to sort of take that main
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line plot and introduce it in a mega dungeon in a way that we
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haven't really done before, you know, previous megatons of had
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some really cool side storylines but this is really the main
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driving plot of dragon flight being pushed forward here.
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Here. Yeah and on top of that, you
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know as we mentioned there would be questing before but also
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there. Yeah there are some quests that
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open up that and become available.
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Once you've completed, the mega dungeon also you know, I don't
5:32
want to get into spoilers here but you know the community is
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kind of come to you know love and appreciate a lot of these
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really awesome IGCSE and the videos that come out alongside
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this content and there were definitely some encrypted things
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that players will have to wait until, you know, the launch of
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fractures in time to see. But addition in addition to that
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kind of a also. Also, this is, we're doing
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something a little bit unique in the similar vein that, you know,
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Normally, the mega dungeons come out with the major patches of,
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where this time, we're doing it in. 5 with fractures and time,
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we want players to be able to experience this from a story
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perspective as even for the player type who might not be,
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who might not, normally do a lot of the, like, kind of organize,
6:20
more challenging content. So we're actually going to be
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splitting the mega dungeon into similar to what we've done in
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the past but much earlier than we have in the past, we're going
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to be adding the of ability to queue for Our heroic Donna the
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infinite as too kind of halves of a dungeon in 10 17.
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So that will be right, you know, kind of around the corner after
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we come out with fractures in time where people will be able
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to experience that even if they're not even if they don't
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want to do it, you know as a Mythic Mega dungeon.
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Wow. Okay.
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So it's coming in. Ten point one point seven.
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I was my assumption would have been that.
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It would have been with the next season that we would have gotten
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both the split or Rogue versions and for possibly Mythic plus
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actually that is a question is are we going to see this in the
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Mythic plus rotation in the next season?
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Yeah, I mean that was part of the motivation there with
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splitting the dungeon into the heroic for 10 17 was one, you
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know. We want to see this in to go
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into the season 3 Mythic plus pool but also as Steven
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mentioned like this is a really important thrust of the story
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for dragonflies. I want players to be able to
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experience that prior to going into the next season.
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Okay. Now, the other part of it is
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that when you're doing it as the big one big chunk Mega dungeon
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that has a lot of difficulties. Mainly, you know, getting a team
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together that can go through all of that.
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And when the difficulty of the actual encounters is higher,
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sometimes you get some teams that can't fully complete.
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It is this dungeon relatively as As challenging as previous Mega
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dungeons, or where have you guys kind of position dead?
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Yeah, I think this is definitely a really interesting kind of
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kind of thing to think about and you know, it's it's something
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that we try to do in terms of like with Donna, the infinite
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think about ways to, you know, service different buckets of the
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community in different ways to make sure that, you know, all
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our players feel satisfied with the content offering that they
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have. One of the things that we're
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actually doing differently with Dawn of the infinite compared to
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the other Mega dungeons is We are intentionally releasing it
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at a difficulty level. That will require more
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coordination. That is similar to raids, you
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know, it's more of a smaller raid like experience for a
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smaller group of players and we are doing that because there's,
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there's been, there's definitely been, you know, Outreach in the
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community asking for more smaller.
8:56
Sized instance, content that is still challenging because, you
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know, not everyone, Either has the time or has the, you know, I
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mean a variety of reasons why you might not be able to raid
9:08
with with with a 20-person team on a weekly basis on a scheduled
9:11
basis, right? But you still want to do
9:12
challenging, endgame content for Meaningful rewards and so this
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was a way to sort of offer that and I think it's you know it's
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it's a nice juxtaposition is something like Mythic plus which
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we're super excited about and happy about but there's you know
9:27
there's there's a timer. It's a very different type of
9:29
experience than you might have. Like in a traditional Raid where
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you're like, progressing through bosses, and you're learning
9:34
encounters, and you're spending 10 minutes and five minutes
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talking to each other by. Okay.
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What do you what do you want to try this time?
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Let's strategize. Let's think about how we want to
9:42
try to approach this and so we wanted to try to take that
9:44
experience and have it in Donna, the infinite at launch and so
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you might be familiar with how previous Meghan tonjes liked as
9:52
of us have had like a hard mode that you could turn on right
9:55
with Donna, the infinite that's essentially baked in to the
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dungeon. It is how it is at launch.
10:00
It is the default difficulty. Why it is notably in a more
10:03
difficult than a regular Mythic dungeon but to reiterate,
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Morgans Point. This is why we felt it was so
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important for us to get heroic out sooner in 10 17 than we
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normally would, because we do want to make sure that we're
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allowing all of our players, you know, to experience the content
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because it has some important story elements, it's a Mainline
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storytelling device for us and so, it's important that we got
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that out earlier to to, you know, coincide with the increase
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in difficulty, and I mentioned it as well.
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But we are, you know, aware that if we're going to have an
10:34
increase in difficulty, we want to make sure that players feel
10:36
rewarded. So the rewards this time around
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are going to be, you know, comparative to liked as a better
10:42
example, more, more more powerful.
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It's something that we think is important, and as an example,
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you know, the power level of the gear will be sort of around what
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you would expect to drop from an end end of raid heroic boss.
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And, and that's, that's sort of the level of power that's being
11:00
targeted. But I think, Even Beyond just
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the raw item level. We're trying some interesting
11:04
things with like different effects on some of the items to
11:08
make them feel thematically tied to Donna, the infinite to the
11:11
idea of time and time travel. And so I think a lot of players
11:14
will find some of those effects to be interesting and unique,
11:16
and no want to go pick them up and play around with them, sort
11:19
of, regardless of the item level itself.
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And then even beyond that, we want to make sure that players
11:24
that are interested in, you know, Cosmetics like prototype
11:27
Road, riding companion, skins or transmog, you know, collectors,
11:29
have something to go for it in there as well.
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And so, as an example, you'll be able to collect infinite
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dragonflight dragon scales for your photo Dragon companions.
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There's some secrets, we don't want to really talk too much
11:43
about, but I think that transmog, fans and collectors
11:46
will be excited about some things that are going to be in
11:48
there as well. So, I think there's a lot for
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players to sort of, you know, get in terms of rewards from
11:54
from from running Donna, the infinite, and, and we're very
11:57
excited about seeing how players sort of engage with the content
12:01
on release. With that more sort of Social
12:03
and coordination, heavy aspect. You just answered a ton of my
12:09
questions in that. Thank you so much.
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I really appreciate when people go deep like that.
12:15
Another part to it is that when you're going through this
12:18
dungeon you can see that there's like a lot of mini-bosses and
12:21
different events that are like sort of mixing it up.
12:24
So when you're like designing, these encounters, was that like
12:27
a very obviously, it's a deliberate thing, you've
12:30
designed design, you design things deliberately.
12:33
But what's the inspiration behind that?
12:34
Are you trying to like mix up the metaphor dungeons?
12:37
Yeah, I think particularly, when you have longer form content
12:41
like this, you want to have these moments of break up right
12:43
in the gameplay. You want to have some fresh
12:45
moments that, you know, it's it's always fun to fight
12:49
different creatures but after a while it's like, can we, can we
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think it's sort of a sort of a Twist on what we're doing here
12:55
to kind of freshen up the experience.
12:56
And so you might be familiar with want to sort of the major
12:59
things regarding that in Donna. The infinite is this sort of
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Gauntlet you have to run through to it.
13:04
Starts in the second half of the dungeon and you To sort of run
13:08
through a bunch of these infinite dragonflight.
13:10
They're trying to like stop you and you have the speed boost
13:12
from cromie and it's a non-combat moment, but it's a
13:16
fun Twist on, you know, our gameplay and it trying to
13:20
interject things like that. I think we feel is important to
13:23
help, it's not even just about. Freshening up the experience,
13:26
it's about making the experience feel more immersive and More
13:28
Alive like you know just different ways to interact with
13:32
characters. Like for example having it
13:34
reason for Crow me to give you that speed boost.
13:36
You know, it feels in line with what Expect from crummy she's
13:38
supporting you and it's just ways to try to integrate all
13:41
that in a, in a, in a sequence of feel satisfying for players.
13:45
And you mentioned, you know there's there's some little
13:47
set-piece moments like you land and a in a infinite trait comes
13:51
flying and lands in front of you and it does little things.
13:54
I think helped a lot to sell the experience as a as an experience
13:59
Beyond just the gameplay. Yeah there are those moments
14:04
that are little more cinematic? Definitely more immersive.
14:08
There are also a couple of bosses that are are challenging
14:14
if you're not paying attention. So thinking of cromie and when
14:20
we're dealing with her evil, counterpart, more G.
14:22
There is a mechanic where you are tracking this figure out
14:26
which one has the debuff Is this something where you are trying
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specifically to combat people? Using like we course is to be
14:34
like, that's the one go I go after it.
14:37
Yeah. I think when we design mechanics
14:39
like that, where we try to come up with new ways for players to
14:42
like read and react to situations, write something
14:45
that's maybe different than you know, dodging, a swirly on the
14:48
ground or you know things that players are very familiar with
14:51
and so mechanics like this are just a way for us to kind of
14:54
harken back to my last answer a way to sort of freshen up the
14:58
play pattern. The thinking pattern that
14:59
players have to have to do with that being said, you know, we
15:03
always take into account like accessibility and we want to
15:07
make sure that players feel like they're able to parse
15:08
information in a way that is reasonable.
15:11
And so that type of stuff always comes, you know, from tuning and
15:13
making sure that we feel that players have enough time to make
15:16
the decision of which, which more cheese, the real more Chi
15:19
and things like that. So yeah, I think in terms of,
15:23
you know, combating, we cores and what I think it's just for
15:26
us, it's more about just introducing Being different ways
15:29
for players to make a decision about what they're actually
15:32
looking at on screen and like with their seeing a character do
15:36
and then they see that and they're able to make what feels
15:39
like a cool decision. Or like, I literally am watching
15:43
this character, do an animation and I'm making a gameplay
15:45
decision about that. We think that we think that's
15:47
that's that's that's a fun game play pattern.
15:50
Also. I mean as Stevens touched on a
15:53
couple times like when we think of Mega dungeons, a lot of what
15:56
we Discuss in with amongst ourselves is like they're like
16:00
many raids, right? But like a small raid but not
16:02
only does it do we mean that when we talk about it from just
16:05
the pure cinematic and storytelling aspect and you
16:08
know, the duration of it, you know, it's an eight boss,
16:10
dungeon that's pretty awesome. But also from the perspective of
16:15
you know, the mechanical choices that the team makes, right that
16:18
that amount of coordination that you might require from a raid,
16:21
is also something that you would see in a mega dungeon where
16:23
normally, we have a pretty clean line almost in the sand where
16:27
Alright, this is a dungeon mechanic, you know, Thou shalt
16:29
not use that. In a dungeon, it's okay to use
16:31
it in a raid or this is more. We think of it as a mini red,
16:34
not only from, you know, from multiple perspectives as well as
16:38
the amount of coordination that we might expect all the way up
16:40
to things that have like, the duration of the encounter,
16:43
right? Like, a normal dungeon boss, we
16:44
might have, we usually aim for like a two-minute Mark where I'm
16:49
like a dungeon bosses. We talked about being quite a
16:51
bit longer than that, in terms of duration, which also frees
16:54
up, more Thai, or gives you more time to experiment with things.
16:56
Phase changes and stuff like that.
16:58
So really it's an opportunity for that the the team to do some
17:01
awesome stuff there. Along the lines of thinking of
17:04
this as a rate encounter. When you're balancing a rate
17:08
especially at the higher difficulties, where you can Bank
17:11
on a certain amount of people, you're able to bank on
17:14
particularly utility but in a five-man team it there's no
17:18
chance that team can be guaranteed to have specific
17:21
utility. How do you like offset that in
17:23
your balancing? Is it just that this is a
17:26
separate category of no, we can't do this because there's no
17:28
way that they could have a priest or a draft here to do the
17:32
rescue /. Or like, what's the thought
17:35
process when you're doing those encounter designs?
17:38
Definitely. I mean, we certainly want to
17:39
make sure that, you know, regardless of the level of
17:43
coordination required that were being accessible to, you know,
17:46
all of our players. And that means, you know, all
17:49
their classes and their specs, I think we certainly want to still
17:53
represent, you know, in some encounters, some sex or classes
17:56
might have a specific moment to really shine, but that does not
18:00
mean that it's like a requirement for them to be
18:01
there. That's certainly not something.
18:03
That we would intentionally you know want to do with like you
18:05
mentioned a smaller group like this because it's with with less
18:08
people, there's that much more you know of an impossibility
18:11
that you can assume every class is going to be there.
18:13
Obviously it's not possible because there's only five
18:15
people. So definitely when we're
18:18
balancing in terms of coordination, we like to think
18:21
more about General gameplay. Rolls not so much specific specs
18:25
or classes when it comes to a smaller group size.
18:27
Like, for example, knowing that and mechanic might have a window
18:31
where it would be good to have a Buff that Buffs damage, right?
18:34
There is a lot of classes and specs that can do that and I
18:37
mean in particular, augmentation of okra will be able to do that
18:41
obviously. But, you know, their shamans
18:43
with with, you know, heroism or blood loss, you know, lots of
18:47
classes can do a haste buff at this point.
18:50
So it's, it's things like that. Where we know that we have
18:52
combat roles that are not literally like being a tank,
18:56
healer DPS but there are moments for that type of class and
19:02
gameplay. A pattern to shine.
19:04
But it's certainly not something that we feel, you know, is is a
19:08
requirement nor should it be. Yeah.
19:10
I mean, ultimately, you know, philosophically when we talk
19:12
about encounter design, you know, we think of it as creating
19:15
a puzzle for the players to solve, right?
19:18
And often, when we discuss that, we want there to be a lot of
19:22
different ways to approach these encounters.
19:24
We don't really feel like the best approach is to say, this is
19:27
exactly how you beat this fight. You must cast this exact spell,
19:30
right? Because then, there's not much
19:31
Discovery there. The player lakhs Of agency.
19:34
And if we approach things like that way versus like, hey,
19:37
you've got a bunch of tools. You can solve this in a number
19:40
of different ways. Like, as long as I've got some
19:42
form of Mobility, you can kind of counteract, this ability, and
19:44
lots of classes have Mobility options, right?
19:46
So really, we look at it as we're creating interesting
19:50
puzzles. The combat team is constant is
19:52
giving us really a fun tools and utility that we can then
19:54
leverage and often will try to find ways to create as many
19:58
potential possibilities in terms of how you solve that problem
20:01
amongst your own group. Cuz that's a lot of fun
20:04
interactions with like the talent system pop up in that
20:06
regard, right? Where when you walk up to an
20:08
encounter like whoo. Okay.
20:10
Hold on. We just wiped but I bet if I
20:13
change my spec around a little bit here, that'll give us the
20:15
tools. Now to counteract that ability
20:17
that we might not have had last attempt so really that kind of
20:20
interplay between the the core classes and the encounters is
20:25
what really creates a lot of exciting gameplay.
20:28
Conversely when you're looking at doing a fixes and Mythic plus
20:33
that seems like it would add additional like constraints on
20:36
how you would design things thinking back to season one, how
20:40
you had to create certain areas or times where thundering
20:44
couldn't trigger just so you wouldn't have liked those
20:47
unfortunate lineups. Like, obviously, that's a recent
20:50
example but there's obviously gameplay examples, that would be
20:54
like that like sanguine happening, right?
20:55
When you get pulled into something or whatever, Do you
20:59
have like a sort of list of mechanics that you don't do
21:04
because you've now introduced new affixes?
21:07
I mean, specifically for the like season 2 dungeons, or do
21:12
you mean with Donovan? We've gone are the infinite, but
21:15
I guess it's more General philosophy.
21:17
When you're designing now is that you you're looking at
21:20
designing dawn of the infinite and you say, okay.
21:22
I don't want to have this thing happened because Afflicted might
21:26
happen or we can't have Have a bunch of speed Mobility things
21:30
because right then and then and there you can get entangling and
21:33
that can cause like, you know, the bad luck everybody
21:37
complains. Because I thought the dungeon
21:38
screwed me all right. Yeah, I mean, certainly, you
21:42
know, we removed quaking for instance with season two but
21:46
that was one of those areas were like, you know, we would
21:48
constantly kind of see like the the community post of the little
21:52
video of like this boss mechanical, right?
21:53
Is quick and hit and we all died.
21:55
What did you what did you want from me game?
21:56
Right? So yeah, those are certainly
21:57
areas We are always taking to consideration how those
22:00
interactions might kind of play together.
22:04
So we discussed that as we are building dungeons, certainly so
22:07
Donnie, the infant. I'm sure that's something that
22:09
the group has been discussing. But yeah, there are for sure
22:11
areas where we look at design options and try to think of how
22:18
can we incorporate as much you know, potential class utility as
22:22
possible, right? Like I want to say it's some
22:26
Afflicted right? Where the That is a effects that
22:29
was added that there's actually a lot of different ways to
22:31
approach that problem. Like it's not just this one
22:34
specific thing solves it. There's a lot of alternative
22:38
ways to approach that problem. So yeah, that's often something
22:43
that the group talks about for sure.
22:45
Well I know you guys are squeezed for time so I just want
22:47
to ask one last question. Before I let you go.
22:50
Um, these dungeons, Mega dungeons.
22:54
Have been such a great success and people love them.
22:57
You guys are pumping out content.
22:58
Faster than ever before. Is there a point where you're
23:01
going to consider doing more than one Mega dungeon in a
23:04
particular expansion without promising anything?
23:07
Yeah I mean certainly you know we love exploring the mega
23:13
dungeon space. You know that's one of the joys
23:16
of World of Warcraft is that there's such a wide breadth of
23:19
players and content that they find interesting, right.
23:23
So like there's a players that love raids and the players that
23:25
love dungeons are the Outdoor World.
23:27
So we're always looking to To create content and an experience
23:30
that is as satisfying for, you know, as diverse and broader
23:34
range of players as possible. So you know, often we just kind
23:37
of follow follow our nose. You know what makes sense for
23:41
the story? But also what what kind of
23:43
content do we think would be exciting right now for the
23:45
player base and that's something that we will continue to
23:48
philosophically kind of guide us and determine kind of what
23:53
direction the content goes in the game.
23:54
But you know as with all things in and World of Warcraft, the
23:57
you know, Any feedback is tremendously valuable to us and
24:00
we're always listening and excited to hear what the players
24:03
think about the content were building and what else?
24:06
They would find fun and interesting.
24:08
Well again, thank you so much for your time.
24:10
Speaking for myself, I love Mega dungeons.
24:12
I love dungeons in general. So any dungeons that release
24:15
after the initial eight so far, is eagerly anticipated by my
24:21
myself and many of my friends. Great, awesome to hear.
24:25
Thank you so much. I appreciate your time.
24:26
Any good. Thanks.