It’s almost time to take to the skies and face the Primal Incarnate, Fyrakk and the Druids of the Flame in the new 10.2 update for World of Warcraft: Dragonflight.
Join me as I chat with Blizzard’s own Katherine Bankson, Assistant Lead Quest Designer, and Anne Stickney, Senior Narrative Designer, as we unpack and dive into Guardians of the Dream.
What are the key elements of 10.2 that you have worked on? And what are you most excited for players to experience in Guardians of the Dream?
K: I worked on a little bit of everything and kind of oversaw the process. And then I was involved in directly implementing one of our quest lines that you get to see with Vyranoth and Wrathian, which is a little bit of fun. So hopefully players enjoy that. I’m looking forward to players getting to see a lot of the stories we’ve been telling, especially the local stories. They dive into a lot of things that players have been wanting to see and a lot of things that I know I’ve been wanting to see from our various characters. So I’m excited for players to be able to get into those and be able to see what we’ve come up with there.
A: As far as myself, Kate and I worked together on the Vyranoth and Wrathion Magical Adventures Tour. That one was super fun to work on and I can’t wait for people to play through it. Wrathion is one of my favourite characters and Vyranoth is quickly becoming a favourite, and the two of them together are chef’s kiss! And I can’t go into detail about the other things that I worked on, but one of them is the raid. I was the narrative point for the new raid, Amirdrassil, The Dreams Hope. I helped work with the story elements in that and the voice lines and the narrative that kind of takes you through the raid. And then some other stuff that I can’t talk about yet, because not everything is on the PTR, but I tell you what, you’re going to be very delighted by it!
Dragon Riding is such a fun and now iconic addition to Dragonflight. This is a major feature of the expansion and is also being introduced to other areas of Azeroth. Have you considered bringing in the original flying mechanic to the Dragon Isles so Mount Collectors can utilise their collections?
K: We’re actually doing that. So that is actually something that is coming in 10.2 in Guardians of the Dream. We’re going to have Pathfinder achievement again so that players will be able to fly on their other mounts in the Dragon Isles. It’s going to involve getting some reputation with a lot of the areas that you’ve been in the Dragon Isles up till now. Some reputation with the new group, with the new renowned Wardens of the Dream. And, you know, having some exploration done. And then you’ll be able to unlock normal flying or old flying, I suppose it should be called now.
There have been some Dragonriding traits added in the last update, can you please tell us what Dragonriding talents we can find in Guardians of the Dream?
A: I’m not 100% sure what the specifics are called, but I know that we’ve got one of them where you hit a button and you get some vigour back and there’s another one that works kind of in synchronization with that.
K: The two new talents are swift skimming, which is a passive, and that means ground skimming can occur while affected by a Thrill of the Skies and the other is Winds Respite, which is another passive, and that’s the one that works with aerial halts. So you get kind of like a brief moment of weightlessness and the effects of gravity are reduced for two seconds. So you float there after you halt in the sky for a few seconds and then you begin to descend.
The Areas of Dragon Isles such as Ohn’aharan Plains and Azure Span were so beautifully created in such unique and interesting ways. What can we expect from The Emerald Dream that will give its own unique flavour and identity?
K: Well, the Emerald Dream, it’s an area that we’ve been really excited to show, a lot of people have wanted to see it for a very long time because we’ve hinted at it and shown little bits and pieces of it in the Nightmare Raid and in the Emerald Dreamway, if you’re a druid and stuff like that. Things that you can expect, even though it’s the Dream, it isn’t just a magical forest. We have lots of different biomes in the Emerald Dream and even though we’re only showing a portion of the Emerald Dream, there are still lots of differences in the areas that we’re going to right now. So we have some beautiful cenotes that were created by the World Building Team and we have some lovely fields and mountain areas and then, of course, there are areas that have been attacked by Fyrakk and his forces and so those are a little bit more fiery and some of those areas have started to be converted into a more flaming version of the Emerald Dream by the druids of the flame themselves. So we’re going to see a lot of different cool biomes in the world.
A: I think what I love about the Emerald Dream is the first time I saw my first inkling of the Emerald Dream, my first character in World of Warcraft like ever was a druid and that first bear form quest that you got, you had to go into the Emerald Dream to talk to a bear spirit and I didn’t know much about World of Warcraft at that point but I was terrified this bear spirit was just going one-shot me because that’s just what I was expecting the game to do. But you go into this green area and it’s bordered by these angry-looking large trees and green mist and you can’t go very far into it. It was all kind of like barricaded off and anytime I run into, it doesn’t matter what game I’m playing, anytime I run into a space where it’s like ‘oh no you can’t go here there’s a wall in the way’ I want to figure out how to get past the wall. You couldn’t do that back then but the Emerald Dream is one of those places that I’ve been wanting to experience since that moment so the fact that we’ve been able to build this massive chunk of it and don’t get me wrong we are not going to the entirety of the Emerald Dream because the entirety of the Emerald Dream it’s like a wild, it’s a reflection of the waking world in which wilderness just kind of runs amok and is left to do its own thing. But it’s not, we know it’s at least as large as Azeroth is right but there’s potentially way more to it than that. I don’t know if we’re ever going to explore the whole thing, I don’t know if we ever can explore the whole thing but the fact that we’ve got this massive piece of it that we get to look into I’m really happy about it and I love how it turned out.
Speaking of Druids, with race combinations will Druids become the forefront with this update?
K: So it isn’t a Druid story that we’re telling right now. So while they’re gonna be there and they’re going to be present, it isn’t something that we’re focusing on with them. Now, my Druid friends, you are going to be eating quite well. We have a number of fantastic and wonderful customisations that are coming out. But the story is about saving Amirdrassill and the whole of Azeroth coming together to do that. And so other classes shouldn’t feel left out when they go to the Emerald Dream. Druids should feel special and awesome because, you know, this is their cool clubhouse and this place that they’ve been to and hey, look, all your friends can come join you now and you didn’t like see, explore it all together. But it isn’t so much of a Druid-specific, Druid-focused patch.
A: Moonkin are going to be so happy though! So happy! So excited for what they put together.
Can you tell me a bit more about Superbloom and public events?
K: Sure. The Superbloom is this event where you’re going to be following this Ancient of Life, his name is Sprucecrown, and he’s kind of like this ‘old grandpa’ sort of character, and he’s falling asleep a lot. So he kind of needs to be prodded onwards to help do the Superbloom, and the Superbloom is this ritual where he’s putting in all of this sort of life energy and life essence into Amirdrassil as it’s beginning to move, beginning to grow, and anticipation of it blooming into Azeroth itself. As the player get to help, and you get to do all sorts of interesting things like rescue little itty-bitty Moonkin, and then they follow you, and then they all cast powers at the same time with you, or there’s a bubble gun that you can use, and you can just fire it on an enemy, and then they just float off into nowhere and then die. And you’re doing things like watering the flowers and pulling weeds and stuff like that. Then, primalists are coming in, and they’re trying to stop you from doing this, and you have to beat them down so it’s a little bit like the Cobalt Assembly and this chef event with the the soup had a baby, and it moves around Amirdrassil so it’s a really cool, fun, dynamic event.
A: The voice actor that we pulled in for Sprucecrown is so good. Every time I hear him pipe up, I’m like, “We need to go help Grandpa out in the garden, man” Just really every time he talks, I love it.
What is the process that goes into the decision-making for the new mythic and dungeon rotations? In 10.2 we will be re-experiencing past dungeons from previous expansions. Is there a particular formula for creating these rotations?
K: I know that from the encounters perspective, they wanted to pull in some dungeons that had some connection to some of the themes that we were going to be talking about in Guardians of the Dream and they wanted to pull in some of those things that were kind of related to it. So Darkheart Thicket with its Druid connection, was an obvious pull that we wanted to grab. And then they wanted to explore some of the older ones like Throne of Tides, which is kind of getting into that elemental thing and the primalist feeling. I know that’s kind of where they go when they’re trying to handle these things.
A: I will say this is not the first time that they’ve taken the mega-dungeon and chomped it into two and then made it like two sections either. Like Darkheart Thicket, obviously, there’s that Emerald Dream connection with it, the wild overgrown, it’s Draenor, but it’s still wild overgrown wilderness.
K: And then Waycrest Manor they have that sort of like culturing druid, but like a twisted version of things with the witches. So that’s kind of where that came into the lineup.
As Season 3 is introducing the raid (Amirdrassil, The Dream’s Hope), can we expect casual players to be able to jump back into this update with ease? Can you please tell me about the excitement of going up against Fyrakk and what challenges we can expect?
A: This all takes place at a temple, Wellspring Temple that is protecting the world tree and helping the world tree come to fruition, sink the roots in, grow, and all that other stuff. As we’re going in there though, we’re interested in helping Amidrasill cross over from the Emerald Dream into Azeroth. That’s what we would like to see done with it. Other people have other ideas and Fyrakk is one of those people who has very different ideas for what he wants to do. He wants to devour the heart of Amidrasill. He wants his power. That’s the long and short of it. That looks tasty, I’d like to take that thing. And the Druids of the Flame are working with him, they aren’t working for him. It’s more like, well, he’s doing something convenient, so why don’t we just kind of ally with him? And we’re both on that same sort of path where we’re working together. Fyrakk is probably one of my favourite villains that we’ve come up with in a long time. And a lot of that is due to Matthew Mercer and his voice. The first time he did that chuckle, everybody fell in love immediately. Fyrakk is such a jerk so having the ability to finally confront him and punch him in his smug little face is something we were really looking forward to doing. And the other thing that we were looking forward to doing was incorporating the Druids of the Flame, we fought them back in Cataclysm, but they’ve got some new tricks now. Some really cool tricks that we will need Dragonriding to help compensate for. There is one encounter in the raid itself in which you don’t fight while you’re Dragonriding, we’re not making it that complicated but you definitely use Dragonriding to traverse your way around the tree. And it’s this amazing rush of players diving into the air and swooping around the tree and going around the branches. And I can’t wait to see it on live and watch people take it on. It’s going to be fantastic.
K: We are opening up all levels of access to the raid, so it’s going to be everything at the same time so players will be able to jump right in and be able to get into the raid. We are opening up the different branches of LFR week over week so you won’t be able to complete LFR at the same time normal Heroic and Mythic are but we are allowing folks to dive right on in.
Is 10.2 the last major update for Dragonflight or could we be expecting more to the narrative?
K: There’s definitely lots of story that we want to tell, this is a turning point in the story of Dragonflight but there’s lots of story that we want to tell that is still to come.
Is there a confirmed release date for 10.2?
K: November 7th (November 8th AEDT) for the update launch and November 14th (November 15th AEDT) for the Season 3 launch.
Get your dragons ready Aussies, the update goes live on November 8th and I hope you will join me in protecting the World Tree from the fearsome Fyrakk. I cannot wait to dive back in and check out the new zone Emerald Dream, the Superbloom public event, and soar to the skies to upgrade my dragon riding talents.
Dragonflights’ new raid Amirdrassil, The Dreams Hope and the new Mythic+ rotation will be live on November 15th.
