Dragonflight Interview with AusGamers - Exploration, Dragonriding, & Familiar Faces

Live Опубликовано 19.04.2022 в 16:33 Archimtiros

spoke with AusGamers

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Exploration, Not Combat... but Some Combatzone preview highlights

Jeremy Feasel, via AusGamers

“We've just gone to the afterlife, where there’s this huge, crazy cosmic story in Zereth Mortis that deals with the Jailer and the First Ones,” Jeremy Feasel says. “This is an opportunity for us to head back to Azeroth and into a very grounded space that feels like classic World of Warcraft. One of main focuses with this expansion is going to a place that's not necessarily about a world ending threat. It's about history. It's about characters. It's about exploration. That's the name of the game. From the get go, you're heading off on an exploration-based adventure, the groups that you set out with aren't even military groups.”A Whole New World, A New Fantastic Point of Viewincreased draw distance

Jeremy Feasel, via AusGamers

“With Dragonflight we wanted to create zones that feel like they hit that level of vastness that you want from a place where dragons would exist,” Jeremy Feasel says. “Almost everything has to be a little bit bigger, a little bit wider. You want to have those giant rolling planes where a dragon can swoop down and munch up a whole bunch of primal sheep. We wanted to try to spread back out again, get some of that classic Stranglethorn Vale feel,” Jeremy Feasel continues. “Huge expanses of trees in between spaces where we can have wildlife and really cool POIs. Characters that might be lost out there, little vignettes to discover.”Dragonriding isn't flying though

Jeremy Feasel, via AusGamers

is very fast and fluid, it's arcadey,” Jeremy explains. “You press the spacebar and you do a giant takeoff. And then the whole mini-game is that you've got height and speed and you have to try to figure out how to get as far as possible before you land again. And it should feel like you're swooping and diving through these landscapes. With giant zones the two ended up working really well together. You're gonna move really fast when dragonriding too, much faster than existing mount speeds. Taking off there should be a giant gust of wind and a big flap of your wings,” Jeremy adds. “Our environment team is doing a great job incorporating things like more cloud layers so that you can fly through clouds and get that feeling of moving really fast. And then as you start to speed up and go faster and faster you'll see particles fly off your wings. And eventually that turns into contrails.”

“A big push was to make the experience of moving around the world feel more three dimensional,” Jeremy continues. “That idea of conservation of momentum, of caring about when you stop, because you don't want to stop, you want to keep going fast. How do I get from A to B as fast as possible? Finding those different spires to jump off of becomes an interesting thing to look for as you're traversing the world.”Dracarys

Graham Berger, via AusGamers

“We knew we were making a dragon expansion and that we wanted to let you play as a dragon. That was the guiding light, but we can't let you be Alexstrasza, you can't be 40-feet tall, that wouldn't work. The team did an incredible job making this draconic humanoid model, the Dracthyr. Getting to that humanoid size and then doing everything we could to merge physical and innate magical capabilities with the class design and the combat design was the goal. The Dracthyr and Evoker are kind of one-thing tied together. It's not just casting spells, it's using the internal power of a dragon.”

“Dracthyr have wings so they get to fly and they use the same style of momentum and gravity that dragonriding drakes do. During their starter experience, you get introduced to the new mechanics with tutorials and all that stuff. Heading into building the expansion, knowing that we wanted to create this feature, we had to set up the environment to match. I've only gotten to see it myself recently and it shocked me how much it brought me into the world. Being engaged in the act of moving around while flying is very different for WoW, and made me see the environment in a new way.”Advancing the Dragon Story

Jeremy Feasel, via AusGamers

“With the dragonflights, if they couldn't be defenders of Azeroth anymore, what is their future?” Jeremy ponders. “That's really what we're going to be exploring, and we’ll be getting into their stories as you land on the Dragon Isles. You're going to be meeting with dragonspawn and dragonkin, some of our ancient friends from Blackwing Lair (up-resed for the new generation), learning about their purpose in dragon society. We're going to find the life pools of the red dragonflight, where their sacred oath to the Titans was put forth. Helping them regain some of their power.”

“Visiting all of the different dragonflights is a little bit similar to what we did in Wrath of the Lich King,” Jeremy concludes. “But these are fully fledged areas and many of them have dungeons associated with them. Helping the black dragonflight take back their defensive Citadel, helping the green dragonflight secure their Grove. The main dragonflights aren't all of the dragons in World of Warcraft either, we’ve met a bunch of other dragons. Stone dragons, thunder dragons. Here we’re meeting another group of dragons called the primalists. They follow a group of primal incarnates, followers of Galakrond, ancient huge proto dragons that choose not to side with the Titans. They believe that everyone should be subservient to dragon kind because they're big and powerful. Facing off against dragons, dragon versus dragon, it's gonna be a lot of fun.”

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