[ad_1]
World of Warcraft continues to release new content for the Dragonflight expansion, with the next major content drop including a new mega-dungeon called Dawn of the Infinite. WoW‘s Senior Game Designer, Stephen Cavallaro, and Associate Game Director, Morgan Day recently sat down with Screen Rant to take a deep dive into what players can expect in this escapade. The mega-dungeon will be part of the upcoming Patch 10.1.5 content which is currently on the Test Realm.
World of Warcraft is sticking to its 2023 Roadmap of content for Dragonflight, with patch 10.1.5 releasing sometime during the summer of 2023. It is currently on the Public Test Realm where players can help test new content for any errors prior to its full release and the biggest addition to the game with this patch is the new mega-dungeon Dawn of the Infinite. This eight-boss mega-dungeon will include a plethora of lore for the game, and players will even get to face off with an evil version of Chromie.
Screen Rant: Dawn of the Infinite is the new mega-dungeon for Dragonflight. There have been a few mega-dungeons in the past couple of expansions. What makes a mega-dungeon special from a dungeon or a raid?
Stephen Cavallaro, Senior Game Designer: Definitely. So with mega-dungeons, and in this regard, Dawn of the Infinite, like you mentioned, is similar to our past mega-dungeons. We really want to allow players to spend more time inside the dungeon getting to experience a wider range of encounters and a wider range of experiences that would be possible in a more bite-size experience. The way we look at our regular dungeons, we see them as more of like a 30-minute excursion that you might be able to do on your lunch break. Whereas the mega-dungeons, and Dawn of the Infinite in particular, we really want you to be able to explore the narrative and the story that we’re telling in there.
Also, to have more time to actually coordinate and form strategies with your friends, a little bit more of a social aspect there. Because the difficulty level of our mega-dungeons is also generally higher than our regular dungeons, and we thought in Infinite in particular, we’re actually pushing that a little bit further. You might be familiar with how past mega-dungeons, like Tazavesh, have had something called Hard mode where players could sort of opt into more challenging content. Dawn of the Infinite is sort of shipping at that level of difficulty as default. We sort of see this as a small raid, like a mini raid for a group of five players to experience and it’s something that we want to try, because we’ve seen players in our community ask for more challenging content that isn’t on a timer like Mythic+ that’s at a smaller group experience. You know, of course, we love Mythic+, a lot of our players love Mythic+, but we wanted to maybe offer a different type of challenge, that’s more of like a slow burn. Like a progression style challenge you might find in a raid, and Dawn of the Infinite allows us to do that. And of course, the rewards that players can expect from that are commensurate with that level of difficulty. So, unlike past mega-dungeons, the rewards for Dawn of the Infinite are going to be notably more powerful. Players can expect to receive something along the lines of the end of a heroic level raid from doing Dawn of the Infinite, among some other cool stuff that we can talk about maybe in a bit.
Morgan Day, Associate Game Director: Yeah, on top of what Steven just said, it’s really fun as well because the group even approaches designing these dungeon bosses, like you mentioned, almost like a mini raid. Our normal dungeon encounter length, we expect a boss to take 90 seconds to two minutes, whereas mega-dungeons we look at it not only from a coordination and mechanics perspective – you know, a mechanic that we might not introduce into what we would call a normal dungeon, we would absolutely try in a mega-dungeon similar to how we would use that in a raid. Also, like the boss duration, sometimes we look at pushing that as well. So bosses are closer, [around] four minutes or more. So that gives the team a lot more design space to play around with; maybe fifth-phase transitions, and cool stuff like that, within the mega-dungeon so that they really do feel like a mini raid.
Screen Rant: Will Dawn of the Infinite have the secret hard mode, as we saw in some of the past ones, and if so, can you tell us what players can expect the rewards to be for that?
Stephen Cavallaro: So I can tell you that in regard to comparison, like Tazavesh’s hard mode, for example, there isn’t a toggleable hard mode for Dawn of the Infinite. It is essentially in hard mode at launch. It will be hard mode, but we’re tuning as if that is the default level of difficulty, like this is the identity of the dungeon itself. That being said there actually may be an additional challenge that your party can partake as part of a feat of strength that may offer a little bit of an enhancement for one of the rewards you might be able to find in a dungeon. That’s something that we’re actually working on right now. So we’re pretty excited about that. But in general, there is not a toggleable hard mode, like you’ve come to expect, for example, like in Tazavesh.
Screen Rant: Will Dawn of the Infinite have Affixes related to the dungeon?
Stephen Cavallaro: So, in terms of Affixes, that’s something that will inevitably come online when this dungeon is split up into two halves for the Mythic+ seasons. That’s something that is more of a system level addition for Mythic+. So at launch, the dungeon is very much its core mechanics, and very much focused along the lines of the specific experience of Dawn of the Infinite. So there are no Affixes or anything like that.
That being said, I do want to also mention that the split into two halves is going to be occurring for heroic mode earlier than we normally would do it. It’s actually going to be occurring in 10.1.7. The dungeon will split into two halves for heroic dungeon matchmaking, so the players can actually use matchmaking to find a group and do the dungeon at, obviously, a lower level of difficulty. The reason we’re doing that earlier than we normally would is because we know that the dungeon is going to offer a coordination challenge, which some of our players may not be interested in. They just want to experience the story in a more straightforward, more regular dungeon-like experience. And so we want to make sure that we’re offering that to those types of players as soon as we can.
Then in 10.2 for our Season Three, that would be when the Mythic+ version is actually available in our next Season. So that’s kind of the roadmap of how we’re looking at it in terms of difficulty and splitting the dungeon up. And yeah, I think that it’s an important kind of point to note – the story elements. With Dawn of the Infinite, we’re really looking to push the main Dragonflight plotline forward in the dungeon, which is something new for us; past mega-dungeons have had some cool stories, but they have, a lot of times, been more side plots. This is pushing forward this concept of the bronze dragonflight storyline, the primal incarnate storyline, how they interconnect, and actually showing that during the excursion that players will have through Dawn of the Infinite. Because we’re doing that, we wanted to make sure that that story was accessible to players sooner. Ultimately, that’s why the heroic mode is coming out in 10.1.7.
Screen Rant: I understand that the timelines are going to be completely messed up again. With Dawn of the Infinite, what is going on with the timelines? Where does this fall? Are there multiple timelines that we’re going to be seeing? How does that work?
Stephen Cavallaro: The story of Dawn of the Infinite sort of picks up where we last left the bronze dragonflight storyline, with Chromie determined to make sure that her leader Nozdormu does not fall to this ultimate fate of becoming Murozond. At the same time, Iridikron has made this secret deal with the infinite dragonflight that we’re not quite sure exactly what it is, to enter the timeways and do some sort of shenanigans that are clearly going to be bad. We’re kind of going in, in sort of a two-for-one special if you will, to go in the timeways and stop Iridikron’s plans and simultaneously do everything we possibly can on Chromie’s end, and to make sure that we stop Murozond from rising. Ultimately, in terms of the timeline we’re in, to answer your question, we’re really in the main timeline. This is our timeline that we’re exploring in Dawn on the Infinite and what we’re trying to do is make sure that our true timeline is preserved. Chromie’s goal is to make sure that in our true timeline, Murozond does not rise.
Screen Rant: Can you tell us a little more about why the infinite dragonflight is focused so specifically on the bronze dragonflight?
Stephen Cavallaro: So the infinite dragonflight really is the evil counterpart to the bronze dragonflight. I think in a lot of ways you could look at them as though – they’re not the same, obviously, [but] in some ways, they kind of are. The infinite dragonflight is the bronze dragonflight but they believe in changing time. They believe that it’s acceptable to change time for different reasons. And the bronze dragonflight is very adamant that time should be kept the same for good or for bad because there are dangerous unintended consequences that can occur when you meddle in time. And I think, to kind of go along with that, you’ll actually see the juxtaposition between two versions of Chromie, in Dawn of the Infinite. You will see the infinite dragonflight version of her, which is the evil version of her, who acts differently than our version of Chromie, who believes in different things than our version of Chromie, and you actually get to fight her and see what she’s about. In particular, things like that allow us to explore different sides of characters that are fun and whimsical. We get to see, like, what would an evil Chromie actually be like? She still has her whimsical personality, but she’s clearly also different in a lot of ways than how you might expect our Chromie to act, and she definitely had some funny conversations in dialogue with our Chromie, and we get to explore that. Ultimately, the infinite dragonflight is really just all about changing time to, in their mind, improve or otherwise make certain timelines or certain events better. Whereas the bronze dragonflight is very much against that, because they feel that it destroys the sanctity of reality.
Screen Rant: Are we going to get to see Chromie and Morchie, her evil counterpart, are we going to get to see the two of them fight?
Stephen Cavallaro: We will be fighting Morchie. Chromie will be with us, although she’s sort of watching from afar during that particular part. But we will get to. One of the cool things about Dawn of the Infinite is that you get to spend a lot of time with very important lore characters. Chromie, and Nozdormu even, is with you for a fair amount of time in the dungeon. So one of the cool things is players will sort of see their reactions to events, and you’ll get to learn a little bit more about certain things. Chromie will provide a little bit of commentary for you as things occur, kind of explaining what you’re seeing. There’s a part where you actually go back in time to ancient Dragonblight, really before it was named Dragonblight, at the moment that Galakrond, who’s this massive proto-dragon, who you’ve never seen before in-game, you finally get to see his body for the first time. And she kind of explains, that’s Galakrond, that’s sort of the cause of all this decay and necromantic badness that we’re gonna have to deal with in a few moments here. Getting to learn and see different parts of the Warcraft universe that you otherwise wouldn’t get a chance to explore via our time traveling is something that’s fun, and it’s especially fun to have something like Chromie be there along with you for the ride.
Screen Rant: I saw in the list of the different bosses that we will be fighting that Galakrond, or rather the Blight of Galakrond, as listed. Are players going to be fighting him? Because he’s like the size of Stormwind, right? He’s huge!
Stephen Cavallaro: Absolutely, he is absolutely massive, far bigger than even Deathwing and, of course, Deathwing was a massive proto-dragon. So players are not going to be fighting Galakrond directly, they will get to see the size of him; his giant head, his giant wing, and the effects that his death has caused on this area that came to be known as Dragonblight. And that’s really where we wanted to focus our attention. We knew that fighting an enemy of that scale maybe didn’t feel very appropriate, especially for a dungeon with five players. It also poses a lot of challenges for how we actually communicate that scale in a way that still is effective for how our sort of game fundamentally is played. So instead, we wanted to really focus on the lore and story aspect of Galakrond, which is “what is this decay all about?” Like, “what is this?” and we wanted to really show it firsthand. So you’re going to be seeing it raising dead proto-dragons, you’re going to be seeing the slime sort of polluting the area, and you’re going to have to deal with the effects of that and ultimately see what Galakrond’s energy ultimately was all about.
Screen Rant: Tyr is also listed as one of the bosses, but in the lore he was always a good guy. So is this an alternate version of him or did something happen to him? I know he’s also dead in current timelines.
Stephen Cavallaro: Yes, yeah. So I think without getting into too many spoilers, Infinite Tyr is in the mega Dawn of the Infinite. You will fight him, you’ll face off against him. Something occurs that will answer your question as to what this version of Tyr actually is and how he came to be. But I’ll save that for when the content actually releases so that players can kind of experience that firsthand.
Screen Rant: Will players within the Dawn of the Infinite, within the mega-dungeon, be using their dragonriding skills?
Stephen Cavallaro: Players won’t be using their dragonriding companions in Dawn of the Infinite, but they actually will be able to earn some cool infinite dragon scale skins for their dragonriding companions by completing Dawn of the Infinite. So, you know, that’s something that we’ve always thought as a team would be super cool. We love the color scheme of the infinite dragonflight and being able to ride on a dragon that looks like that is pretty neat. We hope players enjoy being able to do that.
Screen Rant: I’m excited for that. Okay, so what can players expect from the various encounters in Dawn of the Infinite? I know that there’s also the gauntlet – I don’t know if that’s what you are calling it, but I’ve seen it called the gauntlet online. All these different encounters and events within the dungeon. What can players expect to see?
Stephen Cavallaro: Yeah, so I think I’ll probably break this question down into a couple parts. I think the first part – let’s actually talk about the gauntlet. One of the things that we like to do, especially in longer form content, like a raid or Dawn of the Infinite, a mega-dungeon, is to have a little bit of break-up in the pacing of the gameplay and help players feel like they’re doing different unique things, as they’re traversing this more epic longer form instance content. When we think about things like the gauntlet, as you refer to it, it’s a way to introduce a different gameplay pattern that’s sort of fun and unique and challenging in different ways than just fighting a bad guy. So this particular gauntlet in Dawn of the Infinite, players are going to be getting boosted by Chromie for a big speed boost, and you sort of run and dodge infinite dragonflight attacks. And if you get hit, you get sent back to the beginning.
But of course, this is also a moment I’d like to talk about how we consider accessibility, right? Like, we want to make sure that players are able to actually complete this part. And depending on if you use WASD to control your character, or keyboard turning, or however you move through that area, we want to make sure that there’s always a way for players to progress. And one of the cool things we did in this regard is if you do get to the end, right, if at least one player in your party gets to the end of the gauntlet, then they can actually channel on an orb, and eventually open a portal for the rest of your party to come to you in the event that you can’t get everybody through. Now, the more people that actually make it to the end, the more people that channel on that orb, the faster you’ll actually open the portal, so it encourages more of your group to get to the end. But we want to make sure that it’s not a sort of sticking point. If for accessibility reasons or what have you, you know, players aren’t able to accomplish that part.
To go to some other parts of your question, more mechanics, or sorry, more encounter-focused, one of the things we really tried to do with our encounters is to offer a breadth of experiences. In particular, with Dawn of the Infinite and the coordination element that I mentioned earlier, we really wanted to touch on different ways to encourage a group to coordinate. I think that for the most part each of the encounters has its own little special twist to it that players will come to understand as, “hey, this is the part we have to talk about, how do you want to handle this?” And that’s what we ultimately hope for, is we want to get groups of friends in there that – maybe you play with a group of friends that doesn’t have enough in it to raid but has enough time to do a five-person dungeon – and ultimately get people in there and have fun and talk about the different strategies.
You know, one of the challenges in particular with Dawn of the Infinite when it comes to designing some of these bosses is, as I mentioned earlier, there’s definitely some heavy lore stuff going on here. We talked about Blight of Galakrond earlier but another character I’d like to mention is Iridikron. Players are going to be facing off against Iridikron for the first time in a dungeon setting, which I know some in the community raised some eyebrows about how “we expected this to be a raid fight, this is happening in a dungeon? How does that work?” With Iridikron, in particular, looking at his character he’s someone that we find interesting and I think the community finds interesting as well. He’s obviously very powerful but he seems to be kind of like a patient strategist, like a planner, a thinker type. He even mentioned in one of the cinematics “don’t underestimate them” with them being the players. And that was sort of this new fresh take on a villain and its juxtaposed with his incarnate siblings like Fyrakk, for example, another extremely powerful dragon but more of a loose cannon, right? Iridikron feels a little bit different and we wanted to play that up when we were designing the encounter itself. There’s a bit of a cat and mouse game you’re sort of playing in that encounter with him, and with Chromie supporting you, and we ultimately want to try to make sure that you feel his power, like you’re definitely on your back foot when you’re fighting him. He’s incredibly strong, right? He’s raid boss level power, that you’re fighting in a dungeon group, but with the support of Chromie who’s there with you in the fight. And this sort of strategy cat and mouse game that you’re playing with him, we ultimately feel like it comes across that he’s a little bit different of a villain than maybe players have been accustomed to in the past, and we’re really excited about him.
Screen Rant: That might just lead to my next question, which is for both of you. What are your favorite parts of Dawn of the Infinite?
Stephen Cavallaro: Morgan? You want to go first?
Morgan Day: Yeah, for me, I personally am a sucker for the kind of light-hearted nature of World of Warcraft. I love the team’s ability to weave a lot of these really epic, amazing storylines in with some of the fun, light-hearted nature of what happens in World of Warcraft, right? So Chromie, while she is a fan favorite of a lot of people, especially on our team, I love the Morchie encounter where you get to see the other end of that bubbly personality, but in an enemy perspective of it. And also, the encounter itself, I think is really fun. There’s some really interesting, I call it like, kind of the cup game where you are looking for the real Morchie, which one is she, while you’re dodging all these big, massive attacks. So I really love the lighthearted elements that the team was able to kind of inject into this really epic story.
Stephen Cavallaro: Yeah, for sure. I think to kind of add on to that, when we’re playtesting a fight like Morchie, it’s always a good sign when we’re laughing and having a good time with that type of character because that’s exactly what you’d want to see with the character and personality that you would expect from an evil Chromie. Another part of that fight involves clones that look like you chasing after yourself, and you’re trying to trap them. And you’re like “Is that you? Is that the real you, that’s the fake you, what’s going on?” And it’s just a very fun moment to play around the cup game.
In addition, as Morgan mentioned, I think, for me, I kind of touched on it earlier, but I really think it’s interesting how we’re exploring multiple characters in a gameplay setting that we just haven’t had a chance to do before. I mean, you even mentioned Tyr, which, like I mentioned, I didn’t want to get into too many specifics, but you know, being able to fight against this really, really important character that is super important to our lore and the fundamental structure of the Warcraft universe, and getting to actually see him in a gameplay context and fight against him is just really cool. There’s callbacks in that fight to things that you would come to expect Tyr to be able to do or abilities that you know that Tyr might have. And it’s just interesting to see that play out in a gameplay setting. And it’s sort of the same for me in terms of, I mentioned Iridikron and Blight of Galakrond, you’re getting to see characters that are lore important and have been sort of explored in different mediums outside of the game or in the game, but in a story context. And you’re getting to see what that actually means from a combat perspective, and getting more enrichment on their lore and their story, through the encounters themselves through the gameplay. And that’s something that excites me a lot.
Morgan Day: Not only is it going to be awesome to see Tyr The Infinite Keeper, but there’s this really epic infinite variant on his weapon that you know, players are pretty familiar with, right? We’ve seen that weapon before in our game, but there’s this new variant of it that is kind of corrupted by the infinite, and that is something that he’s wielding in the encounter and players will also be able to acquire from defeating him, which I know is always my favorite thing. When I see the boss wielding that really epic weapon, and I want to defeat it and then loot it off of its corpse. That’s the most gratifying thing for me in WoW.
Screen Rant: I love that Dragonflight seems like the whole expansion has so much to do with the core lore of the game. How long will it take groups to complete Dawn of the Infinite? What will the timers be like for mythic runs, if there are any? You kind of touched on that a little bit earlier.
Stephen Cavallaro: Yeah, so I think this is one of the reasons why we wanted to create Dawn of the Infinite in the way that we did, which is to encourage groups to go at their own pace. It’ll have a lockout, a weekly lockout, so you don’t have to complete it all in one sitting. You can go at your own pace and progress much like you would in a raid. So in terms of a specific timeframe to complete it, I think that’s going to vary quite widely with the different skill levels of the players and what their interest is. Some of our players really like to explore every nook and cranny right? And we have some achievements in Dawn of the Infinite that will kind of encourage you to do that. And other players, they just want to get to the end boss as fast as they can. And I think it’s hard to answer that question with like a specific number. But I think it’s certainly going to be a longer timeframe than you would expect in a regular dungeon.
In terms of the question about timers for mythic plus, that’s something we obviously very much take into account, particularly when we split it up into two halves. And we’ll make sure that the two halves feel appropriate for what you’d expect from the length of a typical dungeon relative to its peers in the dungeon pool when the time comes.
Screen Rant: Can you tell us when this patch with Dawn of the Infinite will be released?
Morgan Day: We have not announced a release date yet right now. You know, it’s on the Test Realm, so people are able to enjoy it and explore it. But really, we’re just looking to create the best highest quality experience we can, and we’re excited for when the players can get it into their hands.
Screen Rant: Is there anything else that I haven’t thought to touch on that you would like to add that our readers should know about?
Stephen Cavallaro: I think we pretty much covered everything.
Morgan Day: For me, I think the one thing that… Yeah, not too spoilery. But a little spoilery. As with all of our really epic and amazing instance experiences. Well, the players love and have come to expect some of these amazing in-game cinematics that come along with them. So while we were not going to talk about what the contents of those are, we’re really excited about what the team has been working on. And we think some of the stories that are going to be told in that medium are really awesome, and people are going to be really excited to see that when it does release.
Screen Rant: Wonderful. And one final question. I always have to ask: Horde or Alliance?
Stephen Cavallaro: Honestly, both. I played both. It depends on if we’re talking about, you know, the modern game or classic, right? I’ve switched back and forth, depending on what my friend group was playing at the time. So my answer is both.
Morgan Day: Yeah, I too, have played both over the years. And picking one over the other is like picking a favorite child. I really appreciate both of their perspectives. And actually, I think I actively have characters on both factions right now. So it’s hard to pick one.
World of Warcraft‘s Patch 10.1.5 and its Dawn of the Infinite mega-dungeon will be the next major content update for the game, though no specific release date has been announced.
[ad_2]
Source link
Armessa Movie News