Patch 12.1 Gearing: 9/6 Myth Items and Vault Bonus Rolls – Blizzard Group Interview

Rachel Vought: Hi there. My name is Rachel Vought. I am a lead quest designer on World of Warcraft. I’ve been with Blizzard for 15 years. I have worked on a ton of stuff from Legion Order Halls, most recently to helping with story on Zul’Aman.

Paul Kubit: yep and I’m Paul Kubit, Associate Game Director, working on World of Warcraft working on midnight and most recently on Curse of Ula’tek. It’s the Vaults of Atal’utek which is an ancient name of that space underneath the temple there. I’ve been with the blizzard for 20 years and we’re working on quests and professions for a while and systems and all sorts of things.

Icy-Veins: Side quests have often been praised for adding interesting bits and pieces of lore without directly influencing the main story. Are these built by individual people? So every every dev kind of gets their own playground? Or is it more of a collaborative effort between the entire team?
Rachel Vought: it’s a little bit of both and of course [we] love local stories and love working on on campaign. Obviously the the main story of the game has quite a few folks working on it like there’s a lot of collaboration with where we want to go and especially with big and popular characters like Zul’jan. We are going into Curse of Ula’tek with Zul’jan and Zul’jara and Orweyna and Lady Liadrin. So there’s lots of folks working together on that. but we also want to fill out the zone with other stories and we want to tell really those personal tales. Of, you know, this one particular troll who’s dealing this one particular situation or this Tortollan who’s been stuck there and has kind of gone a little bit crazy. All of this is also done as a team. We do a lot of play testing of each other stuff we get a lot of feedback and a lot of times there will be specific points that we do want to hit that maybe weren’t covered specifically in the main campaign but we feel are super important for players to know or just you know help fill out the world and explore and occasionally you’ll also see pop-ups from other characters as they pop in and experience this as well.

Raider.io: Zul’jan is a character that players have very strong feelings about. How much did the community reaction to him impact his arc in 12.1, if at all?

Rachel Vought: Yep. First of all, we are so, so happy that folks are resonating with Zul’jan and Zul’jara because they’re characters that are completely new in Midnight. So for a long time, the Amani in World of Warcraft have kind of only had limited presentations, like they’ve often just kind of been the villains. And Midnight gave us a chance to show the depth and breadth of the Amani, the good, the bad, the misguided, the heroic, all of it. So Zul’jan has always been on a different path than his sister from the beginning. He feels like the Amani need to stand on their own. Definitely shouldn’t stand side by side with their actual historical enemies, the Blood Elves, who, by the way, would very much like to take the land back. And, you know, the Loa, who Zul’jan expects will abandon them. So in 12.1, Curse of Ula’tek, we have the space to spend more time with these characters and see that they also are not simple monoliths. They are complicated. And we knew from the beginning that we wanted to focus on these characters and we wanted to pay off that foundation that started with Zul’aman’s leveling campaign. And I don’t want to spoil the story, but there’s still some things that haven’t been seen yet. And we look forward to you reaching them and seeing them in their full context.

Paul Kubit: I’ll just add on to that, that we absolutely do pay attention to folks’ responses to characters, who they like, who they respond to, and so on. heard loud and clear people’s responses to Zul’jan and so we’re really happy to kind of continue a story that focuses on and follows him on his path. but one thing I will call out is that at the end of the Zul’aman campaign back in 12.0 you might remember there was a moment after we defeated the Twilight’s Blade there in that zone at least and they’re having a big party back at the the troll hub that Zul’jan wasn’t there. You were sent to go find him and if you remember where he was he was sitting at the edge of that broken highway looking out at that twin peak over the end. So we did have a pretty good inclination at that point that that was where he was headed next. His path has always been headed towards this isle, but the way that that path goes has always been, you know, a function of our conversation with players. There’s a hidden message there which is take a look at the details of the game that are going into Curse of Ula’tek because there might be clues on where we’re headed next after this.

Icy-Veins: So speaking of where we’re headed next, 12.1, we see continuations to both Zul’jara’s campaign as well as Arator’s hunt. And at least on the PTR, both of these were available immediately. Was this just for testing purposes, or can players kind of choose which campaign or which character they want to follow first?

Rachel Vought: I can speak to this directly. That was for testing purposes, because the Arator part of the story will open up after the start of Season 2. and by necessity it has to start after we open up the raid of the Venomous Abyss. We will start with the main campaign which actually has already started with the 12.0.7 chapter with Revelations with Zul’jan. That is actually chapter one and we’ll then lead on to the Coiled Isle next.
Icy-Veins: But then Arator’s chapter will follow And this is a bit of maybe you can’t answer this. Will that then tie into the story boss that we don’t really know much about yet with 12.1.5?

Rachel Vought: Maybe.

Wowhead: All right. Kind of speaking of the Coiled Isle, is there a way to get to the Coiled Isle quickly? Or will players have to fly out there every time?
Paul Kubit: So the Coiled Isle is part of the Eastern Kingdoms. It is right off the coast of Zul’Aman. And so to get there, you can just hop on a flying mount and fly right over there or go to a flight master or whatnot. One thing, this might seem like a deviation, but I’ll come back to your question, which is coming back in. patch 12.1 is Prey.

Prey was a system where we were fighting alongside Astalor Bloodsworn to seek out anguish around the world, and Astalor is back. He is. going to have new targets for us to capture. He’s going to have new torments. He’s going to have some new VO lines that we get to enjoy as well, as well as a new journey of sort of… benefits that you can get for going through Prey. And one of those things is quick travel to the island. So you will be able to use that Prey system to get yourself there quickly. It may be a good reason to pay a little more additional attention to Astalor at the beginning of the season.

Wowhead: In season one, we got a class tuning roadmap. How do you feel like that worked out? And can we expect something similar for season two?

Paul Kubit: Yeah, that’s a great question. Yeah, so we… To answer the second part of your question, yes, we should be able to expect something similar for that roadmap. We know roughly when we want to do tuning passes on classes, and we have those planned out, and we’re happy to share that with the community. I think it went pretty well the season one. The. only issue I think we had was the note we sent out said, and we may also do additional tuning passes here and there, and that wasn’t put in a very visible spot, and so a lot of people interpreted it as these. for specific dates are the only time that tuning will happen but that’s never the case. we’ll always do um you know tuning when we think it’s necessary and so we’ll make sure that’s. that message is absolutely clear. when that next message goes out in the next couple days gotcha I look forward to that.

Wowhead: Can you kind of explain some of the reasoning on why you increased the power of loot from the last two bosses to Myth 9 of 6? Many players have kind of expressed some frustration that they feel very incentivized to raid, especially for people in Mythic Keystones. What goal are you kind of hoping to hit there?

Paul Kubit: Yeah. Mythic Raiders are challenging some of the most difficult content in the game, and we want to make sure that they feel appropriately rewarded. And so with updates to The Great Vault, which is going to be really exciting for a lot of players, those specific updates in patch 12.1 being when you complete… cards in the raid row in the great vault you will see gear which is a tier higher than what you would normally get from looting it directly off the boss. so if you complete a normal raid boss you’ll get here hero gear from the the vault. if you complete a heroic raid boss you’ll get myth gear from the vault. um completing heroic bot. this is going to be great for our heroic raiders. it’s going to be great for normal raiders. you see that jump up mythic raiders. um we want to make sure that they still have something which makes that what sets them apart gives them the ability to feel like their their challenge is appropriately rewarded. and so from those last couple bosses that that gear which is feels a little bit exclusive um is you know we think is a good reflection of the the effort that they put towards raiding. We’re really excited. there’s a lot of interesting and fun changes that are going into a patch 12.1 and we’re keeping an ear to ground and see how players respond to it and and hopefully a lot of folks have a good time and feel appropriately rewarded for the difficulty that they’re jumping into. Wowhead: Appreciate it. Thank you.

Raider.IO: The bonus rolls being added to the Great Vault has sparked a lot of discussion. And what are the problems the team was trying to solve with that change of us being able to get them in week two? And how do you expect it to affect player progression?

Paul Kubit: Yeah, so bonus rolls were something that came in halfway through the season, roughly, in season one. And we saw a lot of people really excited to be able to earn those. from the you know working alongside decimus to get the void forge up and running and all and all that. um as we look towards season two we thought that these bonus roles were really great just for allowing players an additional choice to be able to either. take that gear immediately from the great vault. I want my power now. I will take that weapon please um or to go to your preferred delve dungeon raid boss and target a specific item that you really want to get. get that later. it’s also really just A nice moment where you are getting the gear directly from the boss itself. You know, one of the things about the Great Vault is that it’s sort of separated from the boss, but when you do use that bonus roll, it’s just like looting from that boss, and so it kind of keeps that moment together. And additionally, we’re able to do that from the Great Vault right at the beginning of the season, almost at the beginning of the season. It’ll be actually the second week of the season when those bonus rolls become available, which gives players just this additional choice on how they can gear their character. So again, this is… one of the several changes which are going in gearing. We are apprehensively excited and we’re going to keep an ear to the ground and hopefully hear how players feel about it.

Raider.IO: I just have a. quick follow-up to that. Is there any concern that it’ll feel wrong to take an item from the vault that is an upgrade when you are actively bonus rolling a boss? Is there any chance maybe we could have the vault item you select be removed from the bonus roll table as well? To remove sort of that feeling of ick?

Paul Kubit: Yeah, that’s a good question. So this is one of those things that we’re sort of listening to feedback from. And we have heard that feedback already that this is something that folks feel like they would be interested in having the, if I pull something from the great vault, punch the punch card so that I wouldn’t get that from the boss. That’s not specifically how it’s going to work for the vault in Curse of Uta’lek, but we’re listening and hopefully we’re going to. you know I see a lot of folks dealing with that interesting choice in different ways that am I going to take that power now if if I got something that I really want from my vault or do I want to use that bonus role to chase some power later?

Icy-Veins: Ion Hazzikostas as mentioned in a recent Q&A that there are plans to expand housing features beyond battle pets which are now coming in 12.1 and that there’s more things that are being explored. What is your stance on more non-cosmetic housing features that the community would be excited about, such as function training dummies, vendors, rate portals, or maybe even something like a world bus that is threatening the neighborhood?

Paul Kubit: Yeah, I would say I would take nothing off of the table for where housing could go in the future. When we’re looking at… We have a couple exciting things. You mentioned pets already. You’ll be able to have your pets in your home. We also have blueprints coming, which is going to, for a lot of folks, functionally change the way that they do their decor as opposed to having to personally move each and lovingly move each piece of decor by hand. identify someone who has created a room or an entire interior exterior that you like and just say you know get their blueprint code apply that to your home and assuming you. have the decor and the dye and everything. apply it yourself or do the opposite. create something and then share it with your friends so they can have your own cozy kitchen nook or whatever you’ve put together. so so there are already like a bunch of changes coming. um we’re not slowing down on housing. we have a whole bunch of sort of cool ideas for the future. and and these all do come from listening in going to housing communities, hopping directly into general chat and listening to what people say that they want. That informs sort of what comes next for housing. So once again, stay tuned.

Wowhead: So in this last season, you guys added a new Mythic Plus exclusive mount for the top 1% of players. And PvP has kind of had a similar thing with Glad mounts. Raid currently doesn’t have an exclusive mount like that. Are there plans to have something similar? You know, a… top one percent mount for raid for example.

Paul Kubit: that’s an interesting idea. I i didn’t consider that like step one is figuring out how you you determine a. percentage for for raids because we don’t just quite have the same rating system. not to say that it can’t be done but there’s some just fundamental design that goes into that. so it’s an interesting line of thought to to chase down. when I look at raids we do um have a history of having a mythic. mounts that are mounts that drop off of final bosses on mythic context and so there’s there. there is some exclusive mount there. but as far as like a top one percent or anything like that nothing specific to announce at this time. but I think it’s a cool idea.

Raider.IO: We’re seeing world bosses go away in 12.1 in favor of lairs. What led the team to the decision to switch to this instance content instead of the open world we’re used to? And how will you measure success of that feature?

Paul Kubit: Yeah, great. question. So like we’ve been thinking about lairs for some time now, really excited for lairs to come in. There’s a couple factors which go into it. One is just thinking back in our memories. for those of us who’ve been playing the game for. Some time now, we may remember world bosses feeling different in the past than they do now. If you think to Kazzak and the Green Dragons and all these sort of legacy world bosses, they had teeth. They were things that were traditionally surrounded with a lot of corpses and bones on the ground from failed attempts earlier. And that’s not really how world bosses work today. As players have gotten more sophisticated and play the game in new ways, world bosses don’t… present like that anymore. in fact i’d say they’re a little bit closer to a world quest than that old school side of world boss. and so and there’s benefits. there’s pros and cons there. that world quest approach makes it a little bit more predictable. what your experience is going to be. but we it got us thinking like what if we could get some of the best of both. worlds and so lairs are an opportunity for us to take that world boss put it inside of a lair an instance a cave or a cavern or some interesting spot that this boss has made its own layer and then have a couple different difficulties where that first difficulty is world difficulty. that’s the new difficulty where you just walk in the front door you’ll see other folks stumble into that front door and a group will naturally form. and then whenever you’re ready to pull you feel like enough. you know folks tanks healers etc. you pull and and take it down with roughly the same difficulty as we expect from modern world bosses from you know the from midnight or the war within and so on. but also there’s normal and heroic and then flex mythic difficulty as well which is where those teeth come back out. you can have some of those experiences where the world boss really feels like a world boss. so this was the opportunity we saw with with lairs. and we’re really hopeful that people will be excited for it. what does success look like? a lot of. people play and have fun.

Raider.IO: Are we expecting the the raid difficulty to be on par with that Rotmire?

Paul Kubit: Rotmire, I would say a better sort of touchstone for you is a raid boss, like looking at the Venomous Abyss. I would say not Ulitech level difficulty. So easier than that as far as difficulty goes. Rotmire, I only sort of. hesitate to use Rotmire as an example because Rotmire was a late season raid boss and so there’s a lot of additional variables that come in when you’re measuring difficulty. did you have gear from running a lot of additional content before and go going in or not? and so that’ll be a trickier comparison. but i’d say closer to an early boss in the venomous abyss is what you should be able to expect.

Icy-Veins: So Rachel, the Coiled Isle was visible off the coast of Zul’Aman for quite some time now. And as you mentioned earlier already, Zul’jan was already eyeing it from afar and many, many players expected it to be like one of the big content pieces and one of the upcoming patches. How do the? player expectations play into or change the approach when you’re finally unveiling a piece of content that many players have been expecting and speculating about?

Rachel Vought: Yeah, this is a fun one because we knew where we were going to go after Zul’Aman. We knew that we wanted to follow these characters and continue their story. And there were some interesting technical challenges also to making a gigantic brand new island off of the coast of the Eastern Kingdoms. This is the original Eastern Kingdoms map, you know, this along with everything else. So, but we wanted to make sure that we really… took the space took the time and then we looked at a lot of the responses that we got from Zul’jara in that original level up campaign. there were a lot of unknowns. When we we put that in we didn’t really know how folks were going to resonate with these. particular characters and it’s like okay yeah we know we’ve made the right call here. and then where their motivations naturally will go where the kind of lines in the sand that they’ve drawn will naturally go. And one thing that I. also think is super important is, like, we have a lot of designers involved with the story who are absolutely also diehard Zul’jan fans. And they’re very invested in making sure that his portrayal is consistent, is compelling. And we really hope once folks are able to see everything play out, that they’ll feel that connection even more.

Raider.IO: I love it. Very exciting stuff. The Coral Owl, exciting. 1201. I was a huge fan of Zul’jan. Only the tallest of trees. Hopefully the Coil Isle also has some very tall trees. But I do have a unique question. This is maybe one hopefully you haven’t heard yet today. 12.0 brought us Zul’Aman, Harandar, and the Voidstorm with all of their fantastic new additions to the Warcraft Bestiary. With us visiting Atal’Utek in 12.1, are there any new critters that we should keep an eye out for? And do either of you have one that holds a special place in your heart?

Rachel Vought: I have two, possibly three. But so one, there’s a baby snake with a mohawk that you can get from one of the local stories. So do play the local stories and find that one. There’s also baby. wind serpents. So they’ve got like little fangs and wings and snake eyes and they’re super cute. And there also might be one vaguely raccoon shaped thing somewhere in this update. but I don’t have a lot of details to share on that. Paul Kubit: okay okay paul vaguely raccoon shaped is a fun way to describe that particular model. um yeah it’s top of the chain yeah um so so for me um i’ll take you on a on a trip inside the developer studio to share sort of how the process when we were building this island. We have these sort of humanoid snake-like creatures that run around on two legs, but they have a snake-like body. And internally, in development for a very long time, we called them snake-oids. We described these as snake-oids. It was just a helpful handle for like, yeah, we’re going to spawn some snake-oids here, and there will be some elite snake-oids in this area, and so on. Long enough that the name came very close to sticking. saying like should we just use that like this was always intended to be a a temporary name but it’s snake-oids. Ultimately it did not feel like the right tone for the name. They are the children of Ula’tek is that particular model but it will always hold a special place in my heart just because one. they look cool. they have that sort of Sethrak-like skeleton but with a very Zul’Aman flavor to them but also because in my heart there will always be snake-oids.

Raider.IO: Love it. Is there also, like, a huge Ninja Turtle fan on the team? Because Tokka and Rahzar are from Ninja Turtle. And he is a turtle.

Rachel Vought: Just one fan.

Raider.io: When I saw the name, I was like, there’s no way. I thought I was losing.

Rachel Vought: We love the Tortollans. In fact, if they feel somewhat familiar in Curse of Uta’lek, it’s because some of the same designers who originally worked with them back in Battle for Azeroth have also worked with them here, including for some of their local stories. So, like, no, we love them lots.

Raider.IO: The Corrosive Codex builds on. ideas that we first saw in the Voidstorm. what did the team learn from that earlier system and what makes progression systems like this successful enough to consider building into future content?

Paul Kubit: yeah that’s a great question I would say. not only does it learn from the the Voidstorm sort of talent tree but also if you remember the loa blessings from Zul’Aman these are also some sort of similar space-based power progression that folks can can chase down should they want to. I think some of the lessons we’ve learned from these is um one. They do a good job of not feeling compulsory but feeling like something that if you’re interested in chasing it down then you you could. I don’t know that a whole lot of folks felt like they needed to have every single loa blessing unlocked in Zul’aman, but if you are a completionist or if you’re someone who is just really interested in outdoor content and and playing around in that space then that could be something you do similarly with voidstorm. and so we carry some of those lessons forward to the corrosive codex in cursive Ula’tek the Corrosive Codex. is bigger. there are 20 different nodes in this thing, or I think 18 nodes with 20 points you can put into them. I can check my math later if you like. So there’s a good amount of complexity that you can chase down in here. And a lot of that I think is really fun is it is really based on just your sort of self-reinforcing power inside of that temple of Atal’Utek. As you adventure more inside the temple, doing things like curse caches at the top level and whatnot. you’re gonna get these corrosive coins. Once you get a bunch of coins you bring them you feed them into a skull which is cool in and of its own right and then and that gives you the ability to either well purchase some cosmetics if you wanted to do to chase that down or get new nodes in this tree.

And those nodes are going to do things that are going to make you better at getting coins, whether that is you’re going to have some additional procs that is going to make it easier for you to. take down some of the elites in this Vaults of Atal’Utek space or make it easier for you to see where you can find more coins. There are certain enemies that have more coins on them, and it’ll put a helpful purple glow on them so you know who to murder first. Or it’ll just do things like make it less harmful if you wanted to swim around in that green toxic… river. um either intentionally or unintentionally you’ll take less damage as you choose that node. and so oh and also the other cool thing about this this talent tree is it actually looks like a snake head like if you look at the outline of the nodes in it it looks like a big cobra head which I think is also just cool.

Wowhead: The Coiled Isle features a unique combination of a fully out flyable outdoor zone and a walking only underground. How did this impact the design of outdoor activities and quests compared to previous patch zones?

Rachel Vought: Yeah, the combination did affect the design. So we were looking to. evolve on what came with Midnight from launch and also give a good variety of things to do. But actually, inside the vaults of Atal’Utek, because it’s inside a huge mountain, navigation becomes part of the gameplay. And it’s also letting us try some new mechanics and new tech. Like, for example… The map is actually going to help you find where others are killing stuff, so you can jump into the fun much, much more quickly. And that’s something that’s going to be new and introduced with this.

Paul Kubit: Yeah, I’ll also throw in there, too, once you’re inside the temple, yes, mounts-wise, it’s ground mounts only, but in your actual navigation, you’re going to be in the air much more than you might anticipate, especially once you get pretty good at navigating this space, because there are lots of sort of tips and tricks that pro navigators will figure out. There are sort of airstreams and feathers and… doohickeys and NPCs that you can interact with and whatnot. that’ll make it so that if you need to get from this spot to that spot, and there’s like about 17 elites in the way, there may be a creative. way for you to be able to get from there to there without pulling a single one of them. And you won’t find all those on your first time in the temple, but on your fifth or sixth or seventh, then you’ll be a lot better at moving around than you were when you first started.

Icy-Veins: Awesome. One final one from me. so about half a year ago you sent out a survey to some players that asked about some of the things that players might be most excited about in terms of new races classes or archetype combinations like healing mages using their time power or tank rogues warlocks shamans. um would you be able to share some of the findings from that survey with the community either through like a blog post or I mean as part of the interview?

Paul Kubit: Yeah, maybe at some point. So we did have. we do a lot of surveys to get folks ideas about things like that. And so not quite ready to announce anything specific to that survey at this time. But, you know, keep your ears to the ground. Keep pay attention. And who knows, maybe at some point we’ll. have some more to announce. There’s always fun things coming in the future. I hope we get to get all this information in front of you soon enough.

Raider.IO: Awesome, awesome. Paul, Rachel, thank you so much for taking the time today to talk to us. We really do appreciate it. And I can’t wait to see you guys in 12.1.

Paul Kubit: Yeah, we’ll see you on the aisle. Thanks, everybody.

Rachel Vought: Bye-bye.