The elimination of some of the most powerful addons for World of Warcraft is changing how Blizzard develops new raids for its popular MMORPG. In recent updates, Blizzard has worked to give the MMO “broader appeal” with new features such as Delves and even Player Housing.
Alongside these new features and plans to improve character creation and overhaul existing locales, Blizzard has killed powerful combat addons and redesigned character classes to account for their removal. However, redesigning these classes is just one side of the coin with Blizzard now changing the way it handles encounters and raids as well.
“The way that gets harder from Normal to Heroic to Mythic is not ‘we shoot more bullets at you’”.
World of Warcraft lead encounter designer Dylan Barker
In the past, groups who frequently raided in WoW would make use of combat addons such as Weakauras to efficiently get through the mission. In fact, these addons were so popular that Blizzard started to design its most challenging raids with the assumption that players would be using the addons.
Speaking to PC Gamer, lead encounter designer Dylan Barker explained that this issue continued into Mythic+, endlessly scaling dungeons set against timers that aim to be the ultimate endgame challenge for players.
“Let’s say, in a Mythic+ scenario, [we’re changing] what mixes of trash we’re suggesting is reasonable for players to pull … up until the number of creatures we expect makes it unmanageable,” Barker said.
With combat addons like Weakauras gone, this means that the designers behind encounters, including Barker, are now focusing more on, well, actual mechanical depth. Barker explains that the previous “dexterity mechanics” of bosses in raids that were designed around the fact that players would be using addons will now be focused on actual new gameplay ideas.
Barker explains that these new “mechanics” will try to “challenge players’ coordination and their strategic abilities”. The first trial of this new style of design will be present in the game’s new expansion, World of Warcraft: Midnight. (By the way, check out our handy Blizzard-approved lore catch-up here!)
“I think there are a couple of mechanics in the raids for this opening tier that re possible in Midnight might not have been possible in the recent past,” Barker continued, “and we’re able to challenge players [with] puzzle and communication and coordination and strategy”.
Additionally, the way in which difficulty scales is no longer tied to just “we shoot more bullets at you”, the designer explains. Instead, the mechanics of a fight will expand to make sure that you have to communicate more or move around the environment more or that the core puzzle is deeper than on earlier difficulties.
Barker explained that encounter designers working on World of Warcraft over the years “have been trying” to shift design towards these type of encounters “over the years”. While combat addons were incredible tools designed by extremely talented fans, the loss of them is leading to a new era of encounter design for Blizzard, and one that’s actually very exciting.
World of Warcraft: Midnight will essentially set the pace for the future of WoW’s encounter designs depending on whether or not it succeeds. Many have felt that WoW encounters designed for the presence of combat addons were stale, and this does at least promise to offer something fresh. As WoW moves to also bring back the sense of adventure from prior versions, it’s an exciting time to be a fan that actually cares about the RPG part of the MMORPG.
