World of Warcraft’s The War Within expansion arrives on August 26, and along with the new zones and new storylines come a range of new features. A big new one for characters to enjoy is Hero Talents, offering a range of new skills that offer a strong connection to cool fantasy concepts for each class, letting the already existing specialisations blend new ideas into the way they fight.
Game Producer George Velev has led the charge on Hero Talent development, and spoke to Checkpoint Gaming about the process of adding these new ideas to the game and just how much work goes into getting the balance right across 39 new sub-class features.
What was the Hero Talents philosophy back when you started building that out versus where it has landed? Talk a bit about the iteration and feedback loops and how that evolution has gone?
George Velev: Fundamentally we realised, “Ten more levels, ten more talent points. What’s the best way to do this?” We were really happy with how Dragonflight turned out with the talent tree, and we thought to ourselves “Is it right to just add 10 more points? Is that going to really do a lot?”
“Do you want to get a little bit more esoteric with things like Oracle where you see the future? Priests don’t really do that, but it’s fun to explore.”
So we talked a lot and came to a decision to do something that’s a bit separate. It was a really long process. We did a lot of virtual offsites figuring out what’s appropriate for Druid to pursue, what’s appropriate for Priest to pursue. Do you want to get a little bit more esoteric with things like Oracle where you see the future? Priests don’t really do that, but it’s fun to explore. So that was really fun. Coming out of those offsites we came to a list of 39, we showed them at BlizzCon and got all the immediate reactions, which was great. It was super fun seeing all 39 on screen at one point and then following that we got to work.
One thing we did in Dragonflight that we were really happy with was early previews. We got a bunch of great feedback. So we just took that to 11.
We wanted to do that with as many of these as we could. We did that very early on and we took some really big swings as well with some of the earlier designs, like Oracle I mentioned. We knew that one was going to be a little bit spicy. So we’re like, alright, let’s see what the players think. And we got a lot of feedback about that. Which was great because we got that feedback very early on.
By the time that we actually hit alpha, and things were getting playtestable we already knew that we were on the right track for these Hero Talent trees. Now that we’re wrapping up we’re more focused on things like tuning and we’re really happy and excited to see where all these land come Season One.
Obviously they’ll kick in as people start level progression. Is there a potential there that it might get a final massage going into Season 1?
George: Where do we stop? We never stop. [laughs] Iteration’s always going to happen. The moment people hit 71, they’ll get their first talent points. We’ll be looking at players feedback, we’ll be seeing how tuning lands. And our goal at that point in time is the weeks leading up to Season 1, and the race, and the Arena season opening up is making sure that we can get things as solid as we can. That way when people feel like they have compelling choices, and don’t feel like they’re pigeonholed into one or the other.
Talk about the thematic aspect of Hero Talents. How important has that been to the whole idea?
George: It’s a goal for all these Hero Talents that feel visually distinct from each other. When I’m doing a World Quest and I see a Hunter over there and they Disengage and shoot dark chains underneath the feet of their target. Oh cool, that’s a Dark Ranger. That’s part of our goal.
Some are louder than others where appropriate, some are a bit more subtle. For example, Fire and Arcane Mages have a Hero Talent called Sunfury, and that summons a gigantic phoenix. Not every Hero Talent is going to summon a gigantic phoenix! Some are new weapon strikes or new totems. But across the board it’s our goal to make sure these are visually distinct.
Feedback usually comes from the hardcore people who really want to be in the thick of PTR testing. What’s the broad hope for how the wider community feels about Hero Talents?
George: We do get a lot of feedback from people who play a lot of PTR in World of Warcraft and do a lot of reports. But we also look at Discords or Reddits or the forums, and we try to get as many people from different sort of environments as we can. Not just hyper focusing on the throughput of a Hero Talent tree. That’s never our goal.
What do we know if we’ve hit the mark? If you can pick a Hero Talent tree that you feel is visually interesting, has thematic hooks, feels like it’s extra spice on top of what you’re already doing, that’s the goal. We want it to feel like an option for you, and you can pick at any time, and not feel like something that you’re constrained towards. That’s the fundamental goal of Hero Talents
“If you can pick a Hero Talent tree that you feel is visually interesting, has thematic hooks, feels like it’s extra spice on top of what you’re already doing, that’s the goal.”
Are there any particular classes that you feel have had the smoothest run at finding the right flavour and ability mix? Were some easier than others?
George: Are you asking something that just felt like it fit and made sense perfectly?
Yes, that it flowed really nicely through that whole process. When you’ve got the fantasy right, you’ve come up with the right ideas. This feels great, well done everybody, take a break. Done.
George: Yeah, done. 38 to go! [laughs]
Some definitely made a lot more sense just with what we had to work with. Because you need to make a fantasy that fits two specs.
Mage was the clearest vision initially. Cool, I’m gonna make frost fire. It makes sense. It makes sense thematically, there’s historical precedence there. Frost Fire Bolt was a big thing. It just made sense. Then from there we’re like, alright, what are some really neat fantasies we can evoke for Mage? Kael’thas is a very famous Mage. Why don’t we have a fire arcane Kael’thas ish spec that just summons phoenixes. That’s pretty cool. Then when we got to Arcane and Frost, we thought to ourselves they’re very projectile focused. What if we have one that’s focused more about manipulating energy and shooting up particles and making it more of a spell slingy oriented mage? And that fell together pretty well.
Shaman was also one that was pretty easy to pin down. Stormbringer for Enhancement and Elemental. Let’s make something that’s very focused around elements, because both are very compelling for both specs. Let’s go with that. Totems are a big part of Shaman, so we wanted to make something that’s very focused around totems for Restoration and for Enhancement. And lastly, Farseer was one that came about with us having their initial conversations on what are really interesting spec fantasies that we don’t really touch on much? What about a spiritual themed Shaman that calls upon ancestors from the past. That’s really cool!
I love all the World of Warcraft Hero Talent trees that summon a bunch of pets or allies. Those are really fun. Death Knight’s Rider of the Apocalypse has been a smash hit since day one. You see something that says, “you summon the four horsemen.” Awesome.
A lot really came together pretty quickly. There were some that we needed to explore different fantasies. Rogue was one. What if there was something like Fatebound where you were manipulating fate and leaving things to luck of the draw and take the fantasy of Outlaw to another degree.
Overall, we’re really happy with where we landed on all 39 of these and we’re really hoping that players find them to be compelling choices.
Just coming up with 39 new cool names for things that are going to make people excited to try them out. That sounds like a really cool week of brainstorming!
George: That’s exactly what we did. We spent two or three days, I blocked out everyone’s calendars 10 to 5. Let’s talk about it. Let’s get in a room. Let’s make a big whiteboard – virtually. Here’s an hour, let’s talk about Rogue. Throw some ideas on the board. See what sticks. Then we have 80 ideas for Rogue. Let’s see what makes sense for these combinations, etc. And we came out of all those meetings with some that we were very confident in, and some that needed follow ups.
But yeah, it was a very fun process, and, yes, 39 names was very difficult! Some changed over time. We showed off Ruby Adept for Evoker at BlizzCon. That’s now Flameshaper. It felt more appropriate.
How much help came in from lore teams and other teams around Blizzard?
George: We talked to our narrative teams a lot. We were like, hey, does it make sense if we give warriors Mountain Thane and they summon elements from the sky? It’s very cooperative.
We try to make sure that as we’re going through the process, we’re talking to not just our narrative and quest folks but also our effects teams, our audio teams. Hey, if there’s an arcane mage that summons a phoenix what colour should that phoenix be? What spells should they be casting? What makes sense thematically?
Design is one portion of the game, but players experience the game through audio, through visuals, through actual playtesting. So it was a lot of collaboration, a lot of teamwork to get us where we are. We do try to make sure that we’re keeping everyone on the same page and collaborating where we can. Hero Talents were built by more than just combat designers at the end of the day.
It was a very fun process that took a lot out of us creatively, but we’re really happy with the final list. It feels like we hit a lot of fantasies that people were looking for.
About the Author
Seamus Byrne
Seamus Byrne has loved games since his neighbour let him play Decathlon on their Atari 2600. He has had to admit he has more time to think about games than play them as an adult, but still loves games more than ever.
