The War Within Pre-Launch Dev Interview: George Velev and Michael Bybee

Last week, we were treated to an exclusive interview with World of Warcraft developers George Velev and Michael Bybee. Our General Manager, Hulahoops, stepped up to ask our most burning questions for The War Within…and my oh my, do we have some juicy answers for you!

The following interview represents a call that took place on August 14th, alongside our friend Stan of Icy Veins. The questions have been transcribed and rearranged for a comprehensible reading experience.

Without further ado, get a 5-hour head start on your TWW journey with some dev-insight into Raiding, the Race to World First (RWF), Mythic+, support specs and additional combat log hooks, Vulpera Druids, and beyond.

Want the inside scoop on new Dracthyr class options, the possibility of a Brawler’s Guild in TWW, Awakening the Machine progress, and more? Icy Veins has you covered!

Table of Contents

Introductions

Michael Bybee: Hi, I'm Michael Bybee, the Production Director on the team for the last year or so. I've been with Blizzard for about 17 years, worked on Diablo IV, and I was also on the WoW team when we shipped Legion, Battle for Azeroth, and the beginnings of Shadowlands.

George Velev: I'm George Velev. I'm a Producer working on the World of Warcraft team. I've been around for four years or so working on World of Warcraft as a producer. I’ve worked on things like Hero Talents and the Talent Revamp (on the PvP side as well). Before that, I was working in WoW QA (Quality Assurance) for 4 years, so I've been around for a hot minute.

Raiding and the RWF

 Q-1: For each tier of Dragonflight, all 3 raid difficulties were released at the same time, removing what has become known as “Heroic Week”. With Heroic Week making a return in Nerub-ar Palace, what ultimately led to this decision? Can you comment on the decision to delay Mythic+ until Mythic Raid opens?

George Velev: Yeah, certainly. One of the major reasons to bring back “Heroic Week” is the amount of content that players are going to experience in the first week of Season 1. We don't want players to feel like they're sort of rushed to do everything with opening Season 1, like having to dive into Mythic Raids or Mythic+ immediately. We want to give more time for the content to breathe. We want players to feel like they have a chance to go through their gearing journey at a more organic cadence.

In terms of Mythic+ and the Mythic Raid unlocking at the same time, we do treat them as sort of analogous player journeys. And, with the change of Mythic 0 being analogous to something like a Mythic +10, we do want to give players more time to get used to Mythic 0 keys, the new Hero Talents, or new class updates before jumping into Mythic+ progression. Mythic+ and the Mythic Raid also offer similar rewards paths, so we like the idea of tying them together in terms of when they unlock.

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 Q-2: Many players have expressed concerns over the binary approach to boss mechanics, where a boss would present players a pass-fail check that either instantly kills them or the entire raid when they do not play flawlessly. The opportunity to recover from minor mistakes is lowered each raid, creating frustrating scenarios in which players perform well, but because a different player fails each time, no progression can be made. What is the current design philosophy behind this type of mechanic, and can we expect any changes in the future?

George Velev: Definitely, I’m happy to talk about that. So yeah, there's two mechanics that are worth discussing here: the mechanics that are pass-fail for the player and the mechanics that are pass-fail for the entire group.

For mechanics that are pass-fail for the player, you know, some like getting knocked back into a bomb or getting two stacks of a debuff, these are ones that we feel let players show a mastery over how they expressed their class or their role in raid content. We generally try to introduce these in like, the second half of Heroic difficulty and up. For the ones that are pass-fail for the raid, like a player missing a soak and wiping the entire group, these are ones that we feel sort of exemplify the group's mastery over the content. It's more of a success criteria for the entire group and it's really something that we like to use because it shows that the entire group knows this mechanic and can execute it and it's sort of a good sort of path of progression in the Mythic fight. At the end of day, it's something that we feel like makes WoW raiding feel fresh and interesting and, for the most part, it's only something that we want to introduce in the back half or last third of a Mythic Raid.

In terms of changing these concepts for the future, we have no current plans fundamentally. These are just two tools that we have in our toolbox to make encounters feel challenging and it's something that we'll continue using when appropriate.

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“When the RWF is going, it's on my second monitor the whole time. You walk around the office, and people are watching it. If you go to the Encounter Design office, it's up on their TVs…It's awesome to see how far it's grown.” –George Velev

 Q-3: The Race to World First (RWF) has grown bigger and better than ever before in recent years, especially with the live-streamed RWF of the modern WoW era. In what way has this growth and development of the RWF and top-end raiding scene affected your work? Has there been a shift in design philosophy or prioritization of certain game systems/mechanics that supports or combats the efforts made by the RWF raiders?

George Velev: I can tackle this one. Speaking of the RWF, I love it. I personally grew up in that environment. I remember back in what like…2011, 2012, or 2013 when no one streamed it and you would just be refreshing a website to see like, “Oh, this guild killed it”. It was all very secretive…very elusive. Nowadays, it's more of a community event, which I think is great. When the RWF is going, it's on my second monitor the whole time. You walk around the office, and people are watching it. If you go to the Encounter Design office, it's up on their TVs. It's super cool. It's awesome to see how far it's grown and I'm happy with how it's gone. I think it's great for WoW.

That being said, in terms of how it's changed how we work, I think one of the more significant ways is that we're now supporting it around the clock. There are a ton of different regions playing in the RWF and it's really our responsibility to make sure that, if a bug or an issue pops up, we're around to support it.

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“For TWW, we were trying to avoid putting Private Auras on specific types of mechanics. Instead, we will still use Private Auras, but we'll keep an eye on how people are engaging with them.” –Michael Bybee

 Q-4: What are your thoughts on the incentive that Netease is giving for Chinese guilds to aim for that World First title? Do you think there’s any world where this kind of incentive expands to the Western audiences?

George Velev: I think it's a really cool thing that our partner in China is doing for the regional players. It’s sort of analogous to some countries giving one-off rewards if their athletes win an Olympic gold medal. Globally, we're really happy with how the RWF currently pans out. It doesn't really fit neatly into the esports category, so we're really hesitant to interfere with something that's so organic, homegrown, and vibrant.

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 Q-5: How do you feel about the Private Auras experiment, and any comments on the various lengths the top guilds are going to in order to circumvent the Private Auras – such as Echo anchoring Private Aura frames to their cursors and using mouseover tooltips to inform their WeakAuras? From a development standpoint, will there be efforts to prevent that type of approach for this upcoming tier or would you like to comment on it in general?

Michael Bybee: In general, we're actually pretty happy with how Private Auras have gone so far. The intent there was to essentially just make it so that there were certain aspects of encounters that AddOns couldn’t see. We haven't been shy about this – there are certain kinds of actions that AddOns can take to get really, really close to automating the game and taking away not just cognitive load, but essentially telling players exactly how to do something and, in some cases, doing it for them. So, for anything that gets pretty close to that, we'll treat it similarly to finding a bug and exploiting a bug in the game, and we'll try to eliminate that as much as possible.

Now, all of that said, we totally learned a lot from using Private Auras in the back half of Dragonflight and, in the case of Amirdrassil, we actually turned off the Private Aura flag on a bunch of spells that had it because it was really complicated to coordinate certain types of encounters and, because of that, even when they were set as a Private Aura, folks were finding other ways around it, like the one you mentioned to try to coordinate together in those really complex encounters. For TWW, we were trying to avoid putting Private Auras on specific types of mechanics. Instead, we will still use Private Auras, but we'll keep an eye on how people are engaging with them.

Really, the goal is to avoid the arms race that happens where people make super complex AddOns, so we make super complex encounters…so then more complex add ons are made and then MORE complex encounters, and then everybody's miserable and I don't think anybody wants that. So, that's what we're trying to avoid.

Mythic+

“That’s really what we're looking for…can we provide affixes that let players make interesting choices and, over time, learn to improve, and feel like they're getting rewarded from that?”
–Michael Bybee

 Q-6: Going into TWW you have started experimenting with the Xal'atath-themed affixes. What were your thoughts as you initially brainstormed and played around with these ideas and the general change to how the Mythic+ system works?

Michael Bybee: I'm excited to talk about this. And specifically, I'm excited about the Xal’atath’s Bargain affixes, and just how Mythic+ is going to play out in the Season. Personally, I play a lot of Mythic+. I'm probably not going to be pushing the 12+ keys, but I'm going to be trying to get my portals and all of that.

The thing that happened this time is that we were trying to engage with what we've heard from the community quite a lot over the years like, “Hey, can we do kiss-curse mechanics? Hey, we want something that actually gives us a benefit. We want to be able to play really well and get something cool from the affixes and a Mythic+ dungeon instead of just feeling like they're always torturing us and punishing us all the time.” So, back in June, we pushed the first round of those and we got a lot of feedback. And frankly, what people were saying is, “This isn't exactly what we're looking for. It's not hitting the mark.” So we went back to the drawing board and what you got instead with these four Xal’atath’s Bargain affixes is that, firstly, it’s something much more thematically tied to her. And secondly, the mechanics are really engaging and interesting.

The one that I think is especially cool is Oblivion where crystals come in towards enemies. If the enemies absorb them, they're harder to kill. If you intercept them, you get a buff. The fact that you can actually play that mechanic badly and it makes the game harder, but you can play it better and it makes the game easier, is really cool. That’s really what we're looking for…can we provide affixes that let players make interesting choices and, over time, learn to improve, and feel like they're getting rewarded from that?

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“Now, with Tyrannical and Fortified alternating and then maxing out at the highest level, there really isn't going to be that situation like, ‘Oh, it's the wrong week with the wrong class and I just can't play.’” –Michael Bybee

 Q-7: For keystone levels +2 to +10, which will be the majority of the playerbase, many players have cited concerns about how these affixes may force specific group compositions or maintenance of numerous alts to beat the different weeks. What can you tell those players to ease their concerns?

Michael Bybee: First of all, in that range, the +2 to +10 keys, (the ones I'm going to be playing), there is nothing that's going to make it so that you absolutely have to bring a particular class. Those keys are challenging, but they're not so challenging that, frankly, I can't do them – and I'm not the best Mythic+ player in the world. Where that really starts to happen is when you get into that +12 range. The way that we think about it is that different groups of players have specific needs and things that they are interested in. For the +12 keys and beyond, these are the most hardcore players – a little bit like speedrunners, this is like Mythic+ “raiding” where they are pushing the game and their players to the absolute limits. And, in that space, a specific group comp with specific classes makes a lot more sense.

Below that, in the +2 to +10 range that you mentioned, it's actually more about, “Hey, if I really want to play a Paladin or I really want to play a Mage, or whatever class I want to play, I want there to be a time when I feel like that makes sense and is cool. And, you know what? There's another time when it's cool for another class to really shine.” So, it's less about forcing players to keep a stable of alts to progress every single week and more about making it so that there are times when your class actually feels cool to be playing – especially for people who identify with a specific class – and then also changing up the texture of the experience. Week after week after week, especially with four affixes in the mix, players will hopefully engage in that and feel like, rather than being punished, that it's just a little bit different. Maybe this week, they choose to bring a different class that they didn't the previous week, but it doesn't feel like you have to. That's really the goal.

 (Hula): It's nice to hear that the goal for the new affix is that some classes may perform better than others sometimes, but that tailoring the comp every week is not necessary.

Michael Bybee: Yeah, and especially when you think about Tyrannical and Fortified. Now, with Tyrannical and Fortified alternating and then maxing out at the highest level, there really isn't going to be that situation like, “Oh, it's the wrong week with the wrong class and I just can't play.”

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 Q-8: George, In our 2023 BlizzCon Interview, you mentioned that you might be looking into developing more cosmetic rewards for Mythic+ in the future, i.e. something akin to the Vicious Mounts from PvP, for those who engage with Mythic+ at a very basic level. Is there anything new that you can share on adding more cosmetic options to Mythic+, whether it be unique transmog or recolored mount versions like we’ve seen in Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor with Challenge Mode rewards?

George Velev: As of right now for the War Within launch, nothing new that we can share, but it's certainly something that we're still discussing and we'll share details when we think the time is right.

System and Performance

 Q-9: In Raids and sometimes Mythic+, many players have cited lag or performance issues during some notable encounters such as those spawning many adds (e.g. Denathrius, Sylvanas, Raszageth, Tindral, etc.). Are improvements being made to lessen the visual overload and hardware performance impact for such encounter formats?

George Velev: We take performance issues very seriously. No one likes lagging during Raids…I certainly don't, and it's something that we work on very closely with our FX teams, our engine teams, and combat encounters teams also work closely together on it. When something does show up on live, we do try to get as much data as possible and make adjustments that we can at that point because no one likes lagging during a Mythic Raid. Seeing that we’re very conscious of it this time around as we introduce things like Hero Talents, which is sort of like visual overload or visual noise, it's something that the combat team and the encounters team are working closely on to make sure that we're making visuals that are both cool but also aren't particularly loud. That way, we can let encounter mechanics shine. It's certainly something that's top of mind for us every single expansion and it's something that we aim to keep a very close eye on.

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“...We are looking to improve some of our combat log hooks when it comes to areas of the game involving things like damage mitigation…and whether or not an attack is flagged as AoE or single target. We're hoping that these new fields give our developers of external tools better information on the full survivability that healing and support abilities provide.” –George Velev

 Q-10: Are there any plans in the future to add combat-log hooks to expose the impact of support-type abilities such as Power Infusion, or multiple Aug Evoker spells? If not, would you be able to shed some light on your philosophy behind it?

George Velev: Sure. We’ve definitely talked about adding more log hooks. Power Infusion is definitely tricky to attribute because of how wildly different its value is at any given time due to how Haste works – it's not as simple as the log hooks that we’ve added for Augmentation. What I can share though, is that we are looking to improve some of our combat log hooks when it comes to areas of the game involving things like damage mitigation, such as more support for things like Avoidance and Versatility and their impact on mitigation, and whether or not an attack is flagged as AoE or single target. We're hoping that these new fields give our developers of external tools better information on the full survivability that healing and support abilities provide. We're not planning this for launch, but it's something that we're working on, so we hope to share more details on that soon.

Classes and Talents

“…The idea of having your Hero Talents deviate from your existing role is something we try to avoid. We're being really careful of making players feel like they're sub-specs. At the end of the day, you are a Holy Paladin first and foremost…there's just a little bit more spice or flavor on top of that with your talents.” –George Velev

 Q-11: Are there any plans to dive more into Support roles so that Augmentation Evoker won’t be the only one, such as adding a 4th spec to some of the other existing classes instead of only Druid? If so, will we see that specific role added to the game for LFG?

George Velev: Great questions! Let's see, starting from the top…no current plans to dive deeper into a Support role for launch, but we are just getting started with the expansion, so time will tell. I will say that we don't really take the inclusion of any new spec or class lightly. It's something that we are very conscious about when we do it, so we really try to make sure the time is right or appropriate. Regarding a new role for the game for LFG, there’s nothing currently planned at this time but who knows what the future will hold. If we do end up adding more things down the line, it’s definitely something that we can talk about.

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 Q-12: Have you considered making the Hero Talents lean more into a role divide of a spec rather than just special abilities?

George Velev: It's certainly an interesting idea. For launch, we felt very strongly about keeping your talents as an extension of your current spec and role and not really deviating from your role too much, although there are some Hero Talents, like Lightsmith, that dips your toes a little bit more into the support space. But even then, they're not really changing your role. They're just sort of enhancing what you're doing. You know that, if you're a Lightsmith Holy Paladin, you're not a support spec – you are a Holy Paladin with a little bit of support layered right on top. In fact, the idea of having your Hero Talents deviate from your existing role is something we try to avoid. We're being really careful of making players feel like they're sub-specs. At the end of the day, you are a Holy Paladin first and foremost…there's just a little bit more spice or flavor on top of that with your talents.

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 Q-13: Will we ever get the Vulpera Druid option to play smol Bear Tanks?

George Velev: You know…no current plans to include Vulpera Druids for launch, but I will say they do sound like they'd be very cute and very fluffy.

 (Hula): I would very much enjoy the Vulpera Druid forms, and I know a lot of people on our team would (they put this question in, so I had to ask). I would like to play a smol bear.

George Velev: *Laughs*

Michael Bybee: Many people would appreciate that I think, yes.

General

“We didn't say the expansion would be shorter – what we said was we're going to try and get them out more quickly and I think that's an important distinction…we really want you to feel like you got value for buying into The War Within, and that you're getting something awesome during that time frame.” –Michael Bybee

 Q-14: Will the stated goal for the 3 expansions in the World Soul Saga being slightly shorter than previous expansions lead to any changes in the Season format we've grown accustomed to (being 4 defined Seasons with the last one being Fated/Awakened)?

Michael Bybee: Yeah, sure, I'll be happy to jump in here. First, I want to clarify: We didn't say the expansion would be shorter – what we said was we're going to try and get them out more quickly and I think that's an important distinction because we're not ready to say exactly how many patches we're going to have, or exactly what the cadence will be, or exactly how many seasons we're going to have. Even though we are trying to get the expansions out and not make people wait two years for every expansion, we really want you to feel like you got value for buying into The War Within, and that you're getting something awesome during that time frame. And so, with balancing all of those things, it's going to be an awesome expansion. After we get past launch and into this first Season, you’ll hear a lot of awesome stuff from us, but we're not quite ready to talk about that yet.

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 Q-15: Why does Parry still exist when Hit, Expertise, and Spell Hit/Pen were removed such a long time ago? Although rotationally impactful spells are rarely parried (such as Colossus Smash, Kingsbane, etc.), it is a very frustrating experience and a significant performance decrease for melee players and even tanks. Do you feel that there is an equivalent to Parry for Ranged classes that justifies its place in modern WoW gameplay? (Can you tell that we have a Rogue on our staff?)

George Velev: Parry is really a mix of fantasy and game mechanics that we feel is really suited for World of Warcraft combat. It encourages players that are playing melee to stand behind the boss, and we really feel that proper positioning of your character is an important part of skill expression. In terms of the melee versus ranged counterpart, it's never going to be an exact ratio of pros and cons, and it's more influenced by encounter mechanics. For example, are there a lot of things that make you move or a lot of things make you stand still? Any kind of encounter that forces significant movement or repositioning is going to certainly favor melee more since, for the most part, ranged players cannot do their full rotation while moving. So, it's not really a 1 to 1, but we do like the idea of Parry existing to further enhance the fantasy of playing a melee character.



 (Hula): We’re out of time, so that’s all the questions we wanted to fit in today.

Michael Bybee: Well, I just want to say thank you! I thought your questions were awesome and it was really good getting to hang out.

George Velev: It was a pleasure.

 (Hula): Thank you! It’s always so fun getting to speak with you and learn more.

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Don’t forget to head over to Icy Veins for additional insights from George Velev and Michael Bybee!

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