Blizzard has just revealed the next major update for World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is 10.2 Guardians of the Dream. As many have speculated, and the story has strongly indicated, we will indeed be traveling into the Emerald Dream to faceoff against Fyrakk as he tries to steal the power and Night Elves’ future, which resides in the fledgling world tree Amirdrassil. To celebrate this announcement, I spent some time picking the brains of Lead UX Designer Crash Reed and Assistant Lead Encounter Designer Taylor Sanders. Let’s dive into everything we have to look forward to and some of the exciting changes arriving with Guardians of the Dream.
The Emerald Dream
As a long-time Druid player and adorer of Ysera, the Emerald Dream has been an area I’ve wanted to visit since I first heard about it. We have dipped our toes into the Emerald Dream in Legion and BFA, but we’ve never had an entire zone to explore and explore. It is important to note that we are only traveling into a small part of the Emerald Dream; it is vast and would encompass multiple zones. That said, the sliver we’ll get in 10.2 is roughly the size of the Ohn’ahran Plains.
Since we’re finally diving into the Emerald Dream in a more complete way than we have in the past, we asked about how they felt working on it. Reed jumped right on that with these thoughts:
“I am super pumped. Playing WoW since the beginning, even in Warcraft III, just all the discussions of the Emerald Dream and how cool it can be. My wife plays a Druid; it’s all she ever talks about. It’s just one of these amazing experiences, that I think we are lucky to be able to share with the players right now. With that, it’s gonna come with some really cool things for the player to do. Like, diving into protecting both the world tree and helping it to grow, depending on what event you are participating in.
For example. There will be a new public event called the superbloom that will allow you to go into the Emerald Dream, and you’ll help the druids there with various activities. You’ll meet a really cool wandering ancient named Sprucecrown, and he’ll give you various activities to do during that event. They’ll include things like fighting off the druids of the flame, and you’ll get to gain some really cool temporary power-ups that’ll make you feel really strong in those moments. I think that’s a really cool event; you are just helping the tree grow and helping to nurture it.”
Reed also went on to talk a bit about one of the other storylines will be with Vyranoth and Wrathion and how they “form a kinship with one another, this feel of they are almost misfit dragons, you know they don’t necessarily fit in, so they form this really nice bond with each other.” Initially, I thought their team-up seemed odd, but the point that they don’t fit in with the others is a good one. Vyranoth has felt like the odd man out with her other three incarnates, and Wrathion, often by his own choice, has been off on his own doing things. This also makes them the perfect choices for reaching out to the Thorignir Storm Dragons and the Netherwings, who have also been separate from the other dragons.
While saving Amirdrassil from Fyrakk, we’ll also work on the new renown track with the Dream Wardens, which continues the pattern from Embers of Neltharion, where we get one new renown track per major update. However, the weekly Valdrakken quest, which requires rep gaining in the Dragon Isles, wasn’t updated to include the Niffen, which was a bit frustrating. I asked if this quest would be updated for the Dream Wardens, and they didn’t have anything they could say about that quest directly. So it seems like it will not be updated, but they also mentioned that they are open to feedback on whether updating those types of quests is something that is desired.
Much like the slitherdrake there is also a new dragonriding mount, which will be a reward for completing the new campaign story. Reed described it as, “If you complete all of the quests for the campaign, you’ll be able to unlock the new mount, the faerie dragon mount. I’m a faerie dragon fan, so being able to have a big epic faerie dragon I can customize in the rostrum is pretty cool.” I honestly didn’t expect a new dragonriding mount this time, but I am pleasantly surprised by this, especially since it also doesn’t rely on RNG to obtain.
Season 3
One of the banner beats of season 3 is the setting for the new raid is the fledgling tree Amirdrassil. Which, for the tree's health, seems like a terrible idea, but it does open up all kinds of interesting possibilities for fights. In fact, Sanders said, “It was only natural that a portion of the raid focuses on and around the tree. We have a really cool dragonriding encounter where players will be able to fight one of our coolest characters; he’s a druid of the flame named Tendral Sageswift. Players will be zooming around the boughs of Amirdrassil using their dragonriding mounts during the encounter. So players will see a lot of Amirdrassil during the raid.” This sounds both exciting and terrifying. I keep imagining players getting disoriented and flying the wrong way, and it could be a whole thing. But it is also a cool concept.
As with the previous two seasons, there will be a mount from the last boss in the raid. Unlike the other two, rather than being a new skin for one of your dragonriding mounts, the Fire Owl is an entirely new mount. Reed confirmed that this mount will be the first non-dragon mount that will use the new flight system, and they call that “dynamic flying.” Unfortunately, Sanders did confirm the Fire Owl is a mythic-only mount. This feels like an odd choice because I swear we have been here before, and they changed things. I’m confused by this choice because it feels like backtracking for no reason. They’ve certainly set that expectation of how that would work thus far. Sanders also pointed out that there are other unique rewards, including dragonriding appearances, from the other difficulties. Maybe with that in mind, players will be less disappointed about the Fire Owl, but I won’t hold my breath on that one.
The Mythic+ dungeons for season 3 are an exciting crop of options. We all knew the two halves of the mega-dungeon would be in, which is awesome as outside of the sandy ball gauntlet and Morchi, it’s a really fun dungeon. The options from BFA and Legion are both suitable picks, as I remember them mostly being fun. There were some issues with mushrooms and people getting knocked into whelpling eggs in Darkheart, but those were execution issues more than anything else.
There’s a huge update to the upgrade system for season 3; we won’t have to mess with different types of upgrade tokens or fragments. There will be just one currency used for all upgrades; this includes open-world gear, all levels of raid difficulty, M+ gear, and PvP gear upgrades. This is a fantastic change. It was frustrating to gather all the different tokens and have them take up so much space in my bags. Also, once all my gear was past a certain point, receiving those lower-tier fragments felt pointless because I had no use for them. It also disincentivized me from helping friends do lower-level content to catch up because all of those would sit there, taking up space until I sold them for minimal gold.
That said, whenever we have had one currency to acquire any gear from any difficulty, some of the community pushes back and expresses concerns about two things. The first is concern over players being able to attain gear of a certain level but are unable to play at the level required to obtain that level. The second concern is that it can lead to “degen” playstyles where people grind out easy content to get currency and upgrade to higher-level gear, which can create a harmful environment for players. Sanders addressed these concerns: “It’s our intent that, while there are still some details being ironed out, it will be the fastest way to upgrade your gear to a mythic level will be by doing mythic level content.”
Hopefully, they will be able to dial into the right amount of currency for each tier of content, which can be difficult when it comes to M+ specifically. For example, it’s way easier and quicker to burn through +12s than to do +18s, so they need to consider that. It’s also important to remember that gear will have similar upgrade ranges as they do now. So, it will not be possible for players to upgrade LFR gear to Mythic level. This certainly helps the concern over players doing easy content to get the best gear. It’ll be interesting to see what the drop rate for M+ is, though. There is a real chance that players could feel disincentivized to run certain key levels if the return on currency isn’t tuned correctly.
I also asked if any updates were planned for the affixes in M+ with this new season; this last season felt rough, especially when I needed to find a healer. Sanders said they currently don’t have any plans for updating them as a part of season 3, but they will pay a lot of attention to player feedback on the PTR. So if M+ is a game mode you care about doing, spending some time in them on the PTR and giving them feedback about how the balance feels will be very important. Since it is an entirely new set of dungeons in the Mythic + roster this time, they are keen to hear what works and what doesn’t.
Another significant change this time is that the catalyst will be open and working from day one of the season. This is one of the best changes for season 3. It always felt arbitrary to wait some weeks at the beginning of a season for the catalyst to open up. There will still be charges that will be gained weekly, so we won’t be able to fill up with new gear and instantly change all of them to tier, but opening it at the beginning of the season is the best choice.
Overall, I can’t wait to dive into 10.2 for myself. They didn’t release the launch date yet, but I’d still guess it’d be around mid-October. Then it’ll be on to Blizzcon, where I’m sure things will be announced. In the meantime, I think there’s a dreamsurge I need to go take care of.
