Last week, I had the opportunity to check in with World of Warcraft Associate Encounter Designer Katrina Yepiz and Associate Game Director Morgan Day to ask them all my last-minute questions before Patch 11.1 Undermine(d) goes live on February 25th. This is the first major update to The War Within expansion, which launched this past August. Although a lot is already known about this update, we had quite a few questions to throw their way. So, let’s jump right in.

Liberation of Undermine

The first raid of any expansion is always a huge question mark since it sets the tone for the rest of the expansion, and the question becomes, “Will they follow the same pattern or do something differently?” Nerub-ar Palace was unique in that the first four bosses only had a slight increase in difficulty between them; however, each boss in the second half represented a significant step up in difficulty. This made for some very uneven progression and some real frustration from many raiders, but I also noticed it a lot in my guild as well.

With Liberation of Undermine having eight bosses in it, I was curious if the team was planning to continue the same pattern again. Yepiz, who was primarily focused on the raid for this update, answered with, 

“For 11.0 we really did try something different by having those final four encounters feel like a significant step up. We’ve heard from many guilds outside of that top echelon of raiding, you know the race to world first gamers; that wall really did feel like a frustrating block to progression… I think with 11.1 we do hope to return to a more gradual difficulty curve, so that every guild that raids mythic seriously can have something to chew on throughout the season.” 

All of that sounds great, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it all feels in a little over a week from now.

Day also jumped in to explain further:

“You mentioned heroic; that’s a scaling raid size. Sometimes what we see in looking at our data is that kill counts or that progression curve looks really good, and then when you say ‘actually lets look at 10 player raids now’ sometimes the attempts to kill look wildly different in a 10-player heroic versus a 20 or 25 player heroic. So we very frequently look at data, look at what the progression looks like for different audiences… We have a well-defined tuning schedule that we try to stick to, to make sure we have an opportunity to look at live balance and how that progression feels for players.”

Scaling raid sizes have always been a bit of a sticker when tuning on fights. For the most part, the team has managed to smooth the pains of different sizes well. There’ve been many times in the past where certain fights were much more difficult at specific group sizes than others. This still exists somewhat; heroic queen with 13 players feels vastly different than with 18, but for the most part, they seem to react quickly to scaling issues, and it’s rare to see a boss be impossible with a specific group size.

Although Nerub-ar Palce was a linear experience for the most part, Liberation of Undermine will function a bit differently. Yepiz explained, “After the first boss, we kind of open up the floor to the next four bosses. So you have some options of what’s the next boss you’re going to go to take down. Maybe if you are struggling with one one week you can go try a different one the next. Just offering different options for how players want to take on the raid.” 

I appreciate it when there is some flexibility in boss order because what one group might find challenging, another might breeze through and find an “easier” boss more difficult. Allowing for some variety also helps when it comes to farming.

Aside from my usual excitement for a new raid, I’m also looking forward to finally punching Gallywix in the face - hopefully, he won’t slink off somewhere at the end. Liberation of Undermine features quite a few bosses that seem like they will present a unique challenge and some interesting lore aspects as well. Yepiz was happy to pipe in with a couple of her favorites:

“I will be a bit biased and say I’m really excited about Rik Reverb because he’s the one I got to work on. He’s Gallywix’s promoter, and I had the opportunity to design him as ‘What does it mean for a goblin to tinker with sound and sonic?’ Getting to explore those ideas, I was really inspired by our sound team. They go into these foley rooms and just start banging together metal and plugging random wires on this machine and make these wild sounds, and it seemed very goblin coded. I took influence from that for his fight. You’ll be jumping between his amplifiers as they blow out to survive a giant sonic nova of damage.

Other fights, our biker gang is really, really, really fun. You get to sabotage some bikes and then punch them into the boss. We’re also doing a similar thing on Stix Bunkjunker. You get on giant balls of trash and run them around and try to blow up bombs so that you can survive. Lots of explosions, lots of fun. I think every encounter designer, they cooked, they just loved making mechanics for this tier, just because of the themes of goblins, and it felt very fun and rewarding to design for.”

Day added, “Our animation team, in particular, crushed it with, I think it’s called Vexie and the Geargrinders, which is, like Kat mentioned, boss one. It has the most epic almost like a movie intro to how they come into the play space. It’s the coolest animation. They are doing doughnuts in the play space, and they will run you over if you get near them while they are doing it.” This is where I am very happy I have stayed relatively unspoiled throughout the PTR cycle. I can’t wait to see all of this in game. 

D.R.I.V.E. isn’t a new mount?

In case you’ve missed it, one of the more interesting features in this update is the new car we’ll get for traveling around Undermine. We’ll be able to customize not just the looks of this vehicle but also how it handles and prioritizes the driving experience you care about most. This begs the question, will this driving style come to all ground mounts in the future in the same way dragonriding completely changed flying? Day had some insights to share regarding this:

“When we were talking about the Undermine and this update, we knew we wanted to fulfill that fantasy of the mean city streets of Undermine, and have it feel like this hustling and bustling city streets with cars honking and moving through the space should be really fun, exciting, and evocative of that busy streets feeling. So having skyriding available down in the Undermine very much undercut that experience we were looking to go for. But we knew we had to give players something just as interactive and fun and as exciting to engage with as their skyriding mounts.  I’ve said a few times I love skyriding because it changes the way you interact with the world. It makes movement feel so much more joyful and exciting…We really wanted to make sure we were still achieving those goals in the Undermine, but on the ground level and then hence the D.R.I.V.E. system or the G-99 Breakneck was born.

Very intentionally, the G-99 Breakneck is not a mount; it is a unique item that you interact with and use while you are in the Undermine. In terms of if that is something that will be in future updates, TBD. We’re always listening to player feedback, if that’s something they are excited to see we’re always open to those recommendations. Our primary focus was on creating something that was fun and creates engaging gameplay as you move around the world of the Undermine.”

Until he mentioned the G-99 Breakneck isn’t a mount, I hadn’t realized I was thinking of this as both a new system and a new mount. From this, it sounds like it won’t be in the mount journal the same way the skyriding dragons were and may be a bit more challenging to roll out to other mounts. One huge aspect that sets this system apart from dragonriding is that although we would unlock new abilities to use in dragonriding, we never could customize the mounts to work. All talents were available to get, and you could choose never to use some of them, but the basic experience was the same for all players—this D.R.I.V.E. system seems to be very different from that. I’m not sure there would be a good way to roll it out to all ground mounts.

Mythic+

One aspect of Mythic+ that I find particularly frustrating is valorstones. It’s always felt weird to have two limited currencies controlling if I can upgrade my gear when one would be enough. Additionally, they only curb gear progression right at the beginning of a season, or when I’m on an alt, I don’t play much. After a week or two, my main is always swimming in them and I can’t spend them fast enough, whereas it’s a constant struggle on my alts.

Day had some interesting thoughts to share regarding valorstones, saying:

“A lot of our focus, especially in Mythic+, has been on crests because we know that often becomes a limiting factor. Where valorstones are definitely we regonize in a bit of a weird space where they matter so much early on in a season, especially before you have gotten all the crests that you need. Then you get basically a saturation point where you don’t need those anymore and your crests really are your limiting factors. We definitely recognize that’s not the healthiest place for them to be, so we feel like there’s a lot we can do from a tuning perspective going into Season 2. I want to say we are making some increases to [aquiring] them from raids; for instance, you’ll get quite a bit more. Then also, we are talking about what other updates [we could] make to them in future updates as well. We definitely hear the community feedback and understand kind of the problem space there.”

I’m not sure increasing the drop rate of valorstones fixes the problem, at least for mains. They recently increased the cap on valorstone, which is nice, but if I am getting more from activities, I will still cap out before I can get the crests to spend on them. Valorstones are also a bit redundant when it comes to crafting. We get a limited amount of sparks, which determines when we’ll be able to craft or upgrade our crafted gear initially. Additionally, to put two fragments together costs valorstones. I’m not sure why we need two limited currencies for upgrading and crafting, but I wish valorstones would be removed entirely.

There’s so much more coming with 11.1 Undermined that we didn’t get a chance to discuss, such as the new dungeon and the new camps for the character select screen. This patch has so much stuffed into it for a patch update and not an expansion launch update. The new campaign storyline and dungeon will be available starting on the 25th, and a week later, all of Season 2 will kick off as well. If you need any last-minute achievements before the patch, you had better get them done now!