In a presentation yesterday, Blizzard announced their next major update for World of Warcraft Dragonflight (patch 10.1), Embers of Neltharion, which will be continuing the storyline kicking off in the upcoming 10.0.7 Forbidden Reach update. In addition to a sneak peek at the new storyline, we also found out a ton of info about the new zone, raid, mythic+ dungeons, and systems updates (cross-faction guilds!). Additionally, I had the opportunity to participate in an interview with Narrative Director Steven Danuser and Associate Game Director Morgan Day, to find out a bit more about everything we’ll be seeing in Embers of Neltharion. So, let’s dive right in!
Setting the Stage
If you’ve been following the news around 10.0.7, which will be launching on March 21st, you’ll know a large part of that update revolves around the Dracthyr returning to the Forbidden Reach and everyone else helping them. If you played through the Dracthyr starting zone, you know that story revolves around not only the Dracthyr waking up, but also Raszageth escaping as well. They barely managed to escape the island with the help of Nozdormu. Since then, the whole area has been out of reach. I don’t want to spoil the Forbidden Reach story for those who have been trying to avoid spoilers, but everything which happens there will lead directly into 10.1.
Zaralek Cavern
The new zone for Embers of Neltharion is an expansive underground cavern called Zaralek Cavern. This zone will be just slightly larger than Zareth Mortis was, and we can use our dragonriding abilities right from the jump. There are also three separate entrances to Zaralek Caverns, with one in each of the following zones: Thaldraszus, Azure Span, and Ohn’ahran Plains. We were also told that there are three distinct biomes in Zaralek Cavern, which I believe will likely correspond to the entrances from each zone.
Additionally, there will be a new renown track corresponding to this new zone, and with the two primary inhabitants, we’ll meet. The first is a new mole-like race called the Niffen, and the second is a group I’ve wanted to see more of since I first quested through Highmountain, the Drogbar. Filling out this renown track will function in the same way the other tracks we have already and will, of course, involve learning a lot more about these two races and the cavern itself. Hopefully, we’ll get to participate in some snail races this time around.
During the interview, Day also mentioned that there will be new dragonriding glyphs and a new talent that will allow players to regen vigor while skimming along the ground. This sounds awesome, but I’m pretty sure this means that rather than suddenly smashing into a tree, I’ll just be crashing into rocks and boulders. While on the subject of dragonriding he also mentioned that we will also see new races throughout the new zone. I can’t get enough of the races which we already have, so getting completely new ones is very exciting. I’m also hopeful there might be more of the freeform races where you have to find the best path around on your own as well.
One surprising bit with a new zone on the way is that the existing Dragon Isles zones will also receive some new campaign questlines as well. We’ll pick up the storyline revolving around the reformation of Tyr, learn more about the blue dragonflight, and delve into why more of them didn’t respond to Kalecgos’ call.
In relation to the blue dragonflight’s story, Danuser had this to say, “That’s really a chance to pick up where we left off in the Dragonflight chapters. We saw that Kalecgos was attempting to get his dragonflight back together, but he was only able to pull a few pieces of it, and he felt like he still had a lot of work to do to kind of make their flight feel more like it once did under Malygos long ago. We’ll get to adventure with Kalecgos and Sindragosa, and delve into the past of the blue dragonflight as well as set a course for its future.” I wasn’t expecting this in an update that very easily could have been all about the black dragonflight and Dracthyr. I’m hoping to learn more about what Sindragosa meant when she said she’s been too forgiving multiple times in the past.
New Raid and Mythic+ Dungeons
Our new raid coming with this update is Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible, which is where Neltharion conducted his most secret experiments and also where he succumbed to the whispers of the Old Gods. We’ll be hot on the tail of not only the incarnates but also Scalecommander Sarkareth, who leads the Sundered Flame. There will be nine bosses in total, and if I had to guess, I’d have to say Sarkareth is the likely end boss. They gave a lot more focus to his role than on what the incarnates are up to when discussing the new raid. It could be a misdirect, but it was notable. They also mentioned we’ll be fighting an elementium dragon during this raid, which sounds potentially fascinating.
They will also be doing a simultaneous release with normal, heroic, and mythic difficulties releasing at the same time again. Day explained their thinking on the simultaneous releases this way, “When we were talking about Dragonflight release a lot of our conversations around the simultaneous releases around just our proximity to the holiday and our ability to support the raid launch. Ultimately after we saw how that played out, we had a lot of discussions around what were the pros what were the cons, what did we like, and what didn’t we like. We really felt like for the broader audience, it was such a great experience to not have that frankly awkward week where like the raids are open but mythic is not open.
So if you’re a mythic+ player, you have to figure out what level do I need to run. Just that awkwardness that would happen when we would have the season launch but not really launch. So having that alignment around this is when the season launches just felt like a great experience for the broadest audience. And the problems that did create for us, which there definitely are problems that caused, felt like solvable problems.” Not being a mythic raider, this change had little impact on me, but it still felt much better to have everything go simultaneously. Still not sure why LFR has a staggered release though.
As expected for the new Mythic+ season the four DF dungeons which were not a part of Season 1 (Brakenhide Hollow, Halls of Infusion, Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr, and Neltharus) will be part of the second season. I wasn’t expecting this selection of old dungeons though: Freehold, Underrot, Neltharion’s Lair, and Vortex Pinnacle. I’m very happy about Neltharion’s Lair, as I was just running through there recently and realized I missed that dungeon being in the rotation. I’m curious about Vortex Pinnacle being added though, as that is a dungeon that hasn’t had an M+ version before, which makes me wonder if there might be some really bad affix/boss ability combos. For example, I foresee terrible things happening when everyone needs to get in a small triangle on Asaad, and quaking goes off.
One interesting thing Day brought up was that there will not be a new seasonal affix next season taking the place of Thundering. Specifically, he said this, “one major change we’re making is we’re actually just, not going to have a level 10, which is to say the seasonal affix like thundering… Seasonal affixes were created, as an idea back in Battle for Azeroth, where we had the same dungeon pool, we’d add one or two new dungeons here or there, but you could be playing the same dungeon for many many seasons, and really we added those seasonal affixes to try and solve the problem of it feeling like dungeons were solved. There was a specific route and a specific way everyone approaches a dungeon. Seasonal affixes were there to kind of mix that up and change the way you approach the dungeons.
Going into Dragonflight we were like, well maybe we don’t need to solve that problem anymore, but maybe there’s a way to add some gameplay that feels like more of a persistent aspect of the dungeon. But ultimately we heard a lot of feedback around complexity and how much stuff do I have to know about what I have to do and what’s going on, and how many wrenches are you going to throw at me. Not even dodgeballs wrenches that we are throwing at you. Definitely, taking a really close look at that with Season 2.” It’ll be really strange not having that seasonal affix, but I agree that with an entirely new pool of dungeons for this seasons, that affix likely won’t be missed much.
Day also explained that they are also taking a closer look at the level 7 affixes and what kind of counterplay they encourage. He said, “how much of that is really just making your healer’s life harder versus how much there is the opportunity where if I play really well, I can negate this affix, and you know use my utility really well or whatever it may be. So, we’re taking a really close look at the whole level 7 bucket, and looking more along the lines of an affix refresh for that bucket… as well as trust us we’ve heard the feedback around when Season 2 comes around, if you’ve done Brakenhide on mythic zero that first week it was pretty hard. So definitely taking a close look at individual dungeons and at really maybe cutting some things that exist today in mythic zero and really asking if once affixes are in the mix does this pull really need to have three creatures that need a kick rotation going in or something like that.” It’s good that they are thinking through these types of things, so hopefully, in Season 2, there will be less of a need for weekly changes to the dungeons themselves.
Systems Update
The biggest system update coming with 10.1 is undoubtedly cross-faction guilds. I never thought for a minute that we would get those before the next expansion. It just seemed like something that could possibly be a huge lift and could work well as an expansion feature. But I’m so excited not to have to wait. They did indicate this will be a big focus in the PTR testing because they know it’s something players want, and they want to make sure they get it right. As such, cross-faction guilds are slated to be available for testing from day one of the 10.1 PTR. Obviously, one of the most important aspects will be being able to convert existing guilds to cross-faction if they want to. It would be terrible if existing guilds had to disband and reform so that they could have their friends on all sides of the divide play together.
In addition, they plan on continuing the class updates and balancing they have been doing throughout DF thus far. There will also be updates to the Heads-up Display and more options made available in the edit mode of the interface. Lastly, they are also planning on updating heirloom armor to scale up to level 70. That one was a bit of a dark horse for me. I can’t remember the last time I used heirloom gear at all. I only really used it for the XP bonus, and since it was removed, I haven’t really thought about that gear at all. Not that any XP bonus is needed. However, this is a good change for players who enjoy using heirloom gear.
Wrapping Up
For a first look, I was surprised by how much detail they were willing to give on many of the aspects of Embers of Neltharion. Obviously, there is still a lot we don’t know, and I’ll be keeping an eye on how things develop from here. So far, though, it really seems like they are carrying forward the positive aspects we’ve had with Dragonflight and keeping up a steady pace of not only information but also updates and new things. I can’t wait to see where we go from here; still holding out hope for infinite Murozond.
