Warcraft Rumble Devs Say 'Never Rule Anything Out' for Future Content

One of the many games spun off from Blizzard’s flagship universe of Warcraft, Warcraft Rumble enters its sixth season with some major new challenges for players, ranging from besieging Stormwind to diving into the Molten Core.

Warcraft Rumble is a mobile game where players can employ collectible minis in frenetic action strategy combat, and its sixth season is just around the corner. Game ZXC sat down with Rumble producer Elhora Davis and senior designer Brendan Farrell for a wide-ranging interview discussing the new season, new content like the Siege of Stormwind and Molten Core Raid, and what's on the table for Rumble's future. The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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A Peek Into Season Six

Q: Tell me about the Siege of Stormwind?

Davis: Oh, man, that is a very great and relaxing opening question.

The siege of Stormwind… Well, what we can tell you about sieges is that they are kind of like a stepping stone towards raids, but they are their own kind of bombastic series of missions in their own right. We wanted players to be able to kind of get some of that raiding experience without needing to reach the end game, so we have our first siege, Stormwind, just set to go very, very soon, wherein you and a co-op partner within your guild will go into Stormwind Castle and siege it. You'll be going up against Highlord Bolvar, Innkeeper Allison, and General Marcus Jonathan. They are some very interesting characters. Innkeeper Allison is in particular my favorite because she is kind of, I don't know if I'm allowed to say muscle mommy, but she kind of is and she's great.

One of the things that I particularly enjoy about the Stormwind siege is that it gives you a taste of the level of spice that's going to come within Molten Core: we’re kind of teaching you some of the mechanics that you might expect to run into, all with the kind of classic Rumble toy-ification.

One of the rewards that you're going to be getting is the wildcard. Minis have traits, and within armies, there are army slots, and these slots can have traits. Tthe benefit of this is that you can upgrade these slots by completing dungeons, and that will make it so that the more upgraded a slot is the more bonus levels can be given to a specific mini. What the wildcard slot will do is it'll make it so that the trait requirement for a slot to get that level bonus will no longer be required for that specific slot. You can put any sort of mini in there, and it will receive the bonuses from that. That's a pretty fun kind of thing you can do, but personally, I'm really looking forward to folks getting their hands on the game and telling us what they think.

Farrell: Yeah, just to follow up on what Elhora said, tons of fun! We have those three missions in Stormwind. You're going to siege the city; it's going to be great. Some other things that players may want to know is that this is a co-op game mode, so you're going to be able to play with guildmates. You can have two leaders on the map at a time compared to solo play where you can only have one, so you can communicate with a guildmate and talk about “What leader are you bringing? What leader am I bringing? What do we think is a good strategy for Innkeeper Allison?”, for example. Maybe she kicks your butt, and so then you go back and say, “Okay, let's go back to the drawing board. I brought Hogger, and you brought Drakkisath–maybe if I swapped out Hogger, for someone's healing, maybe I should bring Tirion,” and then have those kinds of conversations, and try your best to sort of solve the puzzle of each mission and to make the puzzle more fun.

After you've beaten one of the three levels in the siege, you can't use that same leader that you used for the next two. It encourages you to expand your collection, level up more than just one leader, and diversify your strategy and your approach. You're doing this alongside a guildmate, so you need to be communicating and working on your strategies together, and it should be a lot of fun.

Q: Speaking of leaders, what can you tell me about Ragnaros?

Farrell: Yeah, Ragnaros has existed in World of Warcraft before–it's the big boss of Molten Core. In our raid that's coming out, which is also Molten Core, he's the final boss. You'll play against him in the boss mission, he has all these crazy abilities that you have to strategize around, but if you defeat him, you unlock Ragnaros as a mini and he's super cool.

He's our first mini that is stationary, so you play him and what he does is he finds the nearest building that you control. He latches on to it and he protects it, so if you play him near a base or a tower or meeting stone, he effectively replaces that structure temporarily and just sits there. He has these two really cool, melee-like cleave abilities, where he'll swing at enemies in front of him, so he's kind of like a big meat shield for your buildings. He has some really cool talents. The other thing he does is while he's out on a building, if he comes back up in your hand, he instead becomes a spell called Blast Wave, which you can play. It's a spell and it creates this ring of fire around all the buildings you've controlled, which pushes enemies away and applies burn to them, so that's really cool. The fantasy is that Ragnaros is out, and now you're using a spell to activate his big ability, which is tons of fun.

For his talents, he has his Raining Flames, which causes all buildings you control to just passively emanate like AoE damage. Every few seconds, he has Concussive Blast, which makes his Blast Wave spell. After it knocks enemies away from your buildings, it'll leave them dazed for a longer duration or leave them stunned. His last talent is called Sons of Flame–when he's at 50% health, he summons two little fire elementals that have their health slowly tick down. Between that talent and Blast Wave, it's like taking the experience of fighting against him in a raid and squishing it down into a playable mini that you can unlock and use as your leader and play him in your different strategies and compositions.

Q: What else is there to know about Molten Core as a raid?

Davis: Firstly, I'm super excited to see what people will say when they kind of see things for the first time, so I don't want to go too crazy describing things. But what we can say is that it's super fun.

There is a level where–I believe it's Lucifron–and he has these adds called Dominators. These are creatures that will mind control units that approach. When we were playtesting, we were initially just playtesting it as a technical kind of testing to try and look for bugs. We tried to put some soak time into features before we released them, and we completely forgot the objective of the playtest! We were finding ourselves running into these Dominators and being like “Ah, I don't understand how to overcome them.” But as we did it, we started to puzzle-solve together. For example, strategically, we had said, “What about the chickens?” And we were like, “Okay, yes, let's try the chickens.”

I appreciate that’s something that you can say in Rumble that actually is impactful and has a lot of meaning: “Let's deploy the chickens!” We had some success actually trying angry chickens in that situation, because mind control would pick a chicken, for example, and one chicken in a flock of chickens is not as consequential as if the mind control applied to a tank or more expensive units.

There are these kinds of situations that happen within Molten Core that are these puzzles, and you'll have some success trying a bunch of different things. There's no one way to overcome the challenge, but I can assure you that they are varied and interesting. You'll have a lot of fun just trying different stuff out with your partner.

Q: How is Rumble working with content creators promoting Season Six?

Farrell: I can speak a little bit about that. We have a lot of influencers, we have a lot of community channels for players, we have an unofficial Discord where players can come in and interact with the developers, and we invite all of our players to hop on there, and chat with us. We go on there as much as we can and answer questions as often as we can while we're not super busy working on the game.

When we do have influencers who post content about the game, we're always super happy to work with them and support them, and you know, sometimes they'll reach out to us through those community channels. They'll say, “Can you give us guidance on this new thing that just came out? Or what are the details? Or what are the stats for this thing you just announced?” We're always happy to provide those numbers.

Q: What else can you tell us about Season Six?

Farrell: I can't tell you too many details, but one exciting thing coming down is the Cenarion family. Players have gotten a little hint of this with the release of Fairy Dragon, who was the game's first Cenarion Family mini. Fairy Dragon’s out and about. She's in the game causing havoc, but we have planned more Cenarion family leaders and minis coming down the pipe. We have two new leaders and three new minis. I wish I could tell you more about them, but I can't at this exact moment. Those are coming, though, and they're going to be really exciting. The family is all about defensive play styles, there's lots of healing.

There's just lots of really cool stuff coming down the pipe. The one thing that I can tell you about is Earth and Moon, which is the second Cenarion mini that's coming. We have Fairy Dragon already, the second one is going to be Earth and Moon, which is a spell, and other than Ragnaros’s Blast Wave, it's the first spell that we're adding to the game since launch. Its whole thing is that it has two separate forms–Starfall and Entangling Roots–and it swaps between those anytime you play a Cenarion mini, including playing Earth and Moon. You have one slot in your army and it's one card in your deck, but it changes forms.

When it's in Starfall form, it's this six gold, really high damage AoE spell. It's kind of like Blizzard, players are familiar with that, but it doesn't slow, just tons of damage over time. Then, its alternate form is Entangling Roots, which costs three gold, the same AOE as Starfall, but instead of doing heavy damage over time, it applies roots to all enemies in the area. These roots just come out of the ground and grab them by their feet, and they can't move. It's a great way to gain control over the situation. Entangling Roots also applies poison to those minis as well, so it's good in poison decks. But with the mechanic of Cenarion minis causing it to swap, you get a lot of strategic gameplay potential. With this one mini, you get sort of two options at your disposal. We're really excited to have that one come out.

Davis: So Brendan is really awesome at talking about the design, and I think many people will be super excited about that. I'm also excited about design, but I'm also a very basic person. I'm super excited about the Banini Gun that is coming in Season Six.

You got our King, I believe his name is Mukla. I'm so sorry, I'm terrible with names, but he has this banana gun that he shoots. The emote is like he's using his banana minigun and going for it, and he just has a great expression. I really enjoy that we release many emotes with every season, so please look out for the Banana Minigun. And I believe the orc booger emote is coming out, which I believe will be a picture of artistry. So please look forward to it.

Farrell: One quick note, I got too excited, but the Cenarion family is probably coming in season seven. Season Six is when Earth and Moon is going to come out. Just so players are clear on what to expect.

The Future of Rumble

Q: That’s a good segue into: what can you tease about Season Seven?

Farrell: Well, the Cenarion family, for sure. We can't give too many specifics about things and what other things are going to be coming. I think the Cenarion line was probably the biggest teaser there, but you know, with every season, we're super keen on making the game better, making it as fun as we can for all of our players. There'll definitely be lots of really fun, exciting updates. I know that's really vague, but there's plenty of good stuff we've been working really hard on.

Davis: Yes, yes, we will continue to cook in the kitchen, always cooking forever.

The Cenarion family hearkens to the Cenarion druids within Warcraft. Druids are, by nature, kind of dualistic; they have their transformed forms and they have their non-transformed forms. I know, personally, I used to main a bear tank in World of Warcraft, and that was extremely fun. We've kind of tried to hearken to that within their identity. Spells, for example, will have a transformative kind of nature to them. For example, with Earth and Moon coming out in season six, that kind of concept will be expanded on more. Cenarion has this sort of more defensive playstyle, and we saw an opportunity for there to be kind of more healing potentially in the game; that was a space that we hadn't really explored too much. With this, we've wanted to leverage this Cenarion family as an opportunity to really kind of jump in on that and give players an option to experiment more with healing, sort of in defensive playstyles.

Personally, I really gravitate towards that. Tirion is probably my favorite leader. I love him. Him plus Footmen, straight though just live eternally, and I find that really great. I once was completely beaten up by an Abomination and Tirion and that was extremely sad, but also educational. If you're the kind of player that you want to invest in your minis and have them be really persistent on the battlefield, I think Cenarion will be a really, really great fit.

Q: Are there any thoughts about a competitive scene for Rumble like the one that exists for Hearthstone?

Davis: I'll jump in on this one. I wouldn't rule anything out. We've had influencer events and folks who have jumped in and played the game. I'd say that we don't have anything kind of planned at this time, but I definitely wouldn’t rule anything out for the future.

Q: Have there been discussions about expanding beyond Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms?

Davis: Oh, that would be so exciting! That would be so, so exciting. I can't confirm anything at this time, but I know I said this earlier, I would not rule anything out. The team is populated with a lot of people who are huge lovers of Warcraft, and the world itself is extremely rich and extremely diverse. There are plenty of opportunities for us to really jump in and visualize things within the Rumble way. So in the future, perhaps, I wouldn't rule anything out.

Farrell: I'll just add to that, that's one thing pretty much everyone who joins the team always ask, like, “What about XYZ zone from Warcraft” or this thing from Warcraft. There's so much potential and so many of the people on our team are so passionate about Warcraft, or grew up playing it, or just have all these ideas, and there's just so much there. And I know that the team would be excited if we announced the next one is "Whatever the Next Thing Is," I know the team would be super excited about all of that, so there's plenty of potential moving forward.

How The Devs Rumble

Q: We've touched on this a little, but what are each of your favorite leaders?

Farrell: This might be a little based on their story, but my favorite leader is Tirion. I just love healing in every game I play. If there's a healing option, I go for that. I just like playing the support characters. I think, in Rumble, healing is very underrated. I think a lot of players look at it and they go, “I don't think I need that” because they just want to steamroll forward, and there are plenty of ways to do that as well.

I really liked sustaining these minis on the battlefield and kind of building what we call a death ball, and just like with all his healing, instead of your minions dying, they just keep going. You keep adding more as they move up the map and it's tons of fun. Tirion’s like an armored healer, so he's hard to kill. He's just tons of fun. If you sustain long enough, you can get a few of them out at a time, and then you have these Tirions healing each other. You're putting all these other minis on top of them, and it's a great time.

For my favorite mini, there are many. Okay, so the one I always use is Bandits. Bandits is in every single one of my decks. They're really good. They're only one gold, they're very cheap to play, and you get a lot of value out of them. Apart from them being very portable to play, it’s cycling through minis in your deck faster. We actually call minis that cost two gold or one gold “cycle minis” and it's like a dedicated trait to help players understand that they can use them to cycle through their deck faster.

I love Bandits for that reason. But for one gold, they can stun and kill a lot of enemies, and they start right up to them so they're really good at taking out a solo Huntress or solo Ogre Mage, which are minis that I really have trouble playing against. I was like, “What am I going to do about this?” and Bandits are very often a very good answer for that, and I love them. I also just love that they are going back to my first time playing World of Warcraft. I rolled an Alliance character and have since converted to Horde, but like leveling up in Elwynn Forest and you see these bandits, you know, and like they're just such an iconic part of that experience to me. Having them and just deploying them over and over–it's just, that's fun.

Davis: That's awesome. I’m one of the people who's completely overlooked Bandits. I'm realizing the error of my ways. That's awesome. I have to start adding them to my decks as well. For me, yes, I love Tirion and I think he's great. I think he's a very, very powerful old man. He's a spring chicken still.

My other favorite leader is definitely Hogger because I love wolves, gnolls, and wolf-adjacent things. I love him and his giant ham he hits people with, and I think he's fantastic. I love that every time you deploy him he gets faster as he walks around. There is nothing that quite brings me joy as towards the end of the game where Hogger is just hustling down the lane with his ham, and it just makes me very happy.

As for my favorite mini, I think my favorite is probably the Prowler, which is a fast tank. Not only do minis have their traits like cycle or tank or squad or what have you, but they also have other things about them. Fast is one of them for the Prowler, which basically just means he's a speedy boy. What I like about this is that he pairs well with other fast minis such as Harpies. Harpies are a squad of flying extremely offensive bird people, but kind of frail. I appreciate that he can kind of keep up with them and protect them as they're both sort of running down. He does not have the craziest bulk in the world, but he has enough bulk that he is a tank in his own right, so he can protect the Harpies while they make short work of things, which I really enjoy.

A talent I love running on him is Predatory Instincts–what that does is it'll deal double damage to enemies that are at more than 75% health. Iit's just great to have that little vicious, nasty little “Nyeah!” with him, so he's sort of offensive, but also kind of bulky. I just think he's neat.

Farrell: We should have named the talent “Nyeah.”

Davis: Just replace all the sound effects with it.

Q: Is there anything else you each would like to add?

Davis: I think one thing I want to call out is, because it's something that I sometimes do in games, I have a tendency to be like, “This is my favorite thing.” And I'm only going to really do this thing forever. But in Rumble, a real joy of the game is when you diversify, and you try different things. We have lots of mechanisms to better encourage folks to maybe step out of their comfort zone like with our glide surges.

We'll have Blingtron’s Bounties and the Darkmoon Faire that encourage you to sort of mess about and try different things. I'd say that Rumble is the most fun when you try lots of different stuff, and you experiment. I hope that when folks get their hands on sieges, and when they play Stormwind and Molten Core for the first time they want to try a bunch of different leaders and try a bunch of different strategies and just embrace that as kind of as part of the fun. I know, for me, that's when I have the most fun in Rumble when I'm trying all kinds of different stuff, so that would be just one thing that I want to emphasize when I have a chance to.

Farrell: Yeah, I agree with everything or said just as a general message. I think we're all really excited to have players take a stab at sieges and raids. We're just working on it really hard. We're really excited to see how they do, and we're always listening and receptive to feedback. Players, try it out. I think it's fun and they want to see more of that or less of this or this thing feels good, and if this thing does not work, we're always listening. We're always hoping to improve, and so we're just really excited to share it with everyone and see what they think.

Q: And I think the great takeaway from the interview is “Deploy the chickens.”

Farrell: 100%! When in doubt, always a good strategy.

Q: I do have to say I love that. Even more that is a serious strategic move.

Davis: It's almost always viable. It's almost always good.

Farrell: Chickens come up in our design discussions a lot because they're our biggest squad, so they're kind of a design edge when we're thinking about other minis and interactions. Often we stop and reflect, and we're like, “We're really getting paid to have a discussion about nine very tiny angry chickens on the map right now.” It's a very real thing that needs to be discussed. It comes up so often, and it brings us a lot of joy.

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