As it is every year, BlizzCon was filled with exciting announcements regarding the future of World of Warcraft. Blizzard is going into uncharted territory, though, announcing not one, not two, but three expansions overall. The War Within, Midnight, and The Last Titan are collectively dubbed the Worldsoul Saga, and fans are going to be treated to plenty of new content, a new overarching narrative, and more. This Saga is meant to celebrate the past 20 years of World of Warcraft and set the stage for the next 20 years.

Those are lofty goals, but it's clear how dedicated Blizzard is to the future of World of Warcraft. Game ZXC recently sat down with cinematic narrative director Terran Gregory and technical director Frank Kowalski at BlizzCon to talk about the direction and challenges of the Worldsoul Saga, the newly announced features like Warbands and Hero Talents, and much, much more. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

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Q: For my first question, I was wondering what were the main challenges you guys had to think about when lining up three expansions all at once?

Gregory: I mean, that's a really good question. That's always the challenge when trying to project out ahead and ultimately make promises to the community that this is the vision, this is the roadmap, and this is where we're heading. We've talked about that a lot in preparation for rolling out the Worldsoul Saga, and we just believe that, no matter what, this is the right path. We're moving forward boldly with a vision for Warcraft, and people can see that we're just getting started.

We want to rise to the gravity of the 20th anniversary of World of Warcraft, and we wanted to let people know that we have so much more left to tell in this world. The rest is going to come down to our diligence and making that product bold, consistent, and everything that people expect it to be. Is it challenging? Yes. Is it a little terrifying? Absolutely. But we are up to the challenge. We're excited about this product, and we can't wait to see people embarking on the Worldsoul Saga with us.

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Kowalski: The challenge is we're looking out further than we ever have before. We're always looking ahead, right? We're always looking at all this next expansion and all the content, and then we're looking at the next expansion and all that content. But now, we're looking out even further.

We're always thinking very far ahead, both in terms of the story and in terms of what sort of content we want to provide the players. I think, this time, we have gotten a little bolder. It does make that more exciting challenges on both fronts, but it's something we're very engaged with.

Q: Yeah, having some idea of what's coming in the future really makes you want to stick with it, whereas sometimes you don't really know what's going to happen next, so maybe you check out in the second half an expansion. With this, it's like I know the next one is Midnight and I'm really into Void stuff, so I'm super excited for that.

Gregory: You definitely don't want to miss the beginning of that.

Q: What other story threads were maybe considered for the Worldsoul Saga across all three expansions? Were there any other threads that are still outstanding that maybe you considered for the story, but won't be used in Worldsoul Saga?

Gregory: Well, I mean, we haven't revealed everything that will be in the Worldsoul Saga yet, so it's difficult to say what's not in it when we have so much more to reveal moving forward. That's always a challenge in the World of Warcraft world though, with thousands of stories and thousands of beloved characters. Which tale hits the spot is something we pine over constantly in development. We can tell so many different stories, so which ones do we focus on? But really, the creative crew and the development team themselves come together and often discuss what we'd like to do.

Chris Metzen, you know having come back, had thoughts on exactly what we should be doing, but also discussed with the team what we're energized on and what we're excited about. That then starts to coalesce around the notion of a story that we're excited about creating and we hope the audience will be excited about it too.

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Q: Speaking of Metzen, the way he spoke about the Worldsoul Saga also sounded like the culmination of all the stories and almost a conclusion to the journey. I just want to say...WoW 2 confirmed?

[Everyone Laughs]

Gregory: It is the intention that, I think Chris also said, this is meant to spur us onto the next 20 years of World of Warcraft. While there can be trepidation perhaps around, like, does that feel like that an end, is that a conclusion, or are we wrapping it all up in a bow? I don't believe so at all. I think it's just an aspiration to have some of our greatest storylines really come to an exclamation point.

But that's not to preclude the idea that, as we go along that journey, we'll have those echoes of the great cliffhangers of the past as an allegory, Frozen Throne right? That ended in Warcraft 3, but how'd that end? Arthas on the throne, what does that mean for the future of Warcraft?

It's like thinking in terms of the perpetuity and wanting World of Warcraft's narrative to be an everchanging thing. We're still having these Saga moments and still feeling like all 20 years of history can rise to an apex, while also spinning up enough tales to keep us moving.

Kowalski: While it's the end of some story arcs that have accumulated over 20 years, it's also going to be the beginning of others. We are committed to the next 20 years of World of Warcraft. You've seen that with things like Warbands, this commitment to generating evergreen systems that are going to persist. If we wanted World of Warcraft 2, we probably wouldn't go put a whole bunch of brand-new systems into World of Warcraft. We are committed to continue World of Warcraft for decades.

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Q: Speaking of Warbands, one of my colleagues and I were trying to figure out how exactly that's going to work, and we had the thought of somehow seeing your Classic and Retail characters together. But, presumably, Warbands is retail specific?

Kowalski: It is retail-specific right now. We're focused on expanding the experience in the retail game. I think, you know, the game has evolved a lot over 20 years. We've been there since the beginning, the player journey was the character journey way back then. It was very intertwined, like, I was a Night Elf Rogue for three years, right? When I logged into World of Warcraft, that was the thing I did.

Over time that evolved, and we began to see the game through different lenses. Now, I'm a demon hunter main, right? I don't say I'm a demon hunter in World of Warcraft, I say I'm a main. I still have my DK Alt, and sometimes I want to go with play it.

It's really recognizing that with Warbands, recognizing the way players have also evolved in those 20 years, and they experience and look at World of Warcraft differently now. There are some things in the game now where it's like I am the player experiencing the campaign and I am the player experiencing Dragonflight for the first time. So, what we really wanted to focus on was "What did we really want to be the player journey?" That's kind of where we arrived at Warbands. How can we make it easier for players to "change skin" in the game, but still feel like they are a player in World of Warcraft?

Q: What was the craziest challenge from a technical perspective to make Warbands happen and have that be cross-account wide?

Kowalski: It's work. It's moving bits from here to there, right? It's recognizing that there's a lot we want to do with Warbands. We want to create things you can all share, that you can all access. Moving a lot of that data, it's an effort. We think it's an effort that's time has come.

This is the moment for us to put in that work and get it recognized once and for all. This is the way the community has told us they want to play the game. They don't want to hang out around the mailbox all day and sort things between characters. Moving all of that data is just the bulk of that work and then it's just figuring out what belongs where.

Q: Changing gears a bit, the cinematics were amazing and the quality of it is so good. You guys have come so far with that quality and the storytelling. We obviously had the Warcraft live-action movie. In terms of cinematics, do you have anything planned for shorts, short story videos, or even longer-form, movie-type things from a cinematic perspective?

Gregory: Well, our story and franchise division that works on the high-end CGI cinematics is just so talented, and they've supported all of the games we've done throughout Blizzard's history. Really, we always want to tell the story that is appropriate to tell and to support that product. In this case, it's Warcraft like what Metzen announced. Sometimes grand things come in small, intimate moments.

That movie was just so critical to launch us into The War Within. Looking forward, it's always a matter of what is the story we need to tell and how do we tell it. We have lots of wonderful cinematic mediums from the high-end CGI to the animation motion storybooks we have done in several expansions to the endgame cinematics and other mediums. Really, it just comes down to what's the most appropriate thing, at the time, to tell these stories. If there are opportunities in the future to do more with the extraordinary high-end pipeline, we'd love to. We're always invested in World of Warcraft and want to tell the story more, but there's nothing particular to announce today.

Q: For the hero talents, what kind of challenges did we have there when you're considering how to implement that?

Kowalski: Many, many challenges. One of them is what is the right kind of fantasy to hit on for each of those specs, for each of those classes. I'm a Demon Hunter, so I am going to have to choose a Fel-Scarred or a Reaver for my main, but each one of these is going to have to dramatically alter how I play.

The other challenge was sometimes when we add more talents for players, looking back at the history, sometimes you wind up with more and more buttons, and more and more actions to do. Sometimes those are buttons you have to push at the same time. The challenge is do we want to go more in that direction, or do we want to stop and think about how players utilize their spells now? Which of these heroic fantasies would realize, like you saw yesterday, what the mountain king would do with a storm bolt? Hit as many things as he can with it, right?

It's more thinking about how each of these things can layer on top of the character that's already there and give a level of customization that's thematic to the choices you've made. There's still going to be choices there between some different options, but it removes a lot of the complicated mechanics players have typically relied on in the past.

Q: Essentially, you have a choice between a few of them right?

Kowalski: Yeah, like we do on the talent tree right now. Sometimes, you'll have a choice.

Q: With that, so leveling from 71 to 80 you get the hero talents, do you also get any other ones for the existing trees?

Kowalski: Right. Typically when you're leveling, you'll get like spec points and class points. All the talent points you get then would be hero talent points.

Q: Along the same vein, for the talent tree as it is today, there was an obviously huge overhaul going into Dragonflight. Do we expect a lot of changes in the existing class and spec talent trees, or is it really just the balancing for expansions?

Kowalski: More along those lines. We see what's already there, and we will see if there are any tweaks we need to make as per usual for any kind of major update.

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Q: For the story development when you're going into the story and future expansions, how much of that is internal thinking within the teams, and how much of that is also kind of inspired by the community like some of the theories they come up with on Reddit and everywhere else?

Gregory: First off, the people who work on World of Warcraft are very much a part of that community. I was a Warcraft player before I came to work for Blizzard. I had such a passion and so much engagement with it. Inspiration comes from everywhere, we've discussed this, whether it's games, media, Hollywood, our own lives, or books we've read, and that includes the communities that we spend time in.

It really comes down to when our crew is collaborating and bringing ideas to the table. It's a matter of what's getting people excited, and that could come from anywhere. It's just a process by which we collaborate. It takes Blizzard to make a Blizzard game, and it's an enjoyable process to watch unfold.

Kowalski: We read community feedback, maybe more than the community realizes.

[Everyone Laughs]

We're here all the time, we see everything, and we hear everything. Just to reiterate Terran's point, inspiration does really come from everywhere.

Q: For Midnight and The Last Titan, obviously you can't share a lot of details, but how much of those have really been fleshed out in terms of percentage or any other metric?

Gregory: I can't really speak to percentage, but I can say we have a bold notion of the substance of where we're going, what we're doing, and we're really, really excited about that vision.

Kowalski: Yeah, like I said, one of the things we're doing now is thinking further ahead than we ever have before in terms of the systems and in terms of the story. So nothing to share right now, but rest assured, we know where we're going on all those fronts.

[END]