Summary
You need to pay attention whenWorld of Warcrafttakes its players off Azeroth for the final patch of an expansion. The last time this happened, in the Legion expansion, a massive sword tore through the planet’s core – still there to this day, a precursor to everything happening in theMMORPG’s current story. While the last trip off-planet saw players going to the broken, demon home world of Argus, this time they’ll go to the ruptured planet of an NPC race in the game since 2007’s The Burning Crusade.
It’s time to finally see how the Ethereals live. Or, more appropriately, their attempts to rebuild. TheGhosts of K’aresh patch 11.2 update, coming on August 5, feels like a sharp departure for an expansion in The War Within that was all about diving down-deep. The heroes of WoW ventured deep into the caverns of Khaz Algar, found the hidden Goblin capital of Undermine, and will now go with Alleria Windrunner and Xal’Atath herself, to the void-torn planet of K’aresh in an attempt to take back a stolen artifact, the Dark Heart.
TheGamer spoke with Assistant Lead Quest Designer Stephanie Yoon and Senior Game Producer George Velev about the nature of this final The War Within patch and what it means to be taking players off Azeroth once more.
“When we came to this patch, we had grand goals and said ‘this is the cornerstone of what theWorld War Withinexperience is going to be.’” Yoon said. “But also, we had this unique opportunity: how can we directly set up the stuff that’s going to be coming in the future?”
That stuff in the future? No big deal. It’s just the next part of a trilogy being handled by long-time Warcraft story veteran Chris Metzen. But before the WorldSoul Saga continues, we need to first learn about K’aresh and its ghosts.
11.2 Ghosts of K’aresh: A Widening Gyre
Part of creating an interconnected trilogy for a 20+ year-old game is putting plans in motion – and following through. According to Velev, the production cycle is an important part of staying on track for not only The War Within’s finale, but what comes next. “We’ve been sort of trying to standardize our deployment strategy for a while, over the past couple of years, and we’ve learned something that we’re really happy with."
“One of the big benefits of that is we know exactly when we want to ship. But, we do want to sort of lump a lot of our major content in large seasons, like, for example, Ghosts of K’aresh.”
The reason? PTR testing and public feedback are a cornerstone of the creation process, even when fans claim nothing is tested or balanced out of frustration. This has always been part of the World of Warcraft method, dating back to Vanilla WoW and a period when the internal development team would attempt to balance the game themselves.
It went badly. Stories about the Molten Core raid are legendary at this point, including a team of developer play testerswho couldn’t even down their own content. So for Velev and the current team, getting patch 11.2 out and available for testing is all part of the release process. Machines within machines.
“We know the moment PTR goes live and the moment we drop patch notes for the first time, all of us go to the forums and Reddit and Discord and reread a lot of feedback,” he said. As a longtime player, I was taken back a bit to knows that the teams look at and read the same info I do about the game’s more minute details. Velev says that it’s “really exciting, but it also gives us the largest amount of time to actually make changes and get information from both our internal and external teams.”
But what about those PTR releases? One of the more controversial aspects of playing World of Warcraft is the fact that, once the PTR hits, it’s almost impossible to avoid spoilers.
In fact, one big datamine reveal in particular from Ghosts of K’aresh could potentially shake up the game at its core.
Leaks, Void Lords, and City Stomping
We’ll avoid the broader spoilers here, but if you want to know what goes down in the final raid of The War Within, then that information is out there. Really, it’s almost impossible to avoid patch spoilers once the PTR hits if you’re tuned into the game’s zeitgeist in any way.
Spoilers are impossible if you’re into the finer points of the game; one visit to WoWhead and the game is over. The team knows it, and also knows that players will still show up. “For me, I think the journey is just as important as the end goal. So we do have a lot of encrypted content within Ghosts of K’aresh,” Stephanie said. “But it’s about being able to talk to the characters and read their gossips and see how these things play out that really make the experience.”
Knowing the broad strokes doesn’t ruin the overall picture being painted. In many ways, for World of Warcraft, spoilers are merely preamble. “I don’t feel that your friend excitedly telling you the events of a movie ruined the movie; I still enjoy watching the movie, and that’s sort of like the mindset that I personally have towards it,” she said.
That’s important, because Ghosts of K’aresh has a ton of setup and payoff to get through before the clock strikes ‘Midnight’ on part two of the WorldSoul Saga. Part of that is knowing what happened to the Ethereal home world, which once faced off against a dark power that Azeroth is now looking at down the barrel of a void-loaded gun.
Artifacts, Raids, And You
One of the biggest features in Ghosts of K’aresh is slipping into the ethereal shoes of a long-mysterious NPC race. The Ethereals first appeared in The Burning Crusade as Middle Eastern-tinged vendors and shop purveyors. However, they’ve never been fully featured or given the spotlight despite always popping up.
That changes with Patch 11.2, as players jump a void portal to see the remains of their home world, and how the K’areshi are trying to come back from the edge of oblivion.
Part of that journey for players is seeing how the Ethereals adapt, and literally taking on part of their nebulous power. Players will gain the Reshii Wraps, an artifact cloak that will be required in order to progress through the final raid of The War Within, Manaforge Omega. For Yoon and the team, the artifact is more than a gameplay element.
“We really approached it from a story-first perspective, so we came up with this unique opportunity to say, “Hey, why don’t we create this artifact cloak that ties into every single mechanic within both the outdoors and dungeon and the raid within this content patch, to make a cohesive whole out of the events and what players are facing.”
What they’re facing is unlike any boss before: A true blue (well, purple) Void Lord. Long mentioned in lore and considered to be the major threat against Azeroth at the moment, the Void Lord Dimensius is huge, hungry, and all-devouring. It’s also the source of every problem K’aresh has gone through, giving players the chance to right wrongs done to the Ethereals.
If only it were so easy.
Going Out Of Order
For the first time ever in World of Warcraft, the content of an expansion patch is going to be told out of order. How? The natural flow of what players should experience in Ghosts of K’aresh is different than any other before, in that the new dungeon – Echo Dome Al’dani – is meant to be played and takes place after the events of the Manaforge Omega raid. An epilogue, of sorts.
“Initially, we said we can’t have the raid not be the end, because that’s how it’s done. The story usually falls before the raid,” Stephanie said. “Then somebody just said to Chris Metzen: What if it wasn’t the end of the story? What would that look like? What does that experience feel like for the player?”
It’s bold. She also made sure to state that, if you do play Echo Dome Al’dani before you finish the story or raid, you won’t be given spoilers. This is just one of many ways that the new dungeon is breaking fresh territory, including one new feature that feels like it’s been a long time coming. The new Waystone System will appear in dungeons and raids as a checkpoint, to help players avoid the all-too-familiar long walks back after a wipe.
When asked why this feature is coming now, both members of the team said it’s all about player experience.
“Our philosophy is always evolving, and we wanted to sort of revisit how long it takes to do a run back and see what felt appropriate,” said Velev. “Mythic+ has evolved quite a bit over the past couple of years, and we’ve gotten a bunch of feedback, and now feels like a great time to add another quality of life feature.”
Thank the gods, because I never want to march back in shame and run the risk of my group falling apart ever again.
The Clock Soon Strikes ‘Midnight’
It would be easy to call Ghosts of K’aresh a stopgap. Every tease and reveal about the next expansion in the WorldSoul Saga, Midnight, seems to point towards a major change in the game world. After all, it’s hard to ignore ghastly void specters swirling around what looks like Silvermoon City.
Does that mean Patch 11.2 is nothing more than filler? The thing that gets us to the good, explosive stuff? The team is mum on if major destruction awaits, but is pumped to see what happens when players come face-to-face with a real Void Lord – even if they already know it’s coming.
“I’m super-excited to see how players react to the twists and turns of both the narrative, andthe grandeur of the Demensius fight,” said Yoon. As for Velev, he’s all about being transparent and keeping fans satisfied, PTR be damned.
“We kind of know that unless we actively look to encrypt or flag data as internal-only content, then it’s going to be data-mined. People get their thoughts on it. What we want to do on our end, is we want to provide as much context as possible around changes that are only viewed by data mining. Because while data mining is awesome and great, it can sometimes misunderstand some of our changes.”
Will those changes affect the end of The War Within?Log in on August 5for yourself and find out.
