World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is the ninth expansion for Blizzard’s iconic online RPG, and we’re currently closing in on the game’s 20th anniversary. And for the development team and community of millions, Dragonflight has been seen as a success. And with Blizzard spending the past few years expanding the WoW development team, content updates, features, and releases are steadily increasing instead of slowing down.

This week marks the release of the 10.0.7 Content Update, which introduces a new high-level Zone for players to explore in the Forbidden Reach. And with major Content Update 10.1 Embers of Neltharion around the corner, there seems to be a renewed vigor for all things WoW within the walls of Blizzard.

With transparency, communication, and community engagement at the forefront of WoW development in 2023, ahead of 10.0.7’s release, we had the chance to sit down with Ion Hazzikostas, Game Director of World of Warcraft, to talk about the success of Dragonflight and the overall ‘state of the game.’ From the team’s growth to creating content for all the varying playstyles to the future of physics-based flying and the technical limitations of working on a game with 20 years of history, art, and code.

Pull up a chair, pour some Moonberry Juice, fix up a plate of Mulgore Spice Bread and Dwarven Mild cheese, and read on.

The overall reception for Dragoflight has been positive, both critically and with players. Looking at it broadly, was that the expectation or feeling ahead of launch? That the community would embrace the big changes, the new setting, and new additions like being able to fly a dragon.

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Ion Hazzikostas: It has been an exciting few months for the team, for sure. The team was heading into the launch with a lot of confidence. We had thoroughly play-tested and experienced what we made internally, and we were proud of our collective efforts and thought we had something great. We also felt like we had been guided by community feedback throughout the journey, from the second half of Shadowlands and the changes we made over the course of that expansion to build a foundation with player agency and community openness.

Of course, you never know for sure until millions of people play for real, with real motivations, seeking out rewards, and investing time in ways they don't necessarily do with internal or beta tests. It's been tremendously gratifying, and I think it reaffirms the direction that we're going in, and we're looking forward to delivering that and more over the course of 2023.

With 10.0.7 and a major update like 10.1 coming soon, the WoW team has expanded. And we’re seeing an increase in post-expansion updates and content. From bigger things to more incremental updates. From a development perspective, has that been a seismic shift for you and the team? Is it as simple as more people equals more content? Really though, it can’t be that simple.

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Ion: It never is, right? Growing doesn't yield a linear return. If we could get more people and make proportionally more content, we would never stop growing. We could fulfill all of our goals. But of course, organisations have to evolve. We’ve worked through changing our structure, dealing with onboarding, and evolving our communication and collaboration. The habits you build or how you approach things when it’s eight or nine people in a room; suddenly, when there are 20 people, you can't rely on ad hoc processes. Things slip through the cracks if you do that.

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You never know for sure until millions of people play for real, with real motivations, seeking out rewards, and investing time in ways they don't necessarily do with internal or beta tests. [Dragonflight's success has] been tremendously gratifying, and I think it reaffirms the direction that we're going in.

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It's not an overnight process. The team has been growing for many years, and I think we've worked through those kinks. We're at a point where we're hitting our stride and really just tremendously proud that we can better serve all of our World of Warcraft players. That's Dragonflight, Classic, supporting the live game but also being able to work and dedicate resources to the next exciting expansion that we are, in fact, working on. We're not going to talk about it today, of course, but that's always been part of the challenge. Making sure we can do all of these things without short-changing any of them.

From an existing player perspective, it makes sense that with 10.0.7, the Forbidden Reach is this max-level Zone. And also setting up bigger narrative story stuff for 10.1, which will feature a new Raid. Looking at the past few expansions, has the process changed or evolved regarding new content, Dungeons, Raids, and Zones?

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Ion: When you talk about a new Raid, we view our big seasons, and our itemisation refreshes as big building blocks of our expansion cadence, and we don't want to accelerate them too much. Players want to be able to get their rewards, use them, work their way through a Raid tier, and accomplish their goals. We are very excited to be able to complement this with more releases of different shapes and sizes. New outdoor experiences for players who aren't as focused on organised group content and want to continue to explore the world, play through the story, and chase new goals. I think that's an important thing we need to deliver more of.

You mention 10.1, Embers of Neltharion, as a story-heavy update. 10.0.7 actually has quite a bit of story too. And much of that was encrypted and hidden on our Public Test Realm. There we want more eyes on the multiplayer stuff, and we need people to try to break the game in various ways so we can fix it before it goes live. And check out more experimental types of gameplay like Zskera Vaults that we can get feedback on.


Story is something that we can largely test internally, especially when it comes to single-player quest lines. We're happiest when players can experience that together instead of having it all on fansites or data-mined months in advance.

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Story is something that we can largely test internally, especially when it comes to single-player quest lines. We're happiest when players can experience that together instead of having it all on fansites or data-mined months in advance.

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One of the things that is exciting for us about an update like Forbidden Reach is the ability to have more check-in points for our story. In many ways, this update serves as a prelude to Embers of Neltharion, where in past expansions, it might have been, ‘Okay, it's time for a new big patch,’ and we learn about it all at once. Here we can foreshadow. We can build. This is why we need to go here hot on the trail of the Primal Incarnates who just escaped from the Vault of the Incarnates. This is their next step, and then, of course, that's where the next big update will lead.

Speaking about the narrative side. How far is that planned in advance? Obviously, 10.1 is probably set in stone - but what about the rest of the Dragonflight arc?

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Ion: We have a plan we're really happy with for the rest of the Dragonflight arc. There are bits of execution that will change, but the high level, where we're going, major villains and heroes, and plot twists. We have that mapped out and feel great about it. You know, I think it's important for us to know that stuff far ahead of time to foreshadow properly and plant seeds and do all the little things that we hope people will look back on six months from now or a year from now and say, ‘Oh, look at that.’ We should have seen that coming. That's the fun stuff when it comes to this medium of storytelling.

With multiple playstyles, Mythic+, groups super focused on Raids, and PVP, when you're working on these content updates, how difficult is it to touch each thing? With something like Class changes, what makes the cut versus what doesn't? It feels like there’s a lot more to juggle now.

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Ion: The idea of being a dungeon-focused player didn't exist 10 years ago. People finished running hero dungeons and were geared up and moved on. There was no reason to come back except on Alts. Even the collection of cosmetics is something that has so much more depth to it than was the case years ago. We think of all of these playstyles and more, and they're not discrete groups. Most people fit into multiple categories, and it’s this giant Venn diagram of overlapping circles. One of the exciting things about our content update approach is that we can be more nimble. We can address different portions of the audience at different times and ensure everyone is still sated.

You mentioned how the community engages with content on the PTR side and how valuable that is for testing multiplayer. And then there’s the Community Council, which is a little bit different, but also about lowering the barrier between the team and the community. With so many different playstyles and voices, listening and engaging with the community, how do you manage that? Let’s say there’s a vocal group talking about Mythic+ affixes, and that’s now a hot topic. How is that weighed versus something else?

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Ion: Between us developers and the community, that relationship is essential to World of Warcraft. Ultimately, we've created a world in which we are so gratified that millions have chosen to spend their time and make it their home. And we are custodians and caretakers of that world, and we have a duty to the players who spend their time with us to ensure their trust in us is well-placed. That we're taking care of them and their goals thoughtfully. I think for sure; there's a wide variety of playstyles, and navigating that, oftentimes conflicting desires are pitted against each other. That’s the tricky part of just navigating it all. But we need to be hearing it all.


The Community Council serves two purposes. To focus discussion and provide us with an avenue where we can talk with a large group representative of players in a way that we can't necessarily talk with millions simultaneously. There are so many playstyles, and if discourse is left to its own in this day and age, it gets dominated by voices from only a portion of the different playstyles. The more hardcore, the high-end raiders, the people who are pros writing the guides. Those who have lots of followers on Twitch, YouTube, and Twitter. Their voices are amplified, and we hear their feedback loud and clear.

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There are so many playstyles, and if discourse is left to its own in this day and age, it gets dominated by voices from only a portion of the different playstyles. The more hardcore, the high-end raiders, the people who are pros writing the guides. Those who have lots of followers on Twitch, YouTube, and Twitter.

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If there's a concern with high-end PVP class balance or how something in a Raid is tuned, believe me, we know. But there are also millions of people out there who are just working on their seventh alt, exploring the outdoor world, and trying to get into professions or collecting things. They play every bit as much of WoW in terms of the time they spend and the seriousness in which they approach the game. So by stepping back and forming the Community Council, we hoped to pull in a more deliberate range of playstyles. Styles that may be less represented amongst the streamers, influencers, and folks that are clearly very prominent out there.

I mentioned trust earlier, that has to go both ways, and we need to work to earn and maintain that. We recognise that, at times in the past, we didn't want to disappoint people. We didn't want to say something that wouldn't come to pass. That led to putting up shields and hesitating to communicate because what if we make changes? What if we disappoint people? That was leading to an unhealthy overall cycle.


We've tried to embrace more transparency, which means recognising that when we put out a roadmap at the end of 2022, there is a risk that some of those bullet points don't happen due to the realities of development. Whether it's resources shifting around, schedule issues, or us realising that, based on feedback, something isn't what players are looking for. So let’s do something different.

We need to own that because someone will say something if it happens. And that fear in the past might have led us not to publish a roadmap at all. And so, we’ll release our Q1 plans and keep the rest vague. That's not giving people visibility into the experience they are signing up for when they play World Warcraft. It's not allowing them to express their feedback and thoughts about what they are or are not looking forward to. We'll see how it works. Hopefully, we won't regret any of what I've just said.

Shifting gears to the age of WoW and the technical challenges around that. Dragonflight adds the ability to fly a dragon in the Dragon Isles, and I’m guessing that was a big undertaking to make work. We've seen the game evolve visually regarding new expansion Zones and visual effects. With WoW now well over 15 years old, are there technical limitations you and the team feel constrained by? Can the team experiment with major overhauls to systems and the world itself?

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Ion: The answer is yes to both of those. There are constraints in the sense that we have 20 years of history. We have 20 years of content, quests, pieces of armour and art, and everything else we need to keep supporting. We can't simply set off in a new direction and say, “We have this cool new tech. We're gonna build things this way. That old stuff, never mind that doesn't work anymore. Whoops.” And that fact slows us down at times. It requires more deliberate action. But we absolutely are constantly experimenting and looking to push boundaries and remake pieces. It's like the ship enthusiast analogy. If you take a ship and replace all the individual parts, is it still the same ship when you're done?

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We've tried to embrace more transparency, which means recognising that when we put out a roadmap at the end of 2022, there is a risk that some of those bullet points don't happen due to the realities of development.

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That's what we're, in effect, doing. But we're doing that while actively sailing the ship across the ocean because we can't stop. Yes, we're going to replace our UI, redo our talent system, we're going to upgrade our engine, we're going to make use of ray-tracing, and massively increase the fidelity of this piece or that piece. Or, allow ourselves to have a new physics-based flight system. All these are incremental individual changes.

Dragonflight is the ninth expansion to World of Warcraft, and I think each one has evolved the technical underpinnings and what the game allows you to do. You don't necessarily notice that if you're playing continuously, but something like Classic emerges. You look at them side by side, see what it was at the beginning, and realise they are, in many ways, two genuinely different games. That's a process that we will never stop, and we always want to keep evolving and keep using new tech and better designs born from things that inspire us.

Something like the physics-based flying, is that even possible to expand that to the entire game? Would it be feasible to remove loading screens between regions and have this continuous world to explore?

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Ion: Almost anything is possible, and it just boils down to trade-offs. Will we spend the time on this, and will it add enough value for enough players to justify that time? In the case of dragon flight and physics-based flying, absolutely. That is something that players would not stand for if we said we're moving on from the Dragon Isles. We hope you enjoyed dragon riding while it lasted. That's not what the future's going to look like. We will continue to expand that and build upon and broaden things.

When it comes to transitioning between continents without loading screens, that’s something we're able to do in some places. There's some cleverer trickery used in our upcoming Embers of Neltharion update. In World of Warcraft, you've never seen terrain consisting of mountains and ground with environments underneath or above another terrain. When we went into Deepholm back in Cataclysm, you were diving into the Maelstrom and got a loading screen.


When you enter Zaralack beneath the Dragon Isles [a large cave system], there are multiple entry points around the Dragon Isles. You can fly down there on your dragon and come out on the other side seamlessly. That’s new tech that WoW couldn't do in the past.

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In the case of dragon flight and physics-based flying, absolutely. That is something that players would not stand for if we said we're moving on from the Dragon Isles. We hope you enjoyed dragon riding while it lasted. That's not what the future's going to look like. We will continue to expand that and build upon and broaden things.

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So, could we use similar tools to remove the loading screen when you're going between the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor? We could, but would that make the game that much better? Probably not, so let's focus on solving a specific problem or adding something new experience that’s more exciting and immersive. Everyone has SDS now, so [loading] is much faster.

Outside of technical stuff, the, well, world of World of Warcraft continues to evolve. Expanding classes and races and lowering the barrier of who can do what. The new update shows the Monk class expanding to include Lightforged Draenei, Worgen, and Goblin races. There’s adding more choices for players, but what about the lore? And bucking the trend of certain levels of rigidity that have always existed in RPGs that dictate what a race can or can’t do. Which, Warcraft was born from.

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Ion: It's exactly that. There has been a historical rigidity in that sense, and I think the genre is reexamining much of that. Blizzard and WoW are no different. It’s part of a pattern on our end and part of a direction. But we also move carefully and thoughtfully in that direction to ensure consistency with our in-world fiction. We're updating the responses from NPCs for the new classes and spawning trainers. It feels like they belong. They're not simply a tacked-on addition.

We did this with Mage, Rogue, and Priest at launch in Dragonflight, so finally, Tauren Rogues could emerge from the shadows after all these years. Monk is the next step, and there’s no rational reason why once time has passed and Pandaria has been discovered, that the knowledge of these martial arts wouldn’t spread throughout Azeroth so that a Goblin or a Worgen could learn to perform these same combat techniques.

The trickier ones that we continue to look at are ones where it's not just about race but about culture. An example of something I don't think we're likely to see soon is a Goblin Druid. Could a Goblin wrap their head around channeling Druidic Arts? Of course, but culturally, would the Druids of Moonglade embrace a Goblin born in a society that has dedicated itself to pillaging Azeroth of all her gifts? There's a lot to bridge there.


We want to make sure that it makes sense, but at the same time, we want to move in that general direction, plant different narrative seeds, and give people the option to express themselves in Azeroth.

Finally, with 10.0.7, was there anything that didn’t quite make it into this latest patch, or is everything the team set out to achieve here?

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Ion: The core of the patch, the Forbidden Reach, the experiences therein, the narrative chapters that are a prologue to Embers of Neltharion as well as things like Monk expansion - it’s all here.

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There’s no rational reason why once time has passed and Pandaria has been discovered, that the knowledge of these martial arts wouldn’t spread throughout Azeroth so that a Goblin or a Worgen could learn to perform these same combat techniques.

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One of the exciting things for us as developers is the extra flexibility that more frequent updates bring. Originally we had hoped to deliver the ability to join opposite faction guilds in 10.0.7 - but it wasn't quite there. We needed more time to shore it up to ensure it would be a good player experience. Fortunately, players won’t have to wait months and months, it’s there in the 10.1 PTR, and it’ll be in the game shortly after that.

This enables us to make better decisions, airing on the side of quality and player experience without having to feel like if we hold this one thing back, players aren't able to experience it for months and months.

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is available now on PC, alongside the 10.0.7 ‘Forbidden Reach’ Content Update.