World of Warcraft Devs Talk Inspirations Behind The War Within Hero Talents

Today, World of Warcraft: The War Within launches in early access for players who ordered the expansion’s Epic Edition. Although the expansion’s full launch is slated for Monday, August 26, at 7:00 PM Eastern, World of Warcraft players looking to come back to Azeroth for the debut of the Worldsoul Saga will find that some things have changed in the MMORPG’s 10th expansion. One of the biggest features of World of Warcraft: The War Within is the Hero Talent system, which allows pre-established classes and specializations to take their power to the next level with new trees that can grant players powers based on both new and older concepts.

From the hard-hitting Templar Paladins to the unyielding nature of the Mountain Thane Warriors, the new Hero Talent system in The War Within will allow players to make a choice that will give them new ways to express themselves and contribute to high-end content in a meaningful way. Game Rant was invited to chat with World of Warcraft production director Michael Bybee and game producer George Velev about the inspirations and design philosophies that went into developing Hero Talents, and how they were integrated into class balance before and during the early access and global release windows of The War Within. This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.

Hero Talent Trees Have Arrived In World of Warcraft: The War Within

Q: Given the balance changes made to all classes in 11.0.2, were these changes made with the Hero Talent system in mind? Also, how does player feedback from certain changes get factored into future considerations in both major and minor content updates?

Velev: It’s a bit of both, going into both the pre-patch and into the launch and later Season One. We’re looking to make sure that classes in the interim are polished, tuned, and working properly. I don’t think it’s a big secret that we heavily leverage player feedback. We seek it out, we read forum posts, we read Discord and some Tweets, and I’ve seen TikToks about the Hero talents. We use it quite a lot when we make future updates. We talk about how the community is feeling, and whether it’s the right time to make updates for both classes and Hero talents.

Q: There was a Hero Talents blog post that was posted on August 14, and it focused on the class fantasy of each talent. However, some players noticed that some of the visual things that play into that weren’t there. Is there some possibility that it will come later?

Velev: One of our goals is to have the Hero Talents be visually distinct from one another. Take the Hunter class, for example. If you’re a Dark Ranger over a Pack Leader, we want players to see that. Some are intentionally louder, and some are more subtle. That said, we are treating hero talents as an evergreen system, so they will receive updates much like class and spec tuning do. We’re just getting started, and I’m excited to see how we go with how classes and Hero Talents go.

Q: Do you prefer to have one Hero Talent tree be better than the other for specific forms of content, or do you like having both be on par with the other in most content?

Velev: I think definitely towards the latter. Tuning is one of the things players look at when gravitating towards one class or the other. We don’t want to get into the habit of, let’s say Elune’s Chosen Guardian Druid, being the only way to play if you want to push Mythic+ keys. There are a lot of talent trees, and there are 39 specs, so we’re doing our best to tune them.

For us, talents have become the solved problem over the expansion. As long as there’s some variance from one boss to another, that’s cool. What we want is to avoid having to play one Hero Talent throughout a raid. There are quite a few things to give us more tools for Hero Talents that we haven’t had before. You can pick every Hero Talent except for a few choice nodes.

Q: With so many hero talents going into the game, which were your favorites to design from a class fantasy standpoint?

Bybee: As a Mythic+ player myself, I’m going to be playing a Vengeance Demon Hunter tank, so I’m excited about playing an Aldrachi Reaver. From a class fantasy perspective, I think the Voidweaver Priest is the coolest thing we’ve added to the game.

Velev: I’m thinking of playing a Restoration Shaman, but I’m not sure between going to pick Farseer or Totemic. I may also play a Mistweaver Monk, even though my guild doesn’t like me for not deciding. Either way, I think I’ll be playing a healer of sorts. The one that was my favorite to design—the Voidweaver’s visuals are big, but also the Sunfury Mage came together really well. It’s like Kael’thas Sunstrider, but it’s all in a Hero Talent tree. That was a lot of fun to put together, getting the Arcane Phoenix to spawn.

The fantasy of an Oracle Priest as well. That’s something new we haven’t done in World of Warcraft before, even though there have been allusions to it before. The Future Sights and Premonitions were something we wanted to see if it could work, to give the Priests a fantasy of looking into the future. There are quite a few we’ve done that I think works quite well!

Q: Was there a class that gave you trouble when designing the Hero talents?

Velev: There were a few that we explored different avenues for. Oracle Priest was intentionally done differently in World of Warcraft since a future-sight hero was something we had not done within the lore, but it ended in a good spot. Some proved a bit more interesting to figure out, like the entire Hero talent package for the Shaman. We started with the Farseer, which dealt more with spiritual magic.

From there, we thought about a Shaman that focused more on totems, which ended up being the Totemic Shaman that Enhancement and Restoration can pick from. Finally, we got around to Elemental and Enhancement and figured out what they shared in common thematically. We saw that they had lightning and storms at their command, so we cranked them up to the eleventh degree and made the Stormbringer Shaman Hero talents. It was a fun process, but some were challenging.

How many of the Hero Talent trees were pulled from older lore and the Warcraft RTS games?

Velev: Great question! The Keeper of the Grove and the Mountain Thane are inspired by Warcraft 3. That was a big starting point for them. We leveraged the RTS games, the lore, and even past Talents too, like with Frostfire Mage. We know a lot of Frost and Fire mages loved Frostfire Bolt. We were like, okay, what if we took Frostfire Bolt, and we made a Hero Talent tree out of it? Now, if you’re a Frost Mage, your spells have some fire, and if you’re a Fire Mage, your spells can have some frost added to them. A lot of players missed the old talent tree build, so we figured we’d bring it back.

Q: Do you plan on expanding the Hero Talent system during and after The War Within?

Velev: Plans are too early to talk about, but as we said earlier, the Hero talents are an evergreen feature, and we plan to support them going forward. If Dragonflight is anything, Talent tree revamps and Hero Talents aren’t explicitly one-to-one. That said, we did a lot of updates to specs and the Talent tree revamps in Dragonflight, so it’s not off the table to say something similar could happen with Hero Talents moving forward after launch.

Q: Given that the Augmentation Evoker specialization was added in Dragonflight Patch 10.1.5 as a support DPS spec, did its development and release have any impact on Hero talent development at all, or were they done in tandem?

Velev: No, the Augmentation Evoker did not have any effect on the Hero Talent development at the time. The Hero Talents were things we talked about internally long in advance, so it didn’t add to any production dilemmas. That said, Hero Talent trees are an evergreen feature of the game now. If we want to add or change any specs, we can certainly do that in the future.

Q: Were there any Hero talents that didn’t make the cut that you would’ve liked to see in The War Within? What about any plans for some crazy concepts that got scrapped early on?

Velev: There wasn’t anything that we left on the cutting room floor, so to speak. With 39 specializations, we knew we had to make 39 concepts and Hero talent trees, so we felt like we covered a wide gamut. Overall, we feel we hit the mark there.

Q: In the Hero Talent blog post that was posted on August 14, there were some high-quality art pieces for each of the new Hero specs that went alongside it. What were some of your favorite Hero talent art pieces?

Velev: I loved all of them, they all came out so well. If I had to pick one, I’d go with the Wildstalker Druid. It’s this eye stalking out of the forest, it kind of reminds me of the box art from Warcraft 3, the one with Tyrande lurking in the trees. It’s striking and advocates what a Wildstalker is, this hunter lurking and ready to ambush the enemies of nature.

Bybee: For me, it’s got to be the Sentinel Hunter and the Voidweaver. They turned out so well.

Q: With Hero Talents being a system on top of other systems, are there any plans to bring in a tutorial for them to get the hang of these new talents?

Velev: That’s a very interesting idea. It reminds me of the Proving Grounds of the Mists of Pandaria expansion. While we have no plans for tutorials for the Hero Talents, the idea of onboarding players for their roles sounds cool. The way we do dungeons and raids is sort of an onboarding process. We tend to leverage difficulties in instances like this.

Bybee: Exile’s Reach is something that I enjoy for new players. Back during Shadowlands production, one of the things I worked on was Exile’s Reach. I think it was a fantastic time, and we want to do some things for the new players. Once players get through Exile’s Reach now, they will be sent into Dragonflight content, which is one of the best ways they can experience the game. It’s such an awesome fantasy, and getting Dragonriding early on in your leveling is an awesome experience.

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