Unavoidable Calamity
A World Of Warcraft Delve concept
After discovering a plot by remnants of the Twilight’s blade cult to poison Silvermoon’s denizens with void corrupted wine and sow chaos from within, the Champions of Azeroth will explore the source and put and end it it, although, what they discover is something unexpected.
For this project we developed a set of frameworks, based on research of existing WoW delves, from which we created:
- Goals and Anti-Goals
- Design Guidelines
- Enemy Design Framework
- Encounter Design Framework
Goals & Anti Goals
- Build a delve that fits WoW’s design philosophy
- Create interactive objectives that are fun and new while maintaining familiarityÂ
- Have dynamic interesting encounters that can challenge the player in higher difficulties
Communicate designs clearly and efficiently with the least amount of words needed and avoiding numeral identifiers
Identify creature’s archetypes to create a familiarity with the type of creature before getting further detail
Each action/attribute has additional unique identifiers to explain how the creature promotes interactions with other core game mechanics
Make a delve that is too complex with too many mechanics
Create mechanics that might frustrate player base
It feels like each encounter is the same thing with small changes
Make the encounters too difficult and annoying
Make the encounters too simplistic and boring
Guidelines
- Mobs should have synergy at minimum between two of them
- Add variety to the encounters to make them feel distinctive between each other
- There should be a straight forward solution to the mob groups other than “dps them down”
- Some encounters should not be needed to complete the main objectives
Rules
These rules were determined by examining different delves from the current expansion (War Within) and how the mobs, encounters, objectives and abilities behaved. The intention with these rules (and observations) is to create a design space that embodies current WoW delve design language.Â
Research
We used existing delves as references to determine how many rooms each delve had. We reached the conclusion that most delves have a total of 4 rooms including the final boss area.
Objectives on existing delves revolve around grabbing an item for a delve mechanic, interacting with the environment, and eliminating certain enemies or collecting resources. We used these references to create our own objectives, interactable, and goals.
We determined most encounters had a max of 5 enemies to a minimum of 2. Afterwards, we looked into the existing abilities and the difficulties of the enemies to determine frameworks and rules that worked for this project.
Narrative
Xalatath’s forces tried to undermine Silvermoon’s defenses by smuggling void corrupted wine barrels into the city, but in the process, something went wrong and the smuggler’s den was overran by wild creatures. These creatures have consumed the void-infused wine, becoming corrupted and more vicious. This must be dealt with before they leave the caves and attack the city.
Framework Breakdown
Primary objectives:
- Destroy 12 Corrupted Wine Barrels
- Destroy 12 Corrupted Wine Barrels
Boss Objective:
- Slay Void Corrupted Construct
Delve Features
Our goal with the Delve’s unique features were to not only tie the gameplay to the theme/narrative, but also create opportunities for them to be used in engaging ways in combat.
Enemies Breakdown
Gnoll Void Lord (1-E and 3-E)
How the smugglers managed to trap this rare gnoll specimen is a mystery. Not so much how they managed to escape.
When designing the Elite monster, our goal was to challenge the player’s mastery of the skills tested throughout the Delve (timing, targeting, positioning and prioritizing), while setting it apart from other non-elite enemies by introducing its Enrage mechanic, which grants crowd control immunity at low health and provides a unique challenge in the context of the Delve.
Drunken Void Zealot (1-E)
Possibly the last remaining conspirator from the Void forces that tried to smuggle the void corrupted wine barrels into Silvermoon. It would appear he had a taste of the wine and quite liked the combination.
When designing an alternative Elite encounter, our goal was to create a fun but challenging encounter that utilized the unique delve features and the thematic of the delve to creatively use the drunk mechanic in WoW. The complexity of this fight comes from the chaos created from a slowed player who has to reposition themselves due to cone attacks corrupted wine pools to avoid damage and getting drunk.
Void Corrupted Construct
A construct that was deactivated and getting ready to be sold on the black market until it came in contact with the void.
When designing the final boss of the delve, our goal was to create a final challenge for the player were the structure of the fight is well defined, repeatable, and traceable, as each phase is defined by how much health the boss has.
Encounter Breakdown