Before World of Warcraft Dragonflight's Dracthyr looked like they do now, they were actually made of stone.
Speaking to 12DOVE, senior game designer for the Dracthyr Evoker class, Graham Berger, gives an insight into World of Warcraft's latest expansion. Talking about the Dracthyr in particular, Berger revealed that in the early days of development the dragon/human hybrid creatures were actually just the Stoneborn gargoyles from the previous Shadowlands expansion.
"There are a lot of different groups working on this feature all at the same time. And so, early on, on the combat side, we're trying to come up with the abilities; on the art side, they're trying to make the dragon. We didn't have the dragon to play with, and running around on a human and breathing fire felt weird," Berger tells us. "We went back to Shadowlands, grabbed the Stoneborn gargoyle model, and used that. That's the original Dracthyr because it has wings and a bunch of the jumping and flying animations we wanted."
Berger then goes on to explain how the Stoneborn actually helped the team figure out a lot about the Dracthyr during Dragonflight's development: "Being able to use that as a testbed for – 'okay, like pretend it's a dragon, not a gargoyle, but how are the wings going to move? What will it feel like to fly around on the battlefield and breathe fire?' – was a lot of fun." The test was so useful, in fact, that Berger has said he has "some very low-quality gifs stored on my computer of a gargoyle breathing fire."
The World of Warcraft Dragonflight expansion is due to fully release on November 28, 2022. Thanks to two pre-patches for the MMORPG, though, WoW players have been getting to grips with Dracthyr designing as recently as last week. Things may have been taken a little too far already, with several players using the opportunity to use character customisation to make Shrek memes.
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