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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBlizzard's post-mortem on Cataclysm dungeons and raids
by Michael Sacco 
Mar 5th 2012 at 10:00PM
Read the full interview after the break.
Cataclysm Post Mortem -- Dungeons and Raids with Scott "Daelo" Mercer
As a part of our post mortem series on Cataclysm, we sat down with World of Warcraft Lead Encounter Designer Scott "Daelo" Mercer to hear his thoughts on Cataclysm dungeons and raids.
Q. What were your main goals going into Cataclysm?
We really wanted to make sure we were creating new challenges, strong mechanics, and cool creatures while staying true to the expansion and the themes we wanted to carry out. The three raid dungeons came out well and we had a lot of fun bringing the story of Nefarian and the Twilight's Hammer to life. We were also able to add some dynamic mechanics in Throne of the Four Winds, which featured players moving across multiple platforms.
Q. How did this evolve over the various content patches?
Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman were entertaining raids with diverse mechanics, and they translated well when we converted them into Heroic dungeons for patch 4.1. Interesting mechanics and features that once were restricted to raids are now finding their way into our five-player dungeons.
Adding the Dungeon Journal in patch 4.2 was also a major step forward. We wanted to be able to share more information in the game so that players wouldn't feel the need to go look everything up on external websites. While those sites are great at what they do, we felt like we needed to try to alleviate the need to go out of the game to find the information players wanted to see.
The addition of Raid Finder in patch 4.3 also opened up more opportunities for players to be able to experience our raid content. The feature has proven to be extremely popular, and not just with people who had given up on raiding. Many players use Raid Finder to gear up their secondary characters, gain Valor for the week, or just because it's fun.
Q. What do you think worked best?
We've been reasonably successful with our tuning across all four raid difficulty modes. There were a few warts here and there, but we delivered on the idea that 10-player and 25-player raids could exist at a similar difficulty. We also had some memorable dungeons and cinematic moments in Cataclysm. I'm particularly fond of the interactive bombing run in Grim Batol involving the red drakes. Players really got a sense of the epic scale of Grim Batol, and how well they performed in the event could make clearing the rest of the dungeon much easier.
With our improved tools and the experience we've gained over the years, we've become better at finding ways to explain the mechanics of our encounters. Our bosses do a better job of warning players of incoming threats. In Dragon Soul we also began to better inform players of mechanics that caused them to die. Providing a better understanding of the encounters to players is an important goal. We feel that losing to a boss and not understanding why is frustrating, just as beating a boss and not understanding why you won is not as satisfying.
Q. What didn't work out as planned or expected?
Initially, we started off the Heroic dungeons at too high of a difficulty. The difficulty level rather abruptly changed when compared to the Heroics players experienced at the end of Wrath of the Lich King. This major change caught many players off guard, and frustrated some of them. The difficulty also increased the effective amount of time required to complete a dungeon to a longer experience than we wanted. With the release of patch 4.3 we're now in a much better place. We've always talked about being able to complete a dungeon over lunch, and the Hour of Twilight dungeons get us back to that goal. End Time, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight all provide epic play experiences to our players, but at the real sweet spot of difficulty, complexity, and time commitment.
Q. Was there anything that surprised you about how players reacted to a particular encounter?
Not particularly. Something we've learned over the years is to expect the unexpected. The community is very creative and intelligent. The most important thing for us is that players are having fun. They often find interesting ways of approaching things that maybe we didn't expect, but as long the creative solution is still fun for everyone, we usually don't have a problem with it.
Q. What have you learned from Cataclysm and what are some of your top goals for Mists of Pandaria?
We learned we could create a crazy encounter like the Spine of Deathwing. It took a lot of hard work from the whole team and it was a difficult design challenge to tackle. How do you orchestrate a fight on the back of a gigantic flying dragon without inducing nausea? How do we make sure you feel like you're on Deathwing? Delivering that experience was really important and everyone wanted the opportunity to work on it. What was really great was that we launched the story of Cataclysm with the cinematic that showed Deathwing having his elementium plates being put on, then we end the expansion with those very same plates being torn off. It gives some real closure to storyline.
For Mists of Pandaria, we will continue to provide new dungeons and raids while also presenting interesting new types of content in the form of challenge modes and scenarios. Players will also be introduced to new enemies in the Sha, Mogu, and Mantids. Making those creatures come to life will be a lot of fun.
Q. Do you have a favorite dungeon or encounter from Cataclysm?
There are so many. The Conclave of Wind was a great one. Working out interesting mechanics that allowed players to go from platform to platform was a lot of fun and the environment felt really epic. A fight like that was a goal of the encounter team for a very long time.
Blackwing Descent was another favorite and working out the mechanics for the Atramedes fight gave us a lot to think about. How do you create an encounter with a blind dragon that fights? So we gave him sonar and showed the interaction with a sound meter on the player's UI.
In Bastion of Twilight, we really got to sell the corruption angle on Cho'gall which made for another really interesting fight.
Q. Is there a certain mechanic that you always wanted to do but couldn't do prior to Cataclysm?
Not really. There are so many cool ideas to work with that I never feel held back. It's easy to be creatively inspired by the people around you and their energy. It's never a problem of coming up with ideas. It's usually deciding which ones we want to go with next, but the possibilities are endless.
Q. Do you have a "dream" dungeon or encounter that you'd like to create if you had the opportunity?
I've never felt that I haven't been able to do the things I want to do. Everyone on the team is completely dedicated to giving us unlimited opportunities to make epic and awesome experiences. But, if I have to mention something, it would be huge giant death robots. We had Mimiron in Ulduar, but you just can't have too many death robots.
Q. Thank you for your time, Scott.
You're welcome.
Q. What were your main goals going into Cataclysm?
We really wanted to make sure we were creating new challenges, strong mechanics, and cool creatures while staying true to the expansion and the themes we wanted to carry out. The three raid dungeons came out well and we had a lot of fun bringing the story of Nefarian and the Twilight's Hammer to life. We were also able to add some dynamic mechanics in Throne of the Four Winds, which featured players moving across multiple platforms.
Q. How did this evolve over the various content patches?
Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman were entertaining raids with diverse mechanics, and they translated well when we converted them into Heroic dungeons for patch 4.1. Interesting mechanics and features that once were restricted to raids are now finding their way into our five-player dungeons.
Adding the Dungeon Journal in patch 4.2 was also a major step forward. We wanted to be able to share more information in the game so that players wouldn't feel the need to go look everything up on external websites. While those sites are great at what they do, we felt like we needed to try to alleviate the need to go out of the game to find the information players wanted to see.
The addition of Raid Finder in patch 4.3 also opened up more opportunities for players to be able to experience our raid content. The feature has proven to be extremely popular, and not just with people who had given up on raiding. Many players use Raid Finder to gear up their secondary characters, gain Valor for the week, or just because it's fun.
Q. What do you think worked best?
We've been reasonably successful with our tuning across all four raid difficulty modes. There were a few warts here and there, but we delivered on the idea that 10-player and 25-player raids could exist at a similar difficulty. We also had some memorable dungeons and cinematic moments in Cataclysm. I'm particularly fond of the interactive bombing run in Grim Batol involving the red drakes. Players really got a sense of the epic scale of Grim Batol, and how well they performed in the event could make clearing the rest of the dungeon much easier.
With our improved tools and the experience we've gained over the years, we've become better at finding ways to explain the mechanics of our encounters. Our bosses do a better job of warning players of incoming threats. In Dragon Soul we also began to better inform players of mechanics that caused them to die. Providing a better understanding of the encounters to players is an important goal. We feel that losing to a boss and not understanding why is frustrating, just as beating a boss and not understanding why you won is not as satisfying.
Q. What didn't work out as planned or expected?
Initially, we started off the Heroic dungeons at too high of a difficulty. The difficulty level rather abruptly changed when compared to the Heroics players experienced at the end of Wrath of the Lich King. This major change caught many players off guard, and frustrated some of them. The difficulty also increased the effective amount of time required to complete a dungeon to a longer experience than we wanted. With the release of patch 4.3 we're now in a much better place. We've always talked about being able to complete a dungeon over lunch, and the Hour of Twilight dungeons get us back to that goal. End Time, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight all provide epic play experiences to our players, but at the real sweet spot of difficulty, complexity, and time commitment.
Q. Was there anything that surprised you about how players reacted to a particular encounter?
Not particularly. Something we've learned over the years is to expect the unexpected. The community is very creative and intelligent. The most important thing for us is that players are having fun. They often find interesting ways of approaching things that maybe we didn't expect, but as long the creative solution is still fun for everyone, we usually don't have a problem with it.
Q. What have you learned from Cataclysm and what are some of your top goals for Mists of Pandaria?
We learned we could create a crazy encounter like the Spine of Deathwing. It took a lot of hard work from the whole team and it was a difficult design challenge to tackle. How do you orchestrate a fight on the back of a gigantic flying dragon without inducing nausea? How do we make sure you feel like you're on Deathwing? Delivering that experience was really important and everyone wanted the opportunity to work on it. What was really great was that we launched the story of Cataclysm with the cinematic that showed Deathwing having his elementium plates being put on, then we end the expansion with those very same plates being torn off. It gives some real closure to storyline.
For Mists of Pandaria, we will continue to provide new dungeons and raids while also presenting interesting new types of content in the form of challenge modes and scenarios. Players will also be introduced to new enemies in the Sha, Mogu, and Mantids. Making those creatures come to life will be a lot of fun.
Q. Do you have a favorite dungeon or encounter from Cataclysm?
There are so many. The Conclave of Wind was a great one. Working out interesting mechanics that allowed players to go from platform to platform was a lot of fun and the environment felt really epic. A fight like that was a goal of the encounter team for a very long time.
Blackwing Descent was another favorite and working out the mechanics for the Atramedes fight gave us a lot to think about. How do you create an encounter with a blind dragon that fights? So we gave him sonar and showed the interaction with a sound meter on the player's UI.
In Bastion of Twilight, we really got to sell the corruption angle on Cho'gall which made for another really interesting fight.
Q. Is there a certain mechanic that you always wanted to do but couldn't do prior to Cataclysm?
Not really. There are so many cool ideas to work with that I never feel held back. It's easy to be creatively inspired by the people around you and their energy. It's never a problem of coming up with ideas. It's usually deciding which ones we want to go with next, but the possibilities are endless.
Q. Do you have a "dream" dungeon or encounter that you'd like to create if you had the opportunity?
I've never felt that I haven't been able to do the things I want to do. Everyone on the team is completely dedicated to giving us unlimited opportunities to make epic and awesome experiences. But, if I have to mention something, it would be huge giant death robots. We had Mimiron in Ulduar, but you just can't have too many death robots.
Q. Thank you for your time, Scott.
You're welcome.
Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Review the official patch notes, and then dig into what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!
Filed under: Blizzard, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 4)
TonyKP Mar 6th 2012 11:35AM
Scott Mercer is proficient in corporate-speak.
Drache Mar 6th 2012 12:45PM
"People" (in general) seem to forget what it was like when the dungeons first came out. They were a challenge, they took time (read: wipes) to learn - even in normal, depending on your gear!
Of course, after a while you outgear the content, many people ran instances 'til they got sick of them, "Everybody" knew what to do, right? No, not everybody. There's always someone with a "first toon", or even later, with a "first melee toon" etc. Just because they can roflstomp content on their FL geared mage means jack when they're on a melee class, stand in front of the boss (or in the AoE). Or if they don't have their raid healer backing them, but an appropriately geared healer *squish!*
The only thing that I dislike about the pre-HoT and pre-Troll instances is that they were unforgiving when played "at gear level" - one mistake by anyone and it's a wipe. The trolls should've had a big disclaimer "This was a raid once, please be awake and pay attention" just to wake people up. They were/are challenging, required you to pay attention, and you might still wipe. The bad thing was that you *had* to run them for points - and having only 2 instances for that did get on my nerves.
HoTs? Not as much of a challenge, some neat mechanics (for 5-mans), but still had rough/challenging spots if you weren't in FL gear.
And now people raise their alts, and can't grasp the fact that "no, you're NOT OP for the content, stop being an idiot". I don't care that your main has an ilvl of over 9,000, *this* toon doesn't so stop being stupid *and* a dick. And by all that's holy, please DO get out of the bloody fire!
It's not Blizzard, it's the players. Stop being arrogant and things will go a lot smoother and it might just be fun at any level.
Philster043 Mar 6th 2012 2:16PM
To be honest, while I did initially get frustrated or downright nervous and apprehensive about entering one of the Cataclysm dungeon heroics or raids (especially the troll dungeons after a while), looking back on it all now, I can appreciate the hard work the devleopment team put in all of them, trying to make them challenging, and while I think they DID overdo it, it still provided for some very memorable encounters. And isn't memories what playing these games are all about? We're going to be saying to ourselves, "remember when this was hard?" as usual. Maybe not so much "fun" as "hard," though... But regardless, good or bad, I had plenty of them from the latest expansion. Looking forward to what else they've got in store for us.
zanshato9000 Mar 6th 2012 2:59PM
Honestly I feel that the heroic Cata dungeons were tuned just fine BUT the difficulty of 4.0 really should have been what HoT is in 4.3. Now that MOP is on the horizon, 5.0 should be about as difficult as HoT dungeons. MOP 5.1 and 5.2 should be about as difficult as 4.0 heroics were and 5.3 should be as difficult as the trolloics.
ophi Mar 7th 2012 2:36AM
I started in wrath on a shadow priest, my guild had played through BC and in WotLK still marked pulls in some dungeons depending on the situation. We raided casually, with our 10man downing LK only a few months before Cata dropped and our casual 25's clearing up to Putricide weekly.
Once Cata came, some old faces returned for a short while but the heroic dungeons were too much for a lot of us. The time investment and required skill level meant hours of wipes for little or no reward. The healers were the first to go. Raiding never really got off the ground either, after a month of wiping on post-nerf Halfus and Magmaw interest died. DPS was too low, the interrupts and reaction time required was too punishing and no-one knew the fights enough to lead with confidence. Pretty soon the 3 of us keen to raid abandoned the idea, we just couldn't get anyone to turn up.
My experience at the tart of the xpac was a bit different to my guilds however. I actually geared up fast at the start of Cata, and switched from Shadow to Holy to heal for the first time. Not really by choice, the guilds healers were the first to quit so I stepped up (I had been toying with the idea for some time before the xpac anyways). I chained dungeons and for the first month of the xpac I had the best dungeon groups I've ever experienced ingame. The people I was grouped with were mostly guild groups, but they were people like me, taking the challenge head on. Targets were marked, pulls were careful and entire runs were often without wipes. Although HPriest were a bit broken at the time, they didn't mind me drinking after every single pull.
Then the rest of the playerbase caught up and suddenly my Heal spam just couldn't carry them though. The hunter that refused (or didn't know) to trap, the mage that didn't refresh polymorph and the tank that tried to AOE pull, I had them all in spades. I saw more than my fair share of abuse too but if I wasn't kicked I would finish the dungeon. My guild still couldn't clear dungeons at that time so i had little choice.
It wasn't until the Zandoms came along that I could relax a little and start to have fun healing. I still couldn't carry a bad group, but I didn't have to pop Shadowfeind and Hymn of Hope every boss fight. The fun however was short-lived, with no raids all I could do was grind VP for gear (in the vain hope a raid group would form) and the ZA/ZG rotation nearly saw me quit the game. I managed to pug a few clears of BWD/BoT/TotFW and did well, but could never raid with the groups I found on their regular schedule.
I kept ahead of things on the PTR, when the 4.3 content was released I dragged my guildies though it all one by one as if to say "Look see! Its easy again!". A couple have returned, but our guild has definitely changed a lot since WotLK and i can't see any raiding in our future (LFR doesn't count).
Overall, I enjoyed this xpac. I liked that Blizz not only promised us a challenge but delivered it also. To me this is what a game should be, a test of skill, concentration, endurance, balance etc. A really good game tests all those things and more, all at once. Even if I didn't clear the hardmode content at the appropriate gearlevel, I'm happy that I my own game this xpac.