BlizzCon 2023 started off with a bang, including a typically massive ceremony to celebrate the company’s return to the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. Over time, the speakers and creatives of Blizzard hit the stage with announcements for Overwatch 2, Diablo IV, Hearthstone, and the new mobile property Warcraft Rumble, but the crowd saved their energy for World of Warcraft, especially its announcement of the upcoming three expansions which comprise The WorldSoul Saga.
Principal Game Designer Eric Holmberg-Weidler was in attendance, and is himself a relatively recent recruit at the house Blizzard built. His work on World of Warcraft began at the tail end of Shadowlands and into Dragonflight, which featured numerous significant upgrades – including its titular flying dragon mounts – which brought new attention to the formative MMO, as well as some much-requested updates that improved the systems in the game. That’s where Holmberg-Weidler’s investment shined, a trend which returns in the first announced WorldSoul expansion, The War Within.
We had an opportunity to sit down with him and reflect on his years spent with Blizzard since 2021, working through the pandemic on a game which brought comfort and socialization to those trapped indoors. We also discussed his primary Professions contribution to the MMO, as well one of the new systemic features in The WorldSoul Saga which will bring additional comfort to players this time around: Warbands.
Screen Rant: Have you been to a BlizzCon before?
Eric Holmberg-Weidler: Yeah, I’ve been to one. Must have been the second or third or something like that. So it’s been, been a long time.
But this is your first working-BlizzCon.
Eric Holmberg-Weidler: Yes, definitely. I started at Blizz a little under three years ago, in the middle of the pandemic.
There’s an interesting energy to BlizzCon that I’ve noticed, just that it’s almost like a sigh of relief. Like, people are finally back.
Eric Holmberg-Weidler: It’s so cool to just see everyone together and get to enjoy the games again,
Absolutely. And the ceremony culminated in what I think was the most explosive audience reaction, which was for World of Warcraft, obviously. I guess that was probably very predictable, but the tenor of the room definitely changed.
I did want to talk to you a little bit about, at least at the start, about your own personal history with World of Warcraft, prior to signing on with Blizzard a few years back, or with Blizzard in general? Like, how did you enter the worlds that Blizzard make?
Eric Holmberg-Weidler: I don’t even know which came first. I want to say that StarCraft was my first game? I don’t even know when it was ‘95, 96, whenever it came out. And I loved StarCraft all through my teenage years, I was playing StarCraft. And then Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2. Not Blizzard, but I was a big EverQuest fan, and then when World of Warcraft came out, a little bit after it came out – so, like, just probably a few months after – I picked it up and haven’t stopped since.
That was the start of your career. And it’s still going?
Eric Holmberg-Weidler: Yeah! As far as my World of Warcraft career. So I’m not, like, day-one, but I played a lot of Classic. Met one of my best friends doing PVP in World Warcraft. And always, always admired Blizzard as just making some of the best games in the industry, and they were always so polished, and exciting, and straight down my favorite types of games. I’m a big strategy gamer, so I loved RTS back in the day, and the RPGs.
Basically, strategy games and RPGs are my greatest loves. So I always loved MMOs, always loved World Warcraft. And when I had an opportunity to join Blizzard a couple years ago, I took it. For me, personally, I live up in the Bay Area, and my wife lives up there, so I could never move down, so that was one reason I was never able to work there before. It was always a dream. Like, I literally remember a dream at one point where I worked at World of Warcraft, worked at Blizzard.
It’s crazy, because this is really a circumstance where you went from being a fan of the sandwich to making it.
Eric Holmberg-Weidler: Yep, yep. Being able to actually be remote through the pandemic, it gave me an opportunity to be able to join, and World of Warcraft is definitely the game I played the most from Blizzard, so I was super excited to get a job there, and felt like a perfect transition from where I was before.
Did you work on an MMO any time before this?
Eric Holmberg-Weidler: No.
So your first MMO is the big daddy of them all.
Eric Holmberg-Weidler: Yeah. I basically worked at Maxis before this, so I did a lot of simulation-type stuff. But yeah, like I said, I’ve sort of been playing MMOs since MMOs were basically a thing. I’ve always loved them, this is my first one. But I’m, personally, a systems designer. I spend a ton of time doing big features and focusing on systems to deliver experiences for players in particular. So I did that in The Sims and things like that. But, to some extent, that actually translates quite well over to World of Warcraft. [These are] big systems to deliver a feel.
So, my first gig on World of Warcraft was in Dragonflight. I did the Professions revamp, I was the lead designer, and was the product owner on that. It was sort of the same thing. Like, how can I deliver a cool immersive Professions experience for players in World Warcraft? And then, after that, we’re super excited to be able to take on another major feature for WoW in Warbands and The War Within.
Your ownership is in the Professions revamp. I felt like you came in just in time for Dragonflight. And like, in a weird way, because we were talking about the pandemic, it’s like, Dragonflight feels almost like this weird breath of fresh air to the MMO, and it came post-pandemic, at a time when everyone needed to breathe fresh air.
How do you feel like your presence is felt in the Dragonflight expansion overall?
Eric Holmberg-Weidler: As a system designer, I basically gave feedback across the game. Certainly, all my work and heavy focus was on Professions, but one of the goals for Professions was it sort of [affected] the whole game, and making it become more important in the game ecosystem. And the gearing ecosystem was for it to be a major source of gear across the game, so I sort of thought of it as a blanket that tried to touch every other system in some way.
So, we wanted recipes to come from raids and dungeons and outdoor content, and we wanted to be able to get gear from all those sources as well – and items – to feed into the Profession ecosystem. So there was a lot of just working with quests and with world building, with the rest of the rewards team, just to get Professions integrated.
And then, beyond that, and World of Warcraft in general, we’re super-into getting feedback based on that, and certainly the most important form of feedback is from our players. You know, we’re always listening and trying to improve the game, and make sure we’re making the best thing we can for our players. But also, as developers, it’s incredibly useful to have feedback from other developers that aren’t working on our features. So we’re always trying to play each other’s things.
One of the best things about the World of Warcraft team in general is, not everyone, but almost every one of us is a huge World of Warcraft fan. So, we are simultaneously developers trying to figure out how to make the most awesome thing possible, and fans ourselves. So that gives a sort of ending perspective that I think is really valuable in developing the game.
There was no other specific area in Dragonflight that I feel I had an outdo influence on, but I got to give feedback on lots of different things.
But it’s so vital. You’ve explained how Professions just sort of touches so much of it. And also, I felt like the general community feedback was negative in their regard of that system. And now it’s not, now it’s the complete opposite. So was that perceived as like a painpoint already? Were they like, this is something that needs to change? Or did you sweep in and just say: we can fix this.
Eric Holmberg-Weidler: Almost everything we do at this point is coming, at least partially, from player feedback, and listening to our player base, and seeing what they want. There’s always been a desire, as far as programming goes, to make this a more important part of the game. There’s a contingent of players that loves doing Professions, that loves making gold, or crafting things for their friends, or their guild, or whatever else, so we just wanted to lean into that. And that was, in general – primarily starting with Dragonflight, and then definitely moving into The War Within – we have this big focus on evergreen features that are trying to improve the game permanently, indefinitely, in the future. So, Professions is one of those.
The Professions system has evolved, and had cool changes and updates over the many years it’s existed, but it never had any sort of major fundamental revamp. So it was just a great opportunity to listen to our player base and deliver something that made professions able to be a more important part of the game. And to make it – for the players that wanted it to be that – a primary form of gameplay they could spend a lot of their time on.
We talked about, what if there’s a player that cares more about the fact that they’re a blacksmith or a tailor than that they’re a mage or a warrior. And if they want to be able to spend their time doing that, then let’s let them. And that’s sort of a philosophy that we [apply], just sort of trying to carry everything. And that’s why, for War Within, all of our features are about making sure all the different types of players that want to play the game in different types of ways can do so.
Like delves. If you don’t have a ton of time to play, if you’re… You know, I’m a dad. I don’t have a lot of time to play anymore, certainly not like when I was back in college. To be able to get in there and do a delve in 15 minutes, and then go off and help with the kids after that is super valuable. I am lucky enough to have a guild, so I can raid and stuff like that, but for players that don’t have a guild and do solo content, or have just a small group of friends, delves are also for that.
And that’s why we wanted to have that feature support anything from solo, to five players, it doesn’t really matter what roles you are. If you’re all DPS, that’s fine, you can all go as a group of DPS, and it’s about that flexibility, and being able to play the way you want.
Warbands is, of course, about playing alts, and having that be the best experience possible. And acknowledging that lots of players do play alts, and they love doing it, but also that not everyone does. So it was actually really important when setting out the goals for that system that we don’t disadvantage you if you’re not someone who plays alts. Very intentionally, the top goal for Warbands is basically: encourage you to play alts, while never disadvantaging you from doing so. That’s the spirit, right? We [offer] five different ways to make it easier to play alts and not have to feel like, if you feel like playing your mage today, that you’re losing out from the progression on your warrior.
Looking back at Professions for a second, let’s say you also do Professions, and you really want to get to the top of this renown track, because it has a recipe that you can make a bunch of gold on. In the past, if you feel like playing your mage, but you’re most advanced on your warrior, you probably should play your warrior, because you don’t want to lose out on that progression. So, that’s the kind of thing where it’s like, now: great! Play whoever you want, and you get to have that shared progression on your renown track or your reputation across all those characters.
It’s about freedom to play who you want, when you want.
Let’s go into some of those other Warband features.
Eric Holmberg-Weidler: The bank is a Warband bank now. That’s just reducing friction, basically, right? In the past, if you had an item that you needed to send to an alt, then you have to send it in the mail, log off, log in again, go to the mailbox, take it out. Whereas, we’re adding a Warband Bank, which is basically a bunch of different tabs, a sort of UI; it’s similar to the Guild Bank, so you can buy different tabs with gold.
My Professions focus comes around, because I very much wanted it to be: let me put all my reagents in here, and then I can then craft out of there, so it acts like a reagent bank. So all of your characters can dump their reagents into the bank, and then you can just go off and craft, and you don’t have to worry about it. It’s much, much easier to play. And even if you do not play alts, this is an extra bank that you have access to.
In the past, a lot of players would make their own guild, so they would have access to a bank. Which is unfortunate, because then, if they wanted to be in an actual guild, they would have lost that, right? We definitely want players to play together, and not feel like, oh no! This tradeoff between my inventory and playing with people I’ve met! That’s unfortunate, right? So, this is kind of mixed with that as well, so, it’s helpful if you’re solo.
ransmog is another big one that I think players will be really excited about. In the past, of course, you had to be able to equip a piece of gear to collect a transmog for it. So, if you’re a priest, and you’re doing some old raid to get the transmog, and a plate piece drops, you can’t collect them. For your Warband, you are the player, it doesn’t really matter who you’re playing as, it’s your time. So, if you go off and do a raid, do it with whatever character you want, and then you can collect all the pieces that drop this transmog, and that’s going into your Warband collection, which can then be worn by the appropriate character.
So, we’re not changing who can wear what; we still want to maintain that fantasy of, like, you need to be a warrior or other plate-wearer to wear the plate. But if you wanted to also be collecting cloth for your mage or something like that, then you can, at the same time. So that’s, again, a big convenience that follows that philosophy of, it’s the player behind the keyboard that is important, more so than the individual character that they’re playing, as far as their time goes, and their effort goes.
I feel like, in general, every MMO has different elements of rough edges that people accept as part of the character of the game. It’s like, yeah, it sucks, it’s not convenient, but the game’s so good that I deal with it. But it seems like – even especially with Dragonflight – World of Warcraft is really standing their ground, and saying, no, we’re going to smooth it out. We’re actually getting rid of as many of those rough edges as possible. People might want to then go to Classic, I suppose, but…
Eric Holmberg-Weidler: Honestly, it’s about delivering what players want, and what the modern play experience looks like. So, if we look back at Vanilla or those olden days, leveling took much longer, and, and the expectation that you play multiple characters was just lower, because you could spend…I don’t remember how long it took back then, but hundreds of hours just to level to max level, so you probably only played one character. But, over time, we made it easier to level, because players enjoy that. And I think, sort of hand-in-hand with that, players started to play more alts, right?
So, as that evolution occurred, we began to want to make it easier to do that, because that’s what our player base has been enjoying doing, and asking to be able to do more easily. But we’re still fighting with the way the game was originally built, and assumptions that are no longer true. They were perfectly valid back then, there’s was nothing wrong with them, but they’ve changed, the way people play has changed. So, with that, we want to update the game so it plays better in the way people do now. So, that’s what Warbands is about, to make it much easier for players to play all their different characters and all their alts, into the future.
As a developer on this feature, I’m like, alright, great, we’re going to make it easier for us to do things. We have our best guess at what the changes are that are going to have the biggest benefit for our players, but I fully expect as we start playing this new Warband world, which is more account-focused and less individual-character-focused, that more stuff will come to light that makes sense, and it might even evolve the way we make content. It will be a continuous evolution. And, in general, I think that’s how development on a game like this works.
It continues to evolve, and the goal is to always make it the best player experience for our audience as possible, and listen to our players as they give us that feedback.
Yeah. Community feedback was brought up, I think, ten times during the opening ceremony. That seems to be the guiding force that drives it.
Eric Holmberg-Weidler: Absolutely.
How do you respond to and evolve your design placement here with the storytelling as the game progresses? How does that inform what you bring to the actual design perspective?
Eric Holmberg-Weidler: It depends on the feature I’m working on. With Warbands, it was important to deliver a fantasy-forward theme for why your characters share their progression, or share things like banks and things like that. At the same time, this one in particular I think was a little bit tricky, because lots of players have very different fantasies of who their characters are, and what they’re doing. Anything from: “I play five mages,” and my fantasy of it might be like, “I have a mage guild.” Versus other people, who might imagine their characters as a band of mercenaries, and another character might not have a particular concept there.
So, in that case, after thinking about it and talking to people, my goal was to deliver enough fantasy that it feels like it fits into the game. That’s why we’re calling it “Warbands.” I want to see the word “account” not in there as much, things like, “Blizzard Account-bound.”
Because it’s immersion breaking?
Eric Holmberg-Weidler: Yeah, it’s kind of immersion breaking. So, there’s Blizzard Account-bound gear, and that’s going to be changed to “Warbound Gear,” and we’re introducing a new type of binding to it. “Warbound until equipped,” which will allow us to share gear across your Warband, without having to worry about just having to trade gear all the time. So, we wanted to deliver enough fantasy that felt like it fits in the game without putting too much fantasy on it. Like, a Warband is not a specific, very strong fantasy thing, and that’s intentional, actually. It’s to leave enough room for you as a player to put your own fantasy on top of it.
But again, it sort of depends on the future. Like, looking back at professions, if we worked more closely with narratives, or naming things, and how could we connect the different cultures in Dragonflight to the professions and things like that. So it really depends on the system, how much it should be integrated with the rest of the fantasy, the story of the game, and the expansion.
The other thing is, at least so far, we’ve been working on evergreen features, so you can tie them to the overall fantasy of World of Warcraft, but you want to be careful not to tie them too closely to the specific expansion, right? Like, it’s not going to just exist in that world.
In Professions, we added the Artisan’s Consortium, which is this new faction that sort of manages the crafting order system that we introduced back then. And the faction that you could build with them was the Dragon Isle’s Branch of the Consortium. So, the idea is that the Consortium is an expansion-spanning thing, but they have branches, right? So, it’s that kind of thing.
System design is fun now! It’s neat to make really narrative- and fantasy-connected features, and it’s also neat to find the right level of integration there for each feature I work on.
One thing I was pretty excited about that I’m working through now is basically converting a large portion of our achievements, character-specific to account-wide, following the same philosophy. Let’s say the achievement is to collect a hundred things, right? Just to be very generic. If it’s a character-specific achievement, you have to collect all 100 of those things on that specific character, but if you’re trying to swap between them, then you’re like, oh man, I’ve got to start this over.
Talking to one of my PvP friends at work who has earned a number of these really hardcore PvP achievements, just getting a ton of reputation or doing a ton of things in various battlegrounds. And he’s like, I’ve far exceeded what the achievement would require, it’s just spread across like, ten characters. And he’s like, what the hell, that sucks, right?
So, you’re serving that. Just striving to serve the player effort, right? It’s player effort over character effort, in particular, for a lot of these things. If you spent that time, and you did it, then you deserve that achievement, so let’s give you that credit by making them account-wide.
We’re not going to completely remove them. Like, there are some cool achievements that are like, I got in the top 1 percent or 0.1 percent of Mythic Plus, or PvP, or something like that, and, because of that, I have a title that I can only show on that character that earned it. I’m a master of that particular paladin, right? And we don’t want to touch that, because that’s very much about that character, and demonstrating the mastery of that character. But, for a whole lot of others, it’s really, about that player effort.
That relates to kind of what you’re talking about. Are you dealing with the complaints of the weirdly hardcore players who have an issue with any broadening of some of these aspects? Basically, you’re saying they want to boast about the thing they’ve earned, and will they feel like, now, anyone who’s earned it, it’s going to be too easy for them? This is something I feel like a bunch of multiplayer games – not even MMOs in specific – can struggle with and deal with.
Eric Holmberg-Weidler: There’s balancing different player types, absolutely. And that’s one of the tricky things about World of Warcraft, that there are so many different ways to play it. Since we just announced this, I’ll certainly be listening to feedback.
We’ll be listening to feedback and sort of seeing what everyone is saying. We’re trying to be cognizant of that kind of thing, acknowledge that effort wherever possible. The philosophy should be about you as a player, and your player effort.
So, it’s a balance, it’s always a balance, and World of Warcraft has so many different types of players that play in such drastic different ways that it’s important to deliver features for all of them, and to keep them in mind when we’re designing some of the systems, to serve the widest swath of players as possible.
