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A Brief Look at the WoW Development Pipeline - When Did Dragonflight Development Begin?
Dragonflight
Geposted
22.10.2022 um 09:03
von
Anshlun
It is always said that Blizzard starts working on expansions long before we ever see even announcements, but it is almost impossible to know the exact timelines of the development's inner works. With that in mind, today we've decided to dig into the deepest chasms of game data looking for hints of this development timeline and how it aligns with what is already known.
To start, it is important to say that none of this is 100% accurate, this is just information derived from datamining so take it with a grain of salt.
Indexing the World (of Warcraft)
Most of the timelines assembled here will be based using the information that all data in WoW is sequential. Which... saying it like that seems obvious, but the ramifications it has means that even parallel projects, like Classic, Shadowlands, and Dragonflight, for instance, have their data entries sequential. This means that knowing when something was added, means you also know what was added to the database before and what was added after that given date.
An example of that is the
Wappenrock der Meisterschaft
, added as a reward in Season of Mastery for doing an Immortal Naxxramas 40 run, was added to the game's database around the same time many profession reagents were added to Dragonflight beta, as its ID falls right in-between entries for
Drakonische Phiole
and
Tränkekessel der Macht
.
Note, however, that this sequentiality is not
always
the truth, as there have been cases of Blizzard updating old database IDs for new purposes like the
Elixier der Sprachen
, hotfixed in the game December 2018 to allow cross-faction communication using a very old item ID.
Zone Development
During datamining, Zones are usually one of the first things that show up, being usually included in the first builds, with open-world zones being included especially earlier.
For Dragonflight Zones, some of the first development zones added were
10 Highlands
and
Zone4TyrholdTest
, both being indexed shortly before
Himmelsfeste
, which was added to the Patch 9.1 PTR in build 38312, which was released on April 13th 2021, slightly over a year before the release of the
Dragonflight announcement trailer
on April 19th 2022.
These two zones, however, don't seem to have been used and could be just testing zones left over in the data. The first Dragonflight zones being used to this day where the major open world zones,
Dracheninseln
,
Großes Meer
,
Die Küste des Erwachens
,
Ebenen von Ohn'ahra
,
Das Azurblaue Gebirge
, and
Thaldraszus
. These zones are indexed before
Tazavesh, der Verhüllte Markt
, which is the open-world version of the Tazavesh dungeon, where you have the flight path, vendors, and the dungeon portal area, which was added in the same Patch 9.1 PTR build, build 38312.
These indexing additions highly indicate that the work on the open-world features of Dragonflight started almost 18 months ago.
Dungeons, on the other hand, seem to have been added much later, with most of them being indexed around the addition of the
Tirisfal
zone, which is used during the
Dark Ranger customization scenario
and first appeared in Patch 9.2.5 PTR, build 43022, from April 1st 2022.
Quests
For quests, many times the data can be very scrambled around, with quest chains being iterated, it can lead to many quests from a given chain being added earlier or later on in development. For Dragonflight, the earliest quests in the database are
, a World Quest from Ohn'ahran Plains, and
Arkanwächter
, a quest from the Dracthyr intro area.
The starting quests from the Dracthyr intro area, like
Arkanwächter
and
Erwacht, Dracthyr
, sit right in between quests from the Zereth Mortis campaign
Kismetrische Scheibe
and one of the Paragon quests from Zereth Mortis,
Vorräte der Erleuchteten
. Both quests were added in Patch 9.2.0 PTR, build 42423, from February 18th 2022.
The first one,
, is indexed in the middle of the
Blood Elf Heritage questline
added in Patch 9.2.5 PTR. The quest sits between
Unfairer Kampf
and
Ein faires Rennen
, both added in build 42850, from March 22nd, 2022.
However, note that these quests from the Blood Elf questline, and the accompanying Dark Iron Dwarf questline, are indexed in the quest data
before
the quests from the Patch 9.1 campaign, like
Die Seele eines Paladins
. This means that both the Blood Elf and Dark Iron Dwarf questlines have been in the works since Patch 9.1 PTR, before July 8th 2021, even if they wouldn't see the light of day until almost a year later. This shows that the first drafts of Dragonflight quests were started over 15 months ago.
Items
For items, the first entries for Dragonflight were
Gehärteter Djaradinstahl
and
Konstruktionsschreiben
. Overall it looks like the earliest items for Dragonflight were all tied to professions, showing Blizzard's commitment to improving professions in the new expansion, after an uninspiring Profession expansion in Shadowlands.
For a timeline on items, it is a little blurry. Many items around those are from Protoform Synthesis, which first appeared in Patch 9.2 PTR build 42423, which first appeared on February 18th 2022. However, around those items, we can also find items like
Insigne von Farondis' Hofstaat
and
Schlüssel der vielen Gedanken
, added on Patch 9.1.5 and 9.1 PTR respectively, with the second one first showing up on PTR on June 25th 2021.
Final Considerations about Dragonflight Timeline
Looking at all these comparisons, it gives us a really good idea that Dragonflight development started around Q2 2021, with development starting with open world zones, Evoker starting experience, and profession overhaul.
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