Warcraft Rumble, the new mobile action strategy game set in the World of Warcraft universe, will launch worldwide for Android and iOS on November 3, during Blizzard Entertainment’s BlizzCon celebration in Anaheim, Calif. We caught up with Associate Game Director Adam Kugler and Lead Technical Artist Josue Mariscal to dig into every detail of the free-to-play mobile title.
The best news from the interview: All minis and game power are completely earnable in-game, free, with about a week of concerted play.
One quick PSA before we dive in: Any players who finish the game’s tutorial in the first two weeks after release will get four mech-themed items in game for their profiles and “minis.”
Newman: Unlike Diablo Immortal, Warcraft Rumble was done entirely in-house by Blizzard developers. How did the team come up with the idea?
Kugler: Tom [Chilton, Warcraft Rumble game director and former game director of World of Warcraft] spun this project up while he was working on World of Warcraft. He was looking at games that he was enjoying and he was like, “I have an idea for this game that would match the Warcraft universe perfectly. And he cultured that and set it up.
Blizzard has this big incubation behind the scenes. It’s all stuff that we’re working on until we’re ready to announce it. Everything was developed in-house from that moment.
Newman: For every successful mobile Blizzard game like Hearthstone, there are games that aren’t as universally well-received, like Diablo Immortal. Do you feel you’ve got an extra hurdle that you have to leap in order to get approval for a mobile title within what has traditionally been a PC-dominated company?
Kugler: I don’t know that mobile or not is necessarily a concern. In general, it’s more about is the game fun? Is this something that people will enjoy? Does it match the universe that we’re building it in, and does it feel like there’s a long enough tail for content for it?
I love, for example, that we get to leverage the entirety of Azeroth for all of the maps that we design. There’s just a lot to work with there. There’s a lot of different heroes that people are used to seeing, and side characters, bosses like Hogger that are super memorable.
So it’s more about do we see a path to victory? Do we see a path to success? Does this seem like it’s going to work? And that’s kind of agnostic of platform. I’ve seen games on all platforms come and go, both succeed or get refactored or turned back into, “It’d be better if we actually did this.” It’s a big machine in the background that’s kind of trying to find the fun.
Newman: You already had one mobile game using the Warcraft IP. Tom came from this place, given his background, but was there any discussion about whether this should be a Warcraft game versus, say, a cute and chibi-style StarCraft?
Mariscal: Warcraft has been around for 30-ish years, so we have a lot of inspiration to pull from, and the universe is vast. You have all the heroes and villains that we get to recreate—we’re making it much more lighthearted and cutesy, with these mini-units. That alone gives us so much to work with as a start.
Warcraft and its original [real-time strategy] roots, and having this be a strategy game, helps us go in that direction.
And we want to take Warcraft with us. Adam, myself, and many of us at Blizzard, not only do we create the games, but at the same time we are just game geeks when it comes down to it. I’ve spent more time than I’d like to share playing WoW, for example. The fact that I can take that kind of nostalgia with me in this new game is what makes it really fun for me.
Newman: So let’s get into the nitty gritty of gameplay. You’re trying to send a hero and minions down several lanes to defeat the enemy and win the map. But how does combat work?
Kugler: So it’s not micro[-action] based in the way that you would imagine, like a StarCraft micro, I’m going to make my marine fire against this hydrolisk and make sure that exact interaction happens. It’s more like, whatever the mini acquires first is the thing they’re going to latch onto until it’s dead.
So your tactics are much more macro-focused in terms of controlling the map, controlling what a push looks like, making sure that there’s a tank with a ranged unit behind it probably, so that there’s proper support there. Maybe you’re building a couple things for a healing setup and then there’s also unbound minis that you can play along with your push. So maybe you land somebody back behind enemy lines while they’re starting to engage or maybe you cast a spell. So most of it is instant, I just play a thing here — timing and where you play them is where all the tactics comes in.
Newman: What’s the objective of the maps?
Kugler: So the main thing that you’re fighting at the end of every map is a boss. We have over 75 maps for you to play through. There’s just tons of stuff to do. The maps themselves have their own strategic layout to them though, and so they’re large enough that you will want to play closer to the boss or you’ll want to play closer to where you can mine gold on the map to make your income get a little bit up so you can put more stuff on the field.
Throughout the course of the match, there are a variety of different points of interest to capture. There are meeting stones which are very easy to grab — if you walk across it, you get it. There are also ballista towers that will fire arrows at you. There are dragon towers that do cone breath. There are rocket towers. As soon as you take that, there’s a little bit of time where it spins and flips over, and now you can deploy minis from there. So it’s almost like a forward advanced position if you like.
Controlling the map often is just as important as taking the boss down itself. You can sneak around and go straight to the boss from your base, but the longer a mini is in the lane, they going to find resistance and get countered properly. So you always want to surprise by being close to the boss as you can be.
Mariscal: All of these missions are timed, so you want to get to the boss as quick as you can to beat the mission.
Newman: How long are the maps from beginning to end?
Kugler: Regular time is three and a half minutes, and then there’s a minute of overtime where you get double income. No match is longer than or even as long as five minutes except for raids. Raids are longer, raids are hard. Raids are awesome.
Newman: I’m betting that Onyxia [the ultimate end boss and famous dragon from World of Warcraft’s first edition] is longer as well.
Kugler: Yeah, Onyxia is kind of like a single player raid map if you like. All of our super endgame content is about twice as long — eight minutes, last I checked. The idea is that you just get in and play and you can win matches in as little as a minute or two if you know exactly what you’re doing and the stars align. But mostly it’s like two to three minutes for a match.
The whole point is that you can pick up and play, wait in line for a sandwich or something, get a game or two in and then go on with the rest of your day, maybe while you’re waiting for your queue in World of Warcraft.
Newman: Any penalties for losing?
Kugler: Benefits for losing, actually. So no matter what, when you fight a match, you’ll get experience for the match that you fought and you’ll get experience for the army you’re fighting with. Your guys that were fighting, they got experience even if they lost. The big rewards obviously come from winning, but we also reward you with a little bit when you lose.
Mariscal: The reward that I find helpful is my own experience in playing the map. So if I lose, then I now have to rework my strategy, and do I need a different army? Do I need to sub another mini in or out to win the mission? Do I go this route now? Do I want to go left and take over that tower prior to sending my entire army out and to the boss?
Newman: What if you have more time to play? What should you tackle?
Kugler: The game respects your time. If you are engaged in a serious, I’m going to sit down and just play this game spree, that’s what the campaign is for — especially the Heroic campaign, where we ratchet everything up. The Heroic campaign expects you to win with five different strategies, five different families. So there’s a lot of challenge that happens there.
If you’re just going to hang out for a little bit, you can jump into a Quest or a PvP match really simply. You don’t have to engage super hard. The game offers a wide variety of more hangout, casual versions of gameplay and then super elite hardcore stuff like raids and everything in between. There’s no difficulty slider in the game. It’s more like difficulties represented through the activities that you choose to do on a given day.
Newman: Give me an example of a Quest.
Kugler: There are over 60 minis you can collect. When you go to a campaign mission, you’ll have a kind of specific challenge. Chef Aubrey is the chef in Lordaeron, and she has meat wagons and she’s throwing meat at people. It’s fantastic. Later, you’ll get a Quest with her. So Quests, first of all, you don’t know the map that you’re going into. We’ve tuned Quests such that any army should be able to win reasonably well.
And there’s a bunch of things that we do behind the scenes to make sure that’s true. If you show up on Chef Aubrey, the spirit of that map will be there, but we’ve dialed down the puzzling mechanics and just made it a fun back-and-forth. So the army you fight against is going to be completely different than when you played it on campaign.
You’re going to have to counter it a little bit differently and actually react in the moment rather than going through the puzzle that you remember solving before. There’s a ton of replayability.
Newman: What in the game changes to make it replayable?
Kugler: We have a cohort system. Let’s say I put an abomination in there. Abomination is this big tanky guy — I’ll say that’s a tank. And then when you play a Quest with her, we can replace the abomination with any tank in the game.
Tanks can be as big as molten giants or as tiny as quillboar, and they’re played completely differently and they have different strengths and weaknesses. So countering one versus countering the other is going to require slightly different tactics. And really it’s just to keep you engaged and make sure that it’s always fresh.
Newman: So how do you choose what creatures and characters you’ll play?
Kugler: There’s this thing called the grid, where you basically get to see a variety of options for you to choose. And we’ve got an algorithm behind the scenes that kind of ensures that you have every tool that you need. We want to make sure that you have tools to solve every problem.
I could probably tell you the perfect counter for every single mini in the collection, but it doesn’t mean it’s the only one. If there’s a Banshee, for example, the banshee’s going to possess the first thing she sees. If I send a squad of nine chickens up there, she’s going to possess one chicken, all the other chickens are going to turn and murder that chicken, and then they’re going to roll on just losing one ninth of their strength.
But different styles of minis can kill Banshees. So it just depends which strategy you do. And when you build a deck, you want to make sure that you have all of your bases covered.
Newman: How is this monetized? Do I have the ability to buy the minis that’ll show up in those selections? Is there a currency that I am investing in that will then give me additional choices?
Mariscal: As you’re playing these missions, you accrue rewards at the end. One of those rewards is gold, and that gold can be used in the grid to purchased available minis. The grid rotates and shows you different minis as you’re progressing.
You could potentially buy units with real money if you wanted to, but that’s not going to really give you a leg up on anybody else, because the simple fact of the matter is that you can get every single mini in the game just by playing. The only thing that gets you is your collection of minis quicker.
If you were to jump into a PvP match and somebody had minis that you hadn’t owned yet, that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s a winning strategy. The opposing player could beat you on skill alone, and the simple fact that they have better synergies in their army than you do just by purchasing the minis.
Kugler: Playing for free, you can collect the entire swath of minis quickly. It’s like a week or so of free progress, depending on how quickly you go through the campaign. The campaign itself rewards you a bunch of coins. Heroic rewards you a bunch of coins. There are one-time things that you get through doing campaign, but also our recurring features like Arclight Surge happen every three days or so, and there’s a bunch of coins if you get through that. I think it’s 400 or 600 depending on whether you have Premium, you get through that.
Our goal is to make sure that everybody can get a sampling of what they want and see what they want to spend time playing with and leveling up. We don’t want to let players spend themselves out of fun.
We don’t let you buy as much experience as you possibly could on the first day. You can get a wide collection quickly on the first day if you like. If you really want to buy every single mini at hour one, you can do that. But I don’t know what that necessarily gives you, besides maybe you get overwhelmed with stuff, but also if you want to collect everything, I mean that’s who you are.
Newman: Is there any part of the monetization system that you’d actually recommend?
Kugler: One part that I’m particularly proud of is something called the Arclight Booster. It’s a one-time $20 [U.S.] purchase that is a permanent unlock to your account. It’s kind of like buying the box if you like, because the game is free. Again, you can do absolutely everything in the game for free. There’s nothing gated behind spend specifically, but this gives you a permanent boost to the coins you earn from playing and the experience you earn from playing.
My favorite part about that feature is that we have this piece of it — we call it Orcy Bank internally, affectionately — what we do is as you travel through the campaign and you earn the rewards… let’s say you earn 40 coins for this map, we will take the 50 percent that you would’ve earned if you have not bought [the Booster] yet and stick it in a bank so that there’s no pressure to convert early.
If you’re like, you know what, I do really like this game — you won’t have lost out on getting it sooner. I’m super proud that’s in the game. Often when I play games that are free, I’m looking for that: one way to thank you for making this game. I’ve already sunk like a hundred hours into it. What’s the one thing I can get? That’s what I would recommend people get if they enjoy what they’re playing for free.
Newman: So there are more than 75 maps. How many zones on the two continents are you guys offering out of the gate?
Kugler: Currently 15. There’s also four Dungeons at launch. Each of those have three maps. There are also raids upcoming that are going to have multiple maps. There are five PvP maps in circulation right now, and more planned. There’s a huge amount in the Warcraft universe that we can leverage and we’re looking forward to leveraging it.
[Writer’s note: The Blizzard folks got back to us later with the specific list of Dungeons and PvP maps. They are, for Dungeons: Blackfathom Deeps, Gnomeregan, Diremaul and Deadmines. For PvP maps: Arathi Basin, Alterac Valley, Hillsbrad Foothills, Timbermaw Hold and Gadgetzan.]
Newman: How do Dungeons work?
Mariscal: Dungeons are basically a series of three maps. You’ve got to go through the maps, back to back, defeating the bosses as you progress. You have two lives to win all three maps. If you lose those two lives, you got to start over.
Newman: Moving on to Raids, which I understand are coming Soon™ — is there a target date?
Kugler: We are actively developing them. I just did a whole play test with a group of people today, which was super awesome. So they are in active production as we speak. We don’t have an official release date just yet, but we’d like to get them into players’ hands as soon as we can.
Newman: How hard will they be?
Kugler: The content is meant to be the hardest content in the game by a lot. It’s absolutely the end of your journey. You’ll have gone through the entire campaign, you’ll have gone through the entire Hero campaign. You’ll have played at least one of every Dungeon, assuredly, to get to the power level you need.
You can liken it a lot to [original] Classic WoW, where you’re not going to go play Molten Core the first weekend you start, or the second or the eighth. It’s going to take you a while to get there.
They’re hard, man. They’re very, very difficult. We want them to be be aspirational content for the people that have culminated their journey into the ultimate challenge for the game.
Newman: Do they require you to play with a guild?
Kugler: So you must play with a partner, and there is no random matchmaking. You need to find somebody from your guild. So by proxy, yes.
Newman: Let’s say that my friend is a terrible, terrible person and that they have chosen a guild that is different than my guild, but we’re both free on the weekend. I’ve forgiven him. We want to play together. Can we do a raid together or do we have to both be in the same guild to do the raid?
Kugler: Currently you must be in the same guild. He can always backstab and join your guild just for that run.
Newman: Are there any penalties to dropping out of guilds?
Kugler: There’s this awesome feature called War Chest, which is your rank that you achieve with PvP or Arclight Surges that contribute to this global collective. It’s kind of like the war effort from way back in the day. And those are communal rewards that you collect. If you leave a guild, all of your progress for that stays where it is. So you don’t get to carry that with you.
Newman: The game launches in North America and most European areas November 3. Where is the game available now?
Kugler: The game is live in our soft launched regions: the Nordics, Canada, Australia and the Philippines.
Newman: What is going to keep the game fresh for folks who continue playing?
Kugler: Every day there are unique quests to play. Every three days there are Arclight Surges to play. Every week there’s a different Dungeon to play and that will cycle [with] different families and whatever. There are four Dungeons in rotation and five families. So that’s 20 weeks before you’ll see the same specific meta for dungeons.
The PvP system is such that there are different cards that influence the meta. The PvP meta will shift slightly every two weeks, just because of the extrinsic forces we’re putting on the maps. The PvP season itself lasts six weeks. During each six week season, you can expect to see a new mini. There’ll be one coming up for BlizzCon. It’s going to be awesome.
And then raids are expected to be on a monthly cadence. So we have this very large set of overlapping cycles of things that are going to roll in. Even the Arclight Surge combinations, I think it’s like a year and a half before you see the same combination.
Mariscal: I should also mention that we have the Heroic campaign as well. If you’re looking for that extra challenge that you want to get into the Heroic mode, something that we like to call “mean mode” at the studio. They’re familiar maps, but with a twist. It is incredibly tough, in my opinion.
Newman: How often will you be releasing new minis?
Kugler: Every single six-week season. Obviously the Warcraft universe is huge, so we have tons and tons to pull from there.
[Writer’s note: Kugler later said, “I’ve been told by my guy here that I don’t know that we’ve necessarily nailed down that seasons are six weeks, but that is the goal.”]
Newman: Do you anticipate making tuning passes on the minis?
Kugler: We’re not necessarily planning on tuning minis very often. We would rather do tuning via the maps.
Newman: What’s the one thing that people might miss in the game, that they should pay attention to?
Mariscal: I think one thing that I’ve enjoy a lot about the game just as a whole is the sound. I find that some players like to play mobile games in general without sound, and you’d be very surprised at the love that went into all the sounds of the game. My favorite, absolute favorite is the footman. Whenever you deploy them, they just go, “Ha HA!” I find myself audibly saying that in whatever room I’m in.
Kugler: I think my favorite thing to design on the project has been Arclight Surge combo armies. So whenever there’s a combo army, maybe we mix like Jaina and Thalnos together, which you can’t do normally. And having those two synergize together and build an army around that, that players can play through.
It just allows us to go crazy and embrace the joyful chaos that is really core to the DNA of this game.
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