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Despite the immense volume of similarities between Dungeons & Dragons and World of Warcraft, the team working on the upcoming collab rulebook knows that you can't translate everything 1:1. Half of the MMO is about fighting the same bosses over and over until you finally get a good piece of loot. The grind isn't made for tabletop players.
During a recent presentation attended by PC Gamer, principal game designer and project lead James Wyatt says D&D: WoW is more about "paraphrasing" the MMO within the framework of the tabletop game rather than trying to emulate its mechanics. The entire world of Azeroth and the MMO's many expansions (up to Midnight) are fair game for players—the book opens with a big temporal hand-wave from time dragon Chromie—but the smallest details have been shuffled around to fit the format.
Popular dungeons from WoW's past, like the Deadmines, are mostly intact, save for a few alternate routes to accommodate parties who might want to sneak around bosses or skip some altogether. You're still in for the kinds of adventures through deep caverns and ancient cities that WoW players reminisce about today. Some dungeons are lifted right from WoW's earliest era, while others mix in their revised layouts (and loot) from later expansions.
I was delighted to hear that you can still take on the challenge of avoiding every boss in Dire Maul for the bonus rewards after you slay the king, otherwise known as a "tribute run" to WoW veterans. D&D: WoW is built to capture the spirit of exploring the MMO's dungeons for the first time, before the age of datamined loot tables and YouTube guides, while also letting you relive their most iconic moments at the table.
The team calls dungeons a toolbox for DMs to tell the stories of WoW's world without the trial-and-error of the MMO's combat or the tension of deciding who the blue dagger drop should go to. Enemy encounters are curated and there are no restrictions on taking a rest or leaving and coming back later—although the dangers can grow while you're away.
Image credit: Wizards of the Coast
Image credit: Wizards of the Coast
Image credit: Wizards of the Coast
Image credit: Wizards of the Coast
Climactic battles with WoW's biggest names are in there, too, including the Lich King, Illidan, Jaina Proudmoore, and more. They're also where you'll see some of the biggest changes from the MMO. Jaina, for example, doesn't gradually chill your party during the fight, but freezes a player and strikes them with an ice lance if you don't find a way to thaw them out fast enough (the devs recommend using fire, if you've got it) instead.
On the way to the dungeons, you'll have opportunities to prepare your party through WoW's gathering and crafting professions. D&D's crafting rules didn't require a ton of changes to make this work, the team says. You'll be able to do a wisdom check for supplies or ore to mine as you explore. You can take that ore and craft items from a list of recipes, provided you're proficient with the right tools. Powerful items, like armor, will be gated by your proficiency bonus, so there's a real incentive to keep improving your skills as you go along.
D&D's renown system also isn't that far off from WoW's faction reputation system, so the team kept it fairly straightforward: You earn rewards as you climb up the ranks of trust. Becoming exalted with the Earthen Ring can unlock a charm that lets you summon a big Elemental minion or a portal to teleport across the world. The dragon aspects, WoW's oldest and most powerful factions, will even grant you the equivalent of a Wish spell if they like you enough. Rival factions, where raising your reputation with one might damage the other, can show up, too.
Everything here sounds like a smart way to handle a collab that could've barely felt like a collab at all. WoW has so much overlap with D&D already that I can imagine a version of this book that just swaps some names around and calls it a day. Instead, you can tell this was created by people who know exactly what to pull out of Blizzard's world and what to leave behind.
We were told a lot more will be revealed in the lead up to the November 12 release, particularly the way classes from WoW map onto the tabletop format. Wyatt—who spent most of the presentation eagerly answering questions from chat—had to stop himself from spoiling things too early. He also says he's already thinking of all the leftover things that could fit into a follow-up book, but wants to see how this one goes before diving back into Azeroth.
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