Why did Blizzard bring “hectic and chaotic” drifting in custom cars to World of Warcraft? I don’t know, but it’s the game’s most fun feature in years

In case you’ve not been paying attention to Azeroth and World of Warcraft recently released another major update: Undermine(d). In it, players can explore a vast subterranean landscape populated with Goblins and all the havoc they get up to. One of the major features added with this update is drifting, via a new driving system that revitalizes an otherwise ancient grounded mounted movement system.

Drifting around the Undermine is incredibly fun, offering a fast-paced and inherently chaotic intermission between quests and combat encounters. For the first time in the game’s history, ground travel is in itself engaging, and given the lack of flying in this update, seems to be to be the glue that keeps everything together.

But what went into this new addition, and how long did it take to get it right? To help answer that question, I sat down with game director Ion Hazzikostas and lead game designer Maria Hamilton, who peeled back the curtain on WoW’s latest bombastic feature.

VG247: What was the inception of the drifting mechanic?

Hamilton: “We knew we were going to this crazy, busy, chaotic Goblin city space, and we built the zone specifically in mind as that kind of a space. When we were thinking about what would make sense in terms of traversing it, it was all about the mean streets, and the car customisation, and the culture, and the drifting and dangerous driving […] It was primarily about [asking] what would a Goblin drive, and we pretty much ended up with a crazy car.”

VG247: You mention it was built with this Goblin environment in mind. How does that adjust the map design process, as opposed to traditional WoW zones or the verticality in Dragonflight?

Hamilton: “Yes, but we wanted a lot of varying heights as well. But we wanted that through ramps and drops, so that it felt dangerous! Like, who in their right mind would put that turn there with that drop like that?”

Hazzikostas: “There are no safety regulations in The Undermine.”

Hamilton: “Who would put chemical vats you can drive right into there? It was all about that chaos of living in that place.”

VG247: How did you arrive at the feel of this new driving and drifting system? It’s one thing to say ‘we want to add a new driving mechanic’, but that could mean something more realistic – simulation-style? Or something more arcadey and wild, like you’d see in a Crazy Taxi game… what was the feel you wanted to go for?

Hamilton: [smiles and nods]

VG247: Was Crazy Taxi in particular a direct inspiration?

Hamilton: “No, but hectic and chaotic was what we were going for. Absolutely [that].”

Hazzikostas: “I think with the feeling, it was fast and fun. We certainly weren’t looking for aa realistic simulation where you take a turn too tight and now you’re delayed in getting to your destination. Frankly, when we knew we were going to build a place where flying was not available because of the story we were telling and the world we were building, we needed to make sure players didn’t miss [flying] too much. That you could get around quickly, and it was fun to traverse the environment. That it was empowering, not punishing.

“Part of that is just tight controls, speed, and adding that extra layer of customisation that helps with the race aspects of it, but also what suits your personal preference.”

VG247: How did you get it to work, considering the foundational systems in WoW. If you compare current ground-mounted movement, this is quite different! You mentioned it was built similar to how Dragon Riding was built – so how did you go about making this?

Hazzikostas: “Collaboration with our amazing engineers who worked magic to make this happen. There were lessons learned from translating flight to dragon riding, and then to sky riding later on.”

VG247: Could you elaborate on those lessons?

Hazzikostas: “It’s building concepts of physics and momentum into a movement system that otherwise would be a player moving at a fixed rate and direction until you took the finger off the keyboard. A huge amount of the work that made this possible came in over the course of Dragonflight and early War Within to make flying work that way. Now, there are more constraints with being tied to the ground, but also more freedom in some ways in thinking about how you’re going to interact and move over objects, whereas flying is all about air traversal.”

Hamilton: “It was a lot of math.”

VG247: Was there a eureka moment where the team played a build and went, that’s it?

Hamilton: “I don’t think we hit that in quite a while. We’d play a version and say, ‘That’s great. but my steering went a bit crazy, is that customizable or are we going to change that?’ We had been playing it for months, so we were blind to some of the issues. So, when we went to the Public Test Realms, we paid attention to a lot of players and streams, and we went ‘Ah, we should adjust it this way’! We made a lot of changes early in the PTR. But honestly, the engineers spent a lot of time adding controls that we could adjust, so we have different values that we can play with.

“It started feeling really good in the PTR, we started hearing people saying ‘This is fun, I get it now’. And the controls are the hard part too, because a lot of people drive with the wheel or the controller, rather than a keyboard. So there was that as well.”

VG247: One final question on the racing. Having played a lot of WoW Classic recently, players love the Mirage Raceway. They love hosting their own races and playing that way. Are there any plans for any in-game events, calendar events to encourage players to jump in these new cars and have fun with ’em?

Hazzikostas: “That’s a good question and a cool idea. I think right now we’re focused on delivering the system that’s grounded in the story of Undermine. But we’re always looking for opportunities to make use of this tech, and to give players the freedom to have their own fun as we move forward.”

Sound like something fun? You can experience it firsthand right now in World of Warcraft: The War Within. Here’s hoping, like with Dragon Riding, we’ll see the feature expand beyond the cavernous Undermine and take up a larger part of WoW’s future.

This article was based on information shared at a Blizzard press and influencer preview event on February 23, with travel and accommodation covered by Blizzard.