Patch 7.3 New Combat Animations: It’s Magic!

WoW has grown a lot over the last decade, and after we took stock of our combat pacing, it was clear that we needed to deliver a much tighter and more responsive experience for every button you press. Back in the days of simply chain-casting Frostbolt, it didn’t really matter how much time it took your character to go from precast to missile launch. Today, you have a suite of spells at your fingertips where cast times have sped up and split-second decision making is key. To help the way the game is currently played, we wanted more timing consistency.Keeping this split-second decision making in mind for the new cast animations, we found a sweet spot between game play responsiveness and striking, weighty animation. The punchiness of our new animations were working so well, we decided to revisit our original cast animations with a fresh eye on what we had learned—while keeping the style and uniqueness of the classic cast animations for every race. The only thing we touched was the time it took to hit the cast pose since, in the live game, each race’s cast timing is different. This ensured that every spell cast with our new class animations or our iconic racial animations had the same punchy and responsive feel.Ultimately, our main goals remained the same for our next chapter in updating combat; retain the individuality and identity of what came before, pay off epic moments over the course of a battle, and update the game as seamlessly as possible. If we did our jobs right, it should feel as though it has always been this way. Our work should blend into the background so you can focus on melting, smashing, cursing, crushing, igniting, stabbing, purifying, and exploding your foes into unfathomably tiny bits.