World of Warcraft Undermined’s density and speed was a challenge for Blizzard’s engineers, but there are “no limits” to what designers can do

Blizzard’s latest World of Warcraft update not only takes players to the incredibly dense Goblin location of Undermine, but also gives players access to a new D.R.I.V.E system, brining breakneck speeds to the game faster than any mount ever has before.

For the engineers at Blizzard, creating the game’s 11.1 update was actually a sizable challenge. Despite years of engine upgrades and overhauls under the game’s two-decades-old hood, the sheer speed of the game’s new content combined with the new locale’s density was something brand-new to WoW.

World of Warcraft engineers worked hard on Undermine

Speaking to VideoGamer in a pre-release interview, senior software engineer Emily Berger explained that there was some worry early on in the update’s development, but that only caused the team to be more determined to make it work.

“You know, the fast answer is definitely yes [there was worry],” Berger explained. “It is something that we have been, you know, improving upon over the years as well. I think it’s kind of a cool direction to move with the new zone, right? Being dense, very, very close proximity moving around.”

World of Warcraft uses a dynamic loading system that helped immensely when building a zone as dense as Undermine, but the speed introduced with D.R.I.V.E added another problem.

“There’s no limits [for] what the designers want to do.”

WORLD OF WARCRAFT SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER EMILY BERGER

“Something that we actually had to solve for Undermined specifically was for the D.R.I.V.E system, for the breakneck and being able to, you know, move around in these dense spaces, right,” Berger continued. “When you’re working with the D.R.I.V.E system, there is a limit on how fast we could go since we have the dynamic loading. We want to make it feel really, really fast and be able to rule the streets but also still be able to see things not pop in as you’re going.”

Berger explained that the work done on adding breakneck speed driving to World of Warcraft was actually possible because of previous work done on Dragon Riding, a feature that saw players roaming high above the skies of Azeroth.

“Dragon Riding was the first time in the open world to be able to move quickly across vast, large amounts of terrain with really, really, really really, fast high-velocity speeds and be able to work with that,” they continued. “So it’s something that we’ve been kind of building upon over the years and increasing and enhancing the engineering capabilities for it.”

As for the technical challenges for new ideas, that’s the entire role of engineers at Blizzard. Like dwarves forging ore into legendary weapons, the engineers working on the MMO are tasked with turning the wild ideas of designers into possibilities.

“There’s no limits [for] what the designers want to do,” Berger continued. “And it’s always exciting to try to, you know, solve these things. So I think on an engineering point, this is actually more exciting, right? Like to try to solve some of these, I wouldn’t call them problems, but solve some of these things to get solutions for them to be able to bring these to the players.”

2025 is another big year for World of Warcraft. Following Undermined, the team is working on another new zone for release in the summer, followed by a huge expansion—Midnight—later this year.