World of Warcraft Dragonflight’s dragons were originally made of stone

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During early development, Stoneborn were used as Dracthyr placeholders

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight Dracthyr
(Image credit: Blizzard)

Before World of Warcraft Dragonflight's Dracthyr looked like they do now, they were actually made of stone. 

Speaking to GamesRadar+, senior game designer for the Dracthyr Evoker class, Graham Berger, gives an insight into World of Warcraft's latest expansion. Talking about the Dracthyr in particular, Berger revealed that in the early days of development the dragon/human hybrid creatures were actually just the Stoneborn gargoyles from the previous Shadowlands expansion.

"There are a lot of different groups working on this feature all at the same time. And so, early on, on the combat side, we're trying to come up with the abilities; on the art side, they're trying to make the dragon. We didn't have the dragon to play with, and running around on a human and breathing fire felt weird," Berger tells us. "We went back to Shadowlands, grabbed the Stoneborn gargoyle model, and used that. That's the original Dracthyr because it has wings and a bunch of the jumping and flying animations we wanted."

Berger then goes on to explain how the Stoneborn actually helped the team figure out a lot about the Dracthyr during Dragonflight's development: "Being able to use that as a testbed for  – 'okay, like pretend it's a dragon, not a gargoyle, but how are the wings going to move? What will it feel like to fly around on the battlefield and breathe fire?' – was a lot of fun." The test was so useful, in fact, that Berger has said he has "some very low-quality gifs stored on my computer of a gargoyle breathing fire."

The World of Warcraft Dragonflight expansion is due to fully release on November 28, 2022. Thanks to two pre-patches for the MMORPG, though, WoW players have been getting to grips with Dracthyr designing as recently as last week. Things may have been taken a little too far already, with several players using the opportunity to use character customisation to make Shrek memes. 

Need something to keep you busy until Dragonflight fully releases? Take a look at our best MMORPG list. 

Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.