We Sat Down with D&D Game Designer James Wyatt to Talk Dungeons & Dragons: World of Warcraft

We Sat Down with D&D Game Designer James Wyatt to Talk Dungeons & Dragons: World of Warcraft

Posted : Oct 17, 2026 1:00pm UTC

Dungeons & Dragons: World of Warcraft is less than a month away, and it already looks like it's going to be a massive expansion to the tabletop game. But there are still a lot of questions about whether this new expansion is going to lean more towards the combat-oriented approach of the MMO or just be a traditional D&D game on Azeroth.

At New York Comic Con, I got a chance to sit down with Wizards of the Coast principal game designer James Wyatt to talk about the first Universes Beyond expansion for D&D. From how he was talking about the expansion, it really does sound more like a D&D game taking place on Azeroth than trying to shove WoW's complicated mechanics and combat focus on the TTRPG.

Dungeons & Dragons: World of Warcraft Images

I know that there are a lot of people who play both WoW and D&D, and I've heard some WoW players say that this is going to get them into D&D. Does the Expansion have a good on-ramp for those players?

James Wyatt: That is not its purpose, but I think it is a fantastic on-ramp in terms of someone who's a WoW player. Sitting down to make a D&D character, you're like, "Okay, what's a Tiefling? What's a Dragonborn? And what do these classes mean?" Whereas if you have that foundation of here's the WoW species, here's the WoW classes, you know the kind of character you want to make right away. This can help you steer and make those choices as a new player. We also have a very brief introductory "What is D&D?" just in case you don't know or for people who aren't familiar with it. And we steer you to D&D Beyond in particular as a place to find resources to help you get started.

So yeah, we took this down for a playtest at Blizzard last fall in the early stages, and Blizzard employees who had signed up, they signed up blind for a playtest of something. They didn't know what.

And so some of them were like, "Woo, D&D. Yes, I love D&D." And others are like, "Okay, I've never played it before. How does this go?" And I always love playing with new players because they don't know what they're supposed to do. So they are more willing to try anything they can imagine, which to my mind is really what the game is all about.

I was just telling the story of the guy who was playing the Forsaken Warlock who decided that, because he had no lower jaw, he couldn't properly cast spells. So his first spell backfired and knocked him down the stairs. And so then he tore off his own arm and threw it at the monster.