As Blizzard gears up for the start of the public test for their next World of Warcraft expansion, The War Within, I took the opportunity to sit down with two developers and learn more about what we have to look forward to. This time around, Gabriel Gonzalez, Lead Visual Development Artist, and Abigail Manuel, Senior Narrative Designer, were in the hot seat. Of course, since this is everyone’s first look at the first zone in the new expansion, there are some topics, like the first raid and profession updates, which we couldn’t get into, but there was still a ton to discuss.
Environmental Storytelling
Although storytelling in terms of quest text, dialogue, and cutscenes often gets most of the attention from players, a lot goes into it from a visual and environmental standpoint as well. Gonzalez expanded on this idea, “in the Isle of Dorn, one of the things we were thinking about was telling the story of this idyllic pastoral feel, that we want the player to experience the life of this newly acquired culture and newly acquired sense of independence that the unbound are discovering for themselves. So from all the conversations we have with narrative, we start to think about ‘what are the environmental indicators we can place that support the narrative?’”
Manuel added, “We’ve had a lot of conversations about what they eat, where do they sleep, you know, all of these different things we can tell with props or dressing.”
Blizzard did a great job with this in Dragonflight, and I’m really happy to hear they are focusing on it for TWW. I loved Ohn’aharan Plains partially because we really got to delve into what life was like for the centaurs, and it really felt like they had been living their lives there forever. However, everything in the entirety of the zone worked together. From how their tents, clothing, and gear looked, it just felt like everything had a story behind it.
When it comes to the inspiration that they pulled from when working on what the Isle of Dorn would look like, Gonzalaz explained, “We were looking at a lot of other islands that have that rocky/craggy feel to them. We were looking at places like New Zealand [and] Scotland.” He continued to say one of the biggest challenges they run into when creating new zones is the fact World of Warcraft is in its 20th year, “so there’s all these zones where we’ve already done and explored, so it’s a challenge to find something unique and special, but I think we did it with the Isle of Dorn.”
Characters & Lore
While exploring this first zone, we will be accompanied by Magni, Moira, and her son Dagren - whom I had forgotten existed. Manuel pointed out that he’s been a baby in a bassinet in Ironforge for a long time, which makes sense because I haven’t spent any time in that city since Vanilla. She further explained, “He’s a teenager now… he has a very different personality than Magni for sure; he maybe goes a bit closer to Brann Bronzebeard, but you know, less excitable. He’s very bookish, kind of nerdy, and he plays well off of Magni and Moira as a new member of their team. So, he’s very gung-ho about exploring this new island that he has surreptitiously happened upon with everyone else.” This reminds me a bit of the glow-up Anduin received in MoP, and I’m looking forward to seeing Dagren in action.
When it was mentioned that the earthens would be the next playable allied race, my first thought was that the oathsworn would go with the Alliance, and the unbound would go with the Horde. Manuel quickly responded, "the earthen that people get to play will not be allied with the oathsworn and the unbound, so that should not be an issue. There is one race and everyone will get to pick which faction they will be.” She also followed with, “The oathsworn and unbound is the main conflict within earthen society and it does not extend to the allied race.” Considering there could be some issues with either the oathsworn or unbound joining up with the Horde and Alliance, this is probably the best way to go about it.
The nerubians are returning in TWW as a main opposing force we’ll have to deal with. I only really think about them when it’s Wrath timewalking, and I never considered what they were like as a society. So it was surprising to hear that they are a very old race who were at one point very powerful. Gonzalez described their approach with the nerubians as “One of the ‘monikers’ for the flavor of what we were going with is this idea of ‘dark elegance.’ There’s a lot of interesting, beautiful elements about their culture and their architecture that make them feel unique and stand out from other, I guess, ‘evil’ or maybe ‘darker’ cultures that we’ve fought against in the past but still have that edge and cool factor to them.”
Also, Manuel added that these nerubians aren’t undead, which also sets them apart from the ones we’ve fought previously. She continued, “They will have a very interesting striated society. They have their own traditions and ways of speaking. We really wanted to go beyond that ‘well they’re the bad guys’ and show the story of the underlying culture that the nerubians were, before they were the undead thralls that we’ve seen before. The art and the narrative there is going to be a really interesting counterplay of this darkness, but also this civilization that’s lived in the darkness for so long.” As I said, I never really cared for the nerubians before, but I’m actually looking forward to learning more about them.
All the crabs!
One of the more unexpected updates coming with The War Within is the arachnophobia filter, which will change the nerubians into crabs to help players who find spiders troublesome in WoW. We, of course, asked if this would apply retroactively outside of this newest expansion, and Gonzalez confirmed it would be retroactively applied to spiders outside of this expansion. He also clarified, “It’s a little bit more selective than just a banket anything that looks like a spider will be a crab. It’s mostly focused around spider beasts, so we might not actually see entirely all spider-like creatures turn into crabs. I think we want to be a little bit more precise about which ones will be crabs and which ones won’t be.” Manuel also specifically mentioned that if a hunter is running around with spider pets, they would appear as crabs to a player with the filter active.
I also confirmed that this will affect the various spider mounts in WoW. Again, it would only affect the visuals for any player who has turned this setting on. I don’t have an issue with spiders, but I find those mounts to be creepy, so it’s a nice addition. Unfortunately, they weren’t sure if the filter would also affect raid bosses like Sennarth. On the one hand, I would think raid bosses would be particularly important for it to work on. However, I could also see how that potentially could cause all kinds of visual issues, such as swapping her model out for a crab.
That’s everything we covered in the interview. I’ll also have impressions from playing the first zone of the alpha soon. Don’t forget to opt in on your BattleNet account to get a chance to play alpha or beta, and help give your feedback on everything.
