Build a Panel - World Creation in World of Warcraft
- The team likes the designers to have the freedom to explore the space that they are creating.
- Kul Tiras has been in Warcraft lore from the beginning so the team knew it would be a hearty sea-faring culture from Gilneas.
- Boralus
- Creating cities in WoW is one of the hardest things that the world builders have to do in WoW.
- Early versions of cities have red lines for roads and green spaces for buildings.
- The second phase of creating a city has early renderings of buildings so that the design team can figure out how the player navigates the space.
- Scale is also a huge part of this phase.
- Hamburg, Germany and cities in France were looked at for inspiration for Boralus.
- Boralus had many iterations as time went on.
- Safe roads were added over time (easy to navigate roads with no hostile mobs).
- Underrot
- Hulling out a road is the first step in creating a dungeon once you have the initial map.
- Secondary textures and terrain detail come next.
- Certain parts of the terrain lead you in the direction that you need to go.
- Busy areas are often next to areas that are not busy to add contrast.
- Underrot was supposed to be a zone originally, but it wasn't working out. Eventually they decided it worked better as a dungeon.
- Arathi Basin Remastered
- They are still using the engine from vanilla.
- They wanted to keep the same feel of Arathi Basin, but just give it the face lift that it deserves.
- View distance and opening the space was a big part of the remaster for Arathi Basin.
- The team likes to add Easter eggs to zones when possible.
- One Easter egg was a baby in a bird nest in a tree that the designer thought no one would find, but she checked Reddit and the players did!
- Some art is purposeful to trick players into a certain direction, such as leaning trees or lighting.
- Iteration is next. They want to make sure the zone is not monotonousness and feels right.
- Sometimes they design and create a zone that they love, but when they start to navigate it they realize that they hate it.
- A lot of times they design things that don't work in the moment, but will be saved for later expansions.
- Suramar and the disguise mechanic was a little iffy when it was first pitched, but it worked out well.
- Drustvar started off as a frozen wasteland inspired by "beyond the wall" in Game of Thrones.
- Several months in the team decided it wasn't working and changed it to the creepy forest that it is today.
- Originally there were only several witch camps on the outskirts, but eventually they incorporated more of that theme.
- A Horde symbol was placed where Varian's tomb is during design as a joke, but was obviously removed before live.
- Putting an oasis in the middle of Vol'dun was done to break up the monotony of the desert.
- Small details are added as the final step.
- Little props are time consuming, but they tell small stories that add to the environment.
- Lighting can be used to highlight parts of the environment.
- This expansion in particular emphasizes the teams working together to tell the story.
- It is incredible being able to work on a game this long and learn from player feedback.
- WoW doesn't feel like one game. It feels like each expansion is a way to tell a different story.
- Amazing things are coming!
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