Good news Wow fans - Blizzard Entertainment has authorized me to reveal the truth about this thread. I am in fact a Blizzard employee plant and have been posting here to generate buzz for Blizzard's next World of Warcraft expansion 'The Spider Kingdom', which will be released after Mists of Pandaria. Many of you have heard the news that Blizzard is already hard at work on the next expansion after Mists, and you'll be able to see some of the work our game designers have accomplished exclusively in this thread. Keep an eye out for more content here and elsewhere in the near future!
ps - April Fools, her derp!
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If Blizzard ever makes public a world editor, I would certainly be interested in seeing what I could make with it.
Gross! Glad you've found it appealing.
I've gotten a number of requests both in this thread and in PMs, so I'll go over my 'creative process' for maps. This'll help bridge the gap 'til I update next.
For the re-vamped Northrend zone maps, I just took screenshots of them and pasted them into Photoshop. Photoshop as an extremely useful 'Layer' system, which lets you draw over top of any material on a lower layer without directly affecting that. I used bits and pieces of other maps, as well as hand-drawn elements, to change the existing zone maps to reflect the revamped elements of the Spider Kingdom content.
For custom maps, it's pretty much the same. First, I did a quick doodle to get all of the elements roughed out.
Then I took a screenshot of Deepholm using a character that I hadn't explored much with. Doing so gives you a nice blank background of unexplored map to draw on. Using photoshop, I color shifted it to make it totally dark and grim and brutal (or purple in the case of my dungeon maps, cuz purple is evil).
Then I start roughing in lines on a layer above the background. This way if I screw up, I can easily erase or startover without mucking up the background. I keep going until I've doodled all of the elements I'm going to need. I look at maps from the game when I need to use common elements like mountains and caves, so it keeps things looking as authentic as I can make it.
Then when I've got all the lines I need, I make more layers and start adding color and other elements like text, until I finally have something like this.
That's pretty much it - actually quite simple. If anyone wants to learn more about Photoshop, there are zillions of helpful tutorials on youtube and google.