Build a Panel - World Creation in World of Warcraft

[Stoy]

Immersive Sounds of Azeroth

Warcraft 3: Reforged was announced! Submit your questions now for the developer Q & A!

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!

[Orby]

This panel is already my favourite, I don't know the guys name who is presenting but he is a treat to watch, already the star of Blizzcon

[Stoy]

This panel is already my favourite, I don't know the guys name who is presenting but he is a treat to watch, already the star of Blizzcon

Darin DePaul, voice of Reinhardt, N'zoth among many other characters. He is hilarious!

[Orby]

Darin DePaul, voice of Reinhardt, N'zoth among many other characters. He is hilarious!

I didn't know thank you. Thats nice to hear.

[Deleted]

I want him to do all the up coming BFA Q&A. Lets see how he and Ion work.

[Fawkess]

love the build a panel format, hoping we see more of it next Blizzcon as it's cool to let the community choose a panel

[Orby]

I like to think all Easter eggs in game are just WoW devs messing about and when they go live we players try and find serious meaning for them lol

[Cæli]

arathi "Remaster" ? glad that there's vanilla, it's heartbreaking to see how they replace zones with no options. they're talented but they literally don't give a fuck to what they create, everytime.

[Izzyfurious]

Darin DePaul so far is the Enthusiasm good old blizzard in one person, that the Developer today is not. He is a breath of fresh air!

[Orby]

Darin DePaul so far is the Enthusiasm good old blizzard in one person, that the Developer today is not. He is a breath of fresh air!

- - - Updated - - -

Darin Depaul is the good old blizzard heart and soul enthusiasm that the Developer today no longer has. He is a breath of fresh air!

He needs to open next years Blizzcon and all further Blizzcons lol

[Tomana]

[*]WoW doesn't feel like one game. It feels like each expansion is a way to tell a different story.

Therein lies the problem. Each expansion completely invalidates the previous ones.

[Barnabas]

Drustvar is pretty amazing in the end.

[Kathranis]

arathi "Remaster" ? glad that there's vanilla, it's heartbreaking to see how they replace zones with no options. they're talented but they literally don't give a fuck to what they create, everytime.

They're just updating the old art and textures. And because Classic is a thing now they have all the reason in the world to improve old visuals.

[kamuimac]

wont lie - im so glad they are not changing anything

this will ensure complete failure of classic once modern players wil ltry it

im really happy

also 16 debuff limit ? lololololol this makes once again 3/4 of classes efectively usless - feel sorry for poor naive people who will roll anything but bis specs/classes

[ArguesWithStrangers]

I rather enjoyed the design of Drustvar, but thought they overdid the witches. There were just too damn many of them. It would have been better to have a much smaller coven to keep some of the mystery and make it not feel like every single woman in the entire zone was a witch. After a while we were just carving through witches like murlocks.

[kamuimac]

hahaahah they are screwing all people from pirate servers who were using grouping addons .

wow this is gonna be even worse have fun spamming trade for 2 hours to form groups .

[bbr]

They should've kept the modern things, like lighting, group finder etc.

People are going to hate on this so much. hah.

[Bhanzai]

hahaahah they are screwing all people from pirate servers who were using grouping addons .

wow this is gonna be even worse have fun spamming trade for 2 hours to form groups .

interesting. I don't have any addons on the server I play on and always get into a group relatively quickly as a rogue.

You're being overly dramatic. And clueless

Also the debuff limit is meaningless. So much drama for a Saturday

[Debased]

The one thing Blizzard always does exceptionally well.

Too bad they didn't apply their city-building formula to Dazar'alor. So terrible as a functional, engaging city. I bet it's going be great for the raid though.

[Cæli]

They're just updating the old art and textures. And because Classic is a thing now they have all the reason in the world to improve old visuals.

a lot of their "improvements" have inferior color scheme and depth, which is why it's a bit sad to see replacements with no options; they don't have all the reasons to improve visuals, if the visual are pretty in the first place