Blizzard talks about caves and storytelling in World of Warcraft: War Within

World of Warcraft: The War Within is the 10th expansion of the game and is released just a few months before the 20th anniversary of the MMO. But The war within is more than just a milestone for long-standing World of Warcraft Players feel old. It is also the beginning of the end of the first saga of the franchise.

After The war withinBlizzard will release a follow-up expansion called midnightfollowed by another, The Last Titan. This trilogy forms the Worldsoul Saga, which will never end Wowbut aims to lead it into a new era – similar to Bungie’s “Light and Darkness” saga in Fate 2which just ended with The final form earlier this summer.

With the trilogy about to launch, I sat down with Associate Design Director Maria Hamilton and Lead Prop Artist Jordan Powers to discuss this first chapter of the Worldsoul saga, from The war within‘S The Alliance’s initial focus was on the pressure situation in caves.

With the beta for The war within already in full swing, some players have pointed out that the story seems to focus heavily on the Alliance characters. With the lines between the Horde and Alliance softening in recent expansions and a world-ending threat looming, I was curious to see how the narrative team felt about balancing the two factions after the Fourth War in Battle for Azeroth.

“I do not think that Battle for Azeroth hasn’t changed that,” Hamilton said. “I think we wanted to move away from telling different stories unless it made a lot of sense. Sometimes we want people to understand a slightly different nuance, and then we might have a separate story just for the Horde or just for the Alliance. But in general, with our main story, we really wanted to make sure that everyone understood the same story.

“We’ve put a lot of thought into where we represent the Horde and the Alliance. And of course, we know what we’re doing going forward. And so we’re just trying to make sure that nobody feels like their particular interest isn’t adequately represented, because it’s a saga. Right? We have room to stretch things out over a longer period of time. And people may respond to that. They see that first chapter — not even the whole chapter, actually. But they see that first part and say, ‘Wow, that seems like a lot of Alliance characters.’ But there are Horde characters. And there will be more later.”

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Patience is a virtue that is easy to lose sight of when playing a lively game like WowBut this longer saga gives developers the tools to tell a story that not only flows better, but also contains meaningful foreshadowing that can play out in the next expansion or the one after that, rather than six or seven years later like some of the teasers from 2016 legion.

“To use an art analogy, we’ve already got the broad strokes worked out,” Powers said. “We can see where we’re going, what cultures and races and characters we’re going to interact with over the course of this whole saga. And as Maria said, it allows us to make adjustments — you know, make sure we’re hitting the right flavor notes along the way.”

When we talk about the perceived focus of the alliance in the early stages War within content, it’s hard not to mention Anduin Wrynn. Anduin is the rightful king of the Alliance capital of Stormwind, but he spent the last expansion out of the spotlight after being mind-controlled into Shadowlands‘ great evil. In Hallowfall, one of The war withinIn the zones of “The Light,” Anduin is given the space to reflect on what happened to him and to find out if he is worthy of living a life in the service of the Light.

“We wanted to do Anduin’s story justice here,” Hamilton said. “We wanted to make sure he wasn’t suddenly feeling better and perkier. That would have really cheated everyone out of the story. We wanted the depth of his self-doubt and his temporary torment to be more apparent. And we wanted to contrast him with Faerin (Lothar), who doesn’t have those doubts and wields the light. (Anduin) doubts himself and his worthiness. And so we put him in a situation like the one we have in Hallowfall, where he sees these people who are constantly being harassed by endless waves of Nerubians who are constantly attacking, and then give him time with Faerin and give him time in her city to reflect and talk about some of the things he’s experienced – a very deliberate framework for that. (…) The decisions he makes later on are very much based on those conversations he had in (Hallowfall).”

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The war within takes place in a very large group of caves. The opening zone, the Isle of Dorn, is the only outdoor area of ​​the expansion. The Ringing Deeps, Hallowfall, and then Azj-Kahet are all huge cave zones stacked on top of each other. This is a very different world layout than what players and Blizzard are used to, so I asked Hamilton and Powers how the natural limitation of the caves affected development.

“Well, as far as the story side of things, as you say, it’s a little more confined when you have things in a bag,” Hamilton said. “But at the same time, it allows us to tell more personal stories about that place and about some of those people. Sometimes you come across a place that doesn’t look like it’s been used much, that doesn’t have a lot going on. And sometimes that’s really intentional because we want the storytelling from the environment to do the work for us. You come to the place and you’re like, ‘So what happened here?’ So sometimes you don’t have to build things in those more confined spaces to tell the story. Sometimes you just have to step back and say, ‘Okay, they’re going to imagine what happened here, that’s cool.'”

Small spaces are great for deep story adventures like Anduin’s, but it’s difficult to convince players that they want to spend hundreds of hours in caves over the next two years. When approaching the underground zones in The war withinand from the underground zone that Blizzard just added, DragonflightPowers and the art team had to work to differentiate the spaces from one another.

“I think, you know, artistically, there were some challenges in just creating four unique zones, three of which were underground,” Powers said. “One of the main things we had in mind from an artistic perspective was to make sure that all of these spaces that we were creating weren’t too claustrophobic, too dark, too oppressive, because nobody really wants to spend any length of time in that kind of environment. So we tried to find a delicate balance between, on the one hand, conveying the fantasy of going deeper underground, but on the other hand, giving players some new, unexpected things that they’re going to encounter along the way. And I think a great example of that is when you come out of The Ringing Deeps into Hallowfall, you see, you know, the shot of the giant crystal coming out of the cave ceiling, you see the endless ocean. That’s not something players would really expect to see in an underground area.”

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The underground of Azeroth feels like an unexplored corner of the world. But it’s still an unexpected decision to start a whole new trilogy by throwing players into a hole. After all, holes and caves often feel like endpoints – the place where the dragon makes its last stand in your D&D campaign. Heck, some of the World of WarcraftThe oldest raids and dungeons end in caves. When asked about this, Hamilton nodded and answered cautiously so as not to give away any upcoming, yet-unannounced content.

“Yes, a hole goes down or to the sides. But sometimes it gets blocked,” Hamilton said. “And then you have to try different ways out, and it’s not always a hole. There’s more to it than just going down.”

World of Warcraft: The War Within will be released on PC on August 26th.

Disclosure: This article is based on a preview event held on July 11 at Blizzard Entertainment Studios in Irvine, California. Blizzard provided Polygon with travel and lodging expenses for the event. You can find Further information on Polygon’s ethics policy can be found here.