Blizzard: Azeroth zones underdevelopment?

#0 - May 28, 2009, 5:30 p.m.

While questing on my Priest in Searing Gorge i came across Blackchar Cave, Which is sealed off from the zone West of Burning steps. I realized that you had to have some plan to create a zone there but never got put in. Also there are several spots on the map clearly where a zone is, but no zone.

So my questions are:

Were these zones meant to be mysteries?

Are any of these zones underdevelopment in the upcoming expansion? (If so maybe a hint of which ones)

Do you plan on implementing a story line for the role players, but not develop them?(Edit: By develop them i mean create a zone, but still have a name/storyline)

I'm not familiar with BETA but did any of these zones get shut off after the Blizzard team decide they weren't need? If so which ones were they?

Do you plan to just save them for years to come?

Bornakk

#12 - May 28, 2009, 6:25 p.m.

What this question is really relating to is something that happens during development of any content so I will try and give a quick example that hopefully makes sense.

Lets say we start out with 10 (arbitrary number for this example) things we want to implement. During the development we cut out 2 of them that we feel weren't as cool as we originally wanted, then later on, we cut 2 other things because we don't have the time for them and prefer to focus on the other 6 items. Just because these 4 things were cut doesn't mean they aren't in the game files in some primitive form (e.g. blank spots of land), they are just things that players don't have access to.

Any content that gets cut is something we may end up taking a look at it again in the future, but only if we feel it is a good time and will be a be a really positive addition to the game. We are totally fine with putting it off for years/indefinitely (hi Ravasaur trainer!) if necessary too especially when there are new ideas that we feel are better and will add more to the game, even if it means going in an Outland-ish direction.

Bornakk

#38 - May 28, 2009, 7:04 p.m.

Q u o t e:

Can you open up non-CoT Hyjal one of these days? It's sort of silly to have such a massive zone inaccessible. Hell, even if there's nothing added. Just allow the zone to be opened /shrug.

I've seen this brought up a few times, but we don't plan to implement things just for the sake of it. Anytime we develop something we hold it to a high quality standard and plan to do it right.

Bornakk

#43 - May 28, 2009, 7:12 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Yeah i've played this game since Vanilla WoW, just the map has changed so much i can never remember much of how it used to be

It has changed numerous times over the 4.5 years the game has been out. Sometimes we get new ideas and just need to do some land shaping to make it fit, nothing big.

Bornakk

#45 - May 28, 2009, 7:15 p.m.

Q u o t e:

That's the thing, though. Anybody that's used the WoW Map Viewer can tell you that Hyjal, as far as terrain and doodads go, is completely finished and bug-free. All you need is a little bit of time to drop in some buildings and NPCs (and I know it's not THAT difficult to do that, seeing how you guys use a beefed up version of the WCIII Map Editor for creating WoW zones).

In all honesty, current-day Hyjal sounds like a perfect candidate for a content patch.

How would it fit into the story? Why are you there? Why are the NPCs there? Who is there? What do you accomplish in the zone? Where are the flight paths? Where are the horde/alliance towns? Is it needed? What does it add to the game?

Figuring out the answers to these questions and then implementing these answers takes a lot more work than you are giving them credit for.

Bornakk

#70 - May 28, 2009, 7:39 p.m.

Q u o t e:
So if I were to answer all those questions for you, would you consider adding Hyjal then?

The key word here is "consider" - we consider a lot of things on a regular basis, they may just take years to actually be released. Obviously we worked on Hyjal back when World of Warcraft first came out, so technically you can probably say we've been considering it for over 5 years now. The years will keep adding up on this until we feel it is right.