[00:00] My name is Josh Greenfield and I help lead the content and narrative direction for WoW Forever. And my name is Evan and I'm the lead content designer on the World of Warcraft Classic team. Today, we're going to dive into our team's approach for developing the content, stories, and characters within this world.
[00:19] We'll kick things off by talking about the setting of WoW Forever and how it fits into the larger World of Warcraft narrative. Simply put, WoW Forever begins at the same time original WoW begins.
[00:33] The game contains all of the original quest content from the original game and builds on top of it. We will expand upon events, characters, and locations that exist in the original WoW timeframe to further flesh out the original world.
[00:49] This is before Kazzik reopened the Dark Portal at the start of the Burning Crusade and before we traveled to Northrend to stop Arthas and Wrath of the Lich King. We are focused on this year one period of WoW's history and we intend to occupy this space and expand upon it indefinitely.
[01:08] So this panel is called Sound Photograph. What do we mean by that? Well, this is a term that was coined by Chris Metzen in our earliest conversations talking about adding new stories in our Season of Discovery game mode of WoW Classics.
[01:24] The simple idea behind sound photographs is that most of these new stories are things that could have happened feasibly during the vanilla era of Azeroth's history, or again, year one of World of Warcraft.
[01:37] For the Classics team, it also refers to how we approach the stories as well. For many of those stories, we also want to maintain Original WoW's focus on what we call local stories.
[01:50] This is things along the lines of unraveling the mysteries and motivations of the Defias Brotherhood and helping Tyrion Fordring rediscover his lost purpose. This ground-level view of localized stories is what makes the world of Azeroth feel large and textured.
[02:07] We are building these stories just like we used to in the early days of World of Warcraft. We will have big epic narratives, but we'll tell these stories at the ground level. And large linear campaigns that focus on major Warcraft characters aren't really our focus.
[02:25] So, what opportunities does found photographs approach afford us? The first big opportunity, and my favorite as a long-time WoW lore nerd, is the ability to glow up existing but perhaps underutilized characters
[02:39] and giving them an interesting story. Take the former paladin, Gregory the Truthbearer, raised in the service of the Scourge as a death knight. In Warcraft III, he was a minor named paladin NPC
[02:51] that went by the honorific title of Sage Truthbearer and was only featured in a single mission in the Scourge campaign. We continued his story in Season of Discovery and fleshed him out as a character greatly,
[03:03] bringing him full circle back to the light. This is the kind of glow up we'd like to pursue for other characters in Wild Forever. We'll also be able to see characters who were active but off screen during Vanilla.
[03:16] What were they doing at this time? Moln the Earth Fury of the Earthen Ring is a great example here. He was the leader of the Earthen Ring but was largely absent from original life. He will be present in Wild Forever and have a role to play in new stories.
[03:30] We also get to visit places that may have been hinted at or mentioned, but never got screen time. Or maybe we go to places that we maybe have seen in a version of WoW, but were presented in a much different way than we planned to feature them in WoW Forever.
[03:45] The magical city of Dalaran is a great example here. Dalaran has always been seen as a flying city in the sky in World of Warcraft, but it wasn't always flying in the sky. After being destroyed in Warcraft III, Dalaran was rebuilt but existed underneath its protected magical barrier
[04:03] nestled in the Arthrak Mountains for several years. In WoW Forever, we'll get to see Dalaran in all of its freshly rebuilt glory as part of the world. And maybe we'll explore why the protected barrier around it is no longer present.
[04:18] This segues into talking about the continuity of WoW Forever. the million gold question I'm sure a lot of people have when it comes to WoW Forever is how does it fit
[04:30] into the larger WoW continuity and timeline? Yes. And the short answer is that WoW Forever does not exist in the same continuity as Modern World of Warcraft. Yeah.
[04:42] I think they pretty much have to do that. So why do we do that? Well, the main impetus of this approach is to ensure that we have the creative freedom to do what we want to do with the game without creating problematic situations
[04:55] that require a direct response in the modern game. Yeah, you pretty much got to. This does not mean that we are going to completely upend the foundational lore, especially the established events from the RTS game.
[05:08] We aren't going to suddenly say, in this universe, Jaina was a dreadlord all along. No way, go on! Or, we're going to say, she became the witch. Our approach to the new stories we add is to paint inside the lines of established foundational lore
[05:21] as much as possible, but also to build on what comes next in a way that makes sense, first and foremost, for WoW Forever. And to continue on to that thread, let's take a look at our content goals for this project.
[05:37] When we're looking at the world and discussing what content to pursue, we tend to break down the content into three categories. The first is the anticipated. These are the types of things that you may be aware of,
[05:49] the things that did not exist in the original release or may have been inaccessible at the time. The example shown here is not Hyjal, which we've added as a new experience, as a new zone, for you to explore at higher levels. More on that in a minute.
[06:03] These are the comfy and the expected, the wish fulfillment of seeing some of these places that you were aware of in the original release but we haven't been able to explore yet. If there's a piece of well-known content you really want to see,
[06:15] The chances are pretty good it's on a whiteboard back at the office, or perhaps even in production right now. The second type is something we call new but familiar. These are the areas with new concepts or stories that are grounded in locations
[06:29] or with characters that harken back to the original WoW and our early RTS games. These types of content are the things that may surprise players, but really feel like they could have been here all along. Our goal with this type of content is to craft experiences that add depth to the world, but
[06:45] fit seamlessly with taking inspiration from the rich history of Warcraft. The third type is something we called it unexpected. These are new concepts and often involve places or characters that exist within the Warcraft
[06:59] narrative but have not been explored previously. This is also a category of content we plan to introduce sparingly. When looking at this category, we want to be very mindful of what we're adding so not to upend the world, the stories, or the characters, while still creating the experiences that
[07:15] players want to enjoy. One of our goals for this type of content is to ensure that it makes sense within the greater fabric of WoW Forever. So to continue building on that a little bit more, we've talked about where this idea of
[07:29] talent photographs comes from, the types of content that we discuss as a team, and the inspirations in our approach to developing these experiences. So let's take a deeper look at some of the new content you can play about forever.
[07:42] Whether you're starting your journey as an orc in the Valley of Trials or a night elf in Shadowglem, there's something new just for you. New NPCs might greet you in your journey, they might offer you quests,
[07:54] and others may offer you training and skills and recipes and professions, and that's only the beginning. Part of our team's journey throughout this development was to incorporate flavorful additions without, as Josh mentioned,
[08:08] taking away from the classic experiences we all know and love. Overall, we've added dozens of new quests, characters, and stories to each of our new starting zones, along with additional content in every zone for your journey.
[08:20] And of course, with new stories and new adventures comes new rewards. Each of these moments along the way was handcrafted by an incredibly passionate team of individuals with the same love of this world as each of you.
[08:42] Let's talk a little bit about world travel. I think the teleprompter probably did an update. I've had the habit of leveling up beyond your starting zone. You'll find not only new content, but new means of world travel throughout the world.
[08:56] This is an area our team spent a lot of time discussing. We really wanted to maintain the exploration and your journey as you navigate the world. But we also wanted to offer you ways to explore and change the way that you play.
[09:08] So what did we do here As you can see on the screen some of these locations might seem familiar In total we added three new ship routes encouraging exploration questing a new area throughout the world and really leaning into the opportunity for social play
[09:24] which is an incredibly important pillar for this project. The first time you see me here is a connection from Stormwind Harbor to Aberdeen. Humans and night elves, and you dwarves and gnomes in the audience
[09:37] who are deep-run film enthusiasts, now you can rejoice. You can now play with your friends throughout starting zones together, whether spending hours or perhaps avoiding several corpse runs reaching one another.
[09:49] The next we have is a three-part stop. This new route begins in Beneville and then on the South Shore before arriving in Aberdeen. The last pier is located in Steamweedle along the eastern shores of Tanaris.
[10:03] Now when Josh was talking about found photographs, we're often asking questions about the world itself, the characters and locations. These questions like, you know, what is the Steam Wheel Cartel been up to? Are they expanding their operations? And where
[10:16] might this ship take us? And perhaps this ship takes us to somewhere new. So thanks to our friends at Steam Wheel, our new adventures await across the sea in a brand new zone and today our team is very excited to welcome all of you to
[10:32] the River Glades. River Glade type! Okay, so you take the boat over to River Glades from Steam Wheel. What the heck? The River Glades is an expansive new zone, roughly the size of Stranglethorn Vale,
[10:46] with an expected level range in the mid-30s to mid-40s. The zone itself was built in an area that existed in the classic world, but was previously inaccessible and so we decided to fix that. When you enter the zone the first
[11:02] thing you'll notice is the incredible level of detail our artists and world builders and sound designers put into creating a zone that fits seamlessly in the world. For those of you who have played through Red Ridge Mountain, a new fork to
[11:16] the burning steps awaits your new journey into the river glades. While this zone has diverse biomes and creatures throughout, it also blends seamlessly between each of the nearby connecting zones. These null camps that you see on the screen here,
[11:29] they're not just a presence, but a continuation of the world story. Now, when we talk about immigrating content, it's not just about sharing the stories with creatures over from one zone to the next, but it also presents us with opportunities.
[11:43] This is one of our new POIs, where an ogre clan has established their presence, and in questing, you'll meet them and other characters and factions along the way. In total we've added nearly 200 new quests to the zone with stories for both Horde and
[11:57] Alliance players. You'll experience new cultures throughout the zone like the Powderfuse Goblins who run this Powderfuse port and enemies like the Twilight Hammer whose presence was felt throughout
[12:10] the zone in areas like Sunnyglade, a callback to Warcraft's history. And of course, launching your adventures from areas like Ragnar, for the Horde, and Farhold Keep for the Alliance, where you'll encounter one faction in particular dating back to early
[12:26] Warcraft, the Brotherhood of the Horse. The River Glaze is a blending of inspiration from classic historical events, new beginnings and stories integrated into our living world.
[12:40] most importantly to us, it's a love letter to all of you, to our players, and to those who brought this world to life more than 20 years ago. But this journey doesn't stop here.
[12:53] Beyond our new zones, our team spent a considerable amount of time going back to our roots, examining zones like the wetlands, among many other areas in the world. Part of this journey was simply to explore the possibilities without taking away from
[13:06] these areas and what already existed. And for areas like Wetlands, we found opportunities to build on the characters and the stories within without disrupting what exists. For Wetlands, we've added all new content, including over 25 new quests, and provided
[13:22] new opportunities to discover new stories and characters and new leveling paths in your leveling journey. Alongside areas like the Wetlands, we've also updated areas like Desolace, where new centaur
[13:34] collection plus the wait. Also included new rewards. And for our faculty and staff who finally got something with that, we brought reading life into the spaces that weren't used previously but they were waiting for us for a moment that felt like it was the
[13:47] right time to create something new. For new stories to be told and now if you continue your center collecting journey and make your way all the way down into the south of Desolace, a new journey awaits. Gender loss. We've added gender
[14:03] to the south of Desolace through the Valley of Bones. Whoa! This new area offers you different options and new quests to explore to reach the deep history of Elderful Lost, its stories, and the people.
[14:16] We felt it was important to bring this zone to life and the stories we wanted to tell that made sense within the project as well. Wait, there is a zone of rest under Desolace? We felt it was important to include Hyjal, Mount Hyjal, as one of our new zones and an opportunity to explore
[14:29] new stories that make sense within this project. Here you'll explore the aftermath of the battle for Mount Hydral. You'll meet new fashions and build relationships along the way.
[14:41] You'll work with new allies. And you'll encounter all new enemies and area friends. Bro, bro, bro, bro, I need to get there, man. Holy crap, I'm in a place.
[14:53] You'll start to see where this journey leads you. So, changing gears a bit, Let's talk about one of our new race and class combinations, the Forsaken Paladin.
[15:07] Howdy, Hark! So, while Forsaken Paladins are far from our only new race and class combination, we did want to take a few minutes to give them a bit of special attention.
[15:20] Because they were especially excited to play some of the lore for us, And I'll admit, as a paladin named myself, it's something I've been waiting to jump into for several years. The story of the Forsaken Paladins rolls directly off of the new Warcraft III campaign, Forsaken Kingdom.
[15:37] This campaign deals with the initial struggles for the Forsaken to find their footing as a people while the threat of the Scourge and the Scarlet Crusade looms. We don't want to spoil too much of that campaign or the story or the characters,
[15:53] but suffice to say, there's some direct connective tissue here that we will explore in WoW Forever. When WoW Forever begins, we find the Forsaken Paladins at a time where they are deeply mistrusted by the other Forsaken.
[16:06] You have to imagine that if you were an ordinary Forsaken citizen, the only thing you know of Paladins are organizations like the Starlet Crusade, who have made it their mission to torment and destroy all undead, including the Forsaken.
[16:22] Making matters more complicated is the fact that some former paladins who are raised into undeath don't take the transition well. The act of channeling the light is almost maddeningly painful for the undead,
[16:34] which is part of why it is so hard for some to adjust to life as a forsaken paladin. Some of these maladjusted souls will lash out, attempting to destroy or torment other forsaken
[16:46] until they themselves are put down. So when we find our Forsaken Paladin heroes at the start of WoW Forever, they are facing an uphill battle to get the rest of the Forsaken and by extension Sylvanas to fully accept them.
[17:01] One of the new locations we'll visit in WoW Forever is Banderian Keep. This keep is in the formerly unreachable northwestern area of the Tearsful Glades called the Whispering Wood.
[17:13] Forsaken Paladins will be directed here around level 10 to start familiarizing themselves with Banderian Keep and will receive most of their class quests from this location. And of course, no Paladin is a true Paladin without their trusting skill.
[17:30] Oh my gosh! Are you kidding me? And the Paladins of Banderian Keep are no exception. Also, Forsaken Paladin will also embark on their very own Epic Mount quest at level 60 as well.
[17:46] Wait, that's not the Epic Mount? That's the 41? But that was Epic. Whereas the Alliance Paladins claim their Epic Charger in the name of Redemption, Paladins of Forsaken write in the name of Retribution.
[17:59] Yeah, that looks sick. That looks so cool. Now that we've had an awesome look at some examples of that anticipated and then new but familiar category of content, let's take a look at something new and totally unexpected.
[18:11] The Skyborn and their home in the clouds, Zephrasai. Okay, what's the lore? What's the lore here? Let's start by talking about the history of this new race. The Skyborn are a race of high elves that call themselves the Shendorai, or the Hidden Silver High Elves.
[18:26] Their history starts in the ancient kingdom of Eldrith Alas which we now know as Zydomal in the immediate aftermath of the War of the Ancients A group of concerned citizens united to oppose Prince Corseldron and his plans to harness
[18:42] increasingly dangerous amounts of demonic energy to sustain the highborn of Elgith the Lost. Having just seen the destruction caused by the War of the Ancients, these rebels rose
[18:55] up against the prince to try and prevent him from completing his grand design and throwing the kingdom into darkness forever. The rebels' interference cost Torseldrin dearly, and prevented him from realizing his full plan, but it was a period victory, and ultimately the rebellion
[19:12] ended in defeat. Forced to flee Talimdor to escape the terrible wrath of Torseldrin, these wayward elves spent years on the open sea, pushing ever westward into the unknown. Eventually, the Rebels ran aground on an undiscovered land ruled by ancient, primordial elemental
[19:31] spirits. With Torseldron's fleet close on their heels, the desperate elves were forced to strike a bargain with a group of wind spirits who lifted an enormous land mass of this island into the sky in order to escape Azeroth entirely.
[19:46] Using powerful elemental magic, these wind spirits anchored this floating island in the the realm of air, Skywall. Safe and hidden from the vengeance of their pursuers, the Skyborns spent thousands of
[19:59] years building a small but vibrant civilization hidden in a corner of the Elemental Plane. Now, the Elemental Plane has been a core part of Warcraft history since the earliest Warcraft games. We visited it in various realms and other versions of World of Warcraft as well.
[20:15] For a while forever, we were excited to go to Skywall and experience this place through a slightly different lens. The Shindorai as a people have gone through many changes over the past 10,000 years of existence
[20:27] in the elemental plane. Much like their high elven cousins who settled in Quel'thalas, the Skyborn developed their own unique physical characteristics after being suffused with the magic of
[20:40] Skyborn. They are more light and agile than their Kaldorai ancestors, and the magic of the elemental plane has had other effects on their physical characteristics, such as hair color, eye color, as well as
[20:54] skin tone. When we find them at the start of WoW Forever, the Skyborn have been thrust abruptly into crisis. After thousands of years living alongside their elemental benefactors, the Wind Spirits
[21:08] have suddenly vanished. For the first time since arriving in Skywall, the Skyborn must now stand for themselves. The absence of the wind spirits has also thrown the magic that holds Scott and Zephyrus together in turmoil.
[21:22] The ancient pylon structures that anchor Zephyr Tile into the realm of Skywall have begun to falter and fall into disrepair, causing portions of the island to fall into ruin and darkness.
[21:34] In this period of turmoil, several factions have gained traction and are vying for control of Zephyr Tile. The Windshapers are the shamanistic spiritual leaders of Zephyr's Isles, and they are one of the playable factions of Skyborn.
[21:48] This is the faction that will ultimately side with the Horde. While all Skyborn on both factions can be warriors, druids, hunters, and rogues, only Windshaper Skyborn may be shaman. This is to reflect the deep connection that Skyborn shaman have with the elements
[22:04] and the now-departed Wind Series. By contrast, the High Order are the more pragmatic and forward-thinking faction, and they see the departure of the Wind Spirits as an unprecedented opportunity
[22:16] for the Shendorai people to truly be independent. And this is the faction that will ultimately side with the Alliance. The members of the High Order are the proud descendants of the Highborn Magisters
[22:28] who joined the Rebels when they fled from Eldrith Alark. and thus the ability to play as a mage is restricted to high-order Skyborn only. Lastly, we have the Alatef.
[22:41] The Alatef are a cult dedicated to the worship of Alatyr the Windborn. The Wind Spirits rarely spoke of Alatyr in their time with the Skyborn, making the Elemental Lords something of a taboo mystery.
[22:54] Some among the Skyborn, however, were able to use their shamanistic sky sight to peer across the elemental plane and gain a glimpse of the terrifying might of this elemental lord.
[23:06] Tempted by power, these Shindorai broke with the rest of society and dedicated themselves to the service of Alikir. Emboldened by the departure of the benevolent wind spirits, the Alikats have risen to prominence,
[23:20] using the crisis to stoke fear and seize control of a large portion of the island. When we find them in WoW Forever, they are an ever-growing threat to the already fragile peace of Zephyr's eye.
[23:34] So, while we want to keep most stories firmly grounded on Azeroth, we felt it was important and exciting to be able to explore Skywall a bit more, and a starting zone is a great opportunity for that.
[23:47] Zephyr's is not a major fixture in the world, and it's very self-contained. You aren't going to go here every week to raid or to farm materials. This is an example of how we plan to sparingly and respectfully create new and totally unexpected content in WoW Forever.
[24:05] I appreciate that. So before we wrap up talking about Zephyrus, I want to call attention to the screen. So this is the final in-game map of Zephyrus 5. and here is the original sketch that Chris Metzen drew up for Zephyrus
[24:20] after our first meeting talking about his novel. That's W6. I love it. I'm very stoked, and he sent this to me very excited. As someone who remembers reading the original WoW,
[24:33] or original Blizzard game manuals, and seeing Chris's sketches in these, I can say it was definitely a surreal and geeked out moment when he sent this over to me, and we thought it would be cool to share with you guys.
[24:46] Very, very, very cool. And dude, okay, so high elves, they're basically high elves. I don't know why they just call us high elves. A lot less explanation or more if it's just a high elf. I don't hate it.
[24:58] So speaking of sharing, we thought it would be fun for us to go on a little adventure together. So we are going to go off script a little bit and we're going to dive into a conversation between the two of us and a few thousand of our closest friends here today.
[25:10] And we're going to talk a little bit about the development of WoW Forever. And so to kick that off, we're going to jump right into the first question for Josh. Tell me a little bit about how the learnings from Season of Discovery were applied to this project.
[25:24] Good question, good question. So in Season of Discovery, we did a lot of work to try and tell stories in a very classic way, in a way that felt very diegetic to the world. And, you know, I mentioned earlier talking about blowing up existing characters
[25:36] like, you know, Gregory the Truthfarer and Anna the Vindicated. and following their stories as they sort of, you know, there was a backdrop of this Legion invasion
[25:48] and they came together to rediscover the light together and stave off that adventure. Well, telling those stories at the ground level, focusing on those two characters, that is very quintessentially vanilla.
[26:01] And it was something that we leaned into heavily. We studied a lot of original WoW. We played through all of these classic questions we knew and loved to create those types of stories. And we want to bring that forward into WoW Forever.
[26:15] A lot of the quests from Season of Discovery are things that we, or sorry, a lot of the quest lines in WoW Forever are things that we started in Season of Discovery and carried forward.
[26:28] You know, speaking of kind of like the journey that we were talking about earlier, can you tell us about the development journey of something like the Riverblades? It's so grounded. It's so vanilla WoW.
[26:40] Absolutely. Where do we begin? I'll take you on a little bit of a journey, a little bit of behind the scenes about our development process. So when the zone was, we were first working on zones, what areas do we want to develop for this project?
[26:56] And there was a piece of land on the eastern shores of the eastern kingdoms, and it had never really been developed. It did exist on the map. So if you want to go look at that, you can find that. And that started a discussion. We have a lot of discussions on our team.
[27:08] and that was what could we do with this area? And that led to discussions about how could we, you know, have stories from certain zones tie into this, whether they're connected or other areas of the world.
[27:20] And that led us to one of our world builders, you know, coming up with a couple, you know, ideas for the zone. It started as a few different biomes. We weren't sure if we wanted to have it be one single zone. It's a very large zone. It's about 30 chunks, which is roughly the size of Stranglethorn.
[27:34] And ultimately we did land on making it a single zone. and that led to a lot of other discussions about, now that we have our zone idea, what kinds of stories do we want to tell And that was a very long discussion a month long discussion and we whittled down about 10 or 12 ideas I would say to a handful and those ultimately became some
[27:55] of the stories that all of you will get to experience in the River Glades today. Yeah we bounced a lot of those off of Chris Metzen very early on and he was really excited to kind of revisit some of these places that we'd seen in the earliest Warcraft games,
[28:09] even for a single mission, like someplace like Sunny Glade. Super cool to go back there. A lot of people pick up the phone when you're there. Continuing on the topic of the journey, why don't you tell us about how we went about choosing
[28:22] which level bands to include new content in, because that was something we really wanted to make sure that we rounded out the world. Tell us about that. No surprise to anybody here, a lot more discussions.
[28:34] What we do is we have discussions all day, every day. it's great because it gets us thinking about why do these decisions matter how do they impact the player experience for something like Riverglades a lot of it really came down to
[28:46] that we wanted to provide players not only a new zone to explore with new stories but a new level band so you don't have to stay in the areas that you're already familiar with and that's part of the journey that we wanted everybody to be able to take on their own
[28:58] or you know if you want to explore the new areas you can if you want to stay in the old areas you can do that as well and it was a blending and the blending of the stories from one zone to the next also coincide with the level bending for the spaces.
[29:10] So if you're in Stranglethorn, you want to level there, great. If you want a little bit of a break, you can now go experience an entirely new zone with hundreds of new quests for both factions. And we're not talking just only about Riverglades as well. When we look at areas like Wetlands and Spoilers,
[29:24] there's some areas of northern Kalimdor that might have new questing as well. All of this is intended to help give you more opportunities to not only explore these stories, but change the way that you level. I think there should be
[29:36] like multiple paths on the way to the game I like that and we wanted to give you different opportunities to play the way that you'd like to play right now there's people who do that journey and seeing it through a different lens each time is really exciting and you know
[29:48] it's been a joy to level a bunch of different characters on our internal test and kind of take a different route you know I think vanilla players right like we kind of have a route we like to go it's the comfy kind of butt groove
[30:00] in your leveling process and we sort of we were able to kind of upend that a little bit. It was a lot of fun. So when we're talking about level banding and all the zones that we want to introduce and all the new content that we're going to create,
[30:12] tell us a little bit about how we approach those big story moments. Yeah. So I talked a little bit about telling stories in a sort of vanilla way or a classic way. I think
[30:24] one of the things that we all I'm going to speak for everyone a little bit here, I'm sorry, and say that I think the things most people agree is also about original WoW is the mysteries it created.
[30:36] I don't know about you guys, but I remember in, like, 2006 watching, you know, a grainy video of the first guy to go through Starlit Monastery with a corrupted ashbringer on his back, right? That stuck with me.
[30:49] He talks to Fairbanks, he learns about Darian Mograin and Outland, and I spent kind of years, I feel like, wondering where that was going to go and how that was going to play out. I think the unfortunate thing about 2026, however, is that a lot of those questions in the intervening years have been answered.
[31:06] And so what we're really trying to do with something like Wow Forever is create opportunities for new mysteries for everyone. You know, how did the Brotherhood of the Horse end up in the River Place?
[31:19] Like, what was their motivation? How did the Boulder Rock Ogre Clan, how did they end up, you know, they were a part of the Twilight Hammer a little bit, spoiler, sorry. And how did they end up on their own?
[31:32] And what will that mean in their interactions with the horde? I don't know. And so creating those new mysteries is really important to us. So when we're talking about all this stuff and, you know, we're in the office and we're talking about ideas
[31:45] and we're planning for occurrence and release and the future content, it provides us a lot of opportunities. So the last question I wanted to ask today was, Josh, no pressure, what does the future hold for WoW Forever? Oh, boy. So, you know, I think if you're playing the beta next Thursday and you're feeling a little adventurous,
[32:05] maybe you might want to try to do a little bit of a corpse run to the entrance of a place called Grim Batal in eastern Letlands. If you end up there, you'll notice, maybe potentially notice anyway, a much larger red dragon presence outside of the...
[32:23] Ah, a red dragon. I'm not sure why. I don't know what that's about. I don't know. Anyone have any opinions about that? I don't know. You know, I think you hinted at this a little bit, Evan,
[32:36] but the talking about some zones that we've also added more things to, such as Asshara. We haven't talked about it a lot. We did Asshara quite the blow up, too. Asshara W, let's go!
[32:49] I will say, though, there's perhaps a crater-sized hole in the content of that zone. And I'm wondering if maybe at some point they might fill that.
[33:01] I don't know. What does that mean? Fill the crater in Azshara? What? You know, that's about the time we have for today. We hope that all of you enjoyed this discussion.
[33:13] And we can't wait to invite all of you to come play this journey with us throughout Azeroth. on behalf of myself and Josh, the classic team, and the World of Warcraft team. Thank you all very much. Enjoy the rest of your BlizzCon.
[33:25] We can't wait to see you in Albala. Thanks. Oh, there you go. Okay. A lot of light in there. Yeah, there. BlizzCon is brought to you by MSI.
[33:38] Take the next step in upgrading your visual experience with MSI QD OLED monitors. Silkglass. Brilliant for head. But now I'm expecting a new talk. This is what it is.
[33:52] Cool. We can't hear you at all? Wait, is it too loud? Is it too quiet? Let's try again. Try again, try again. Is that better? Good now? Alright.
[34:05] Yeah, no, I was like trying to not talk too much because the mic is obviously, you know, picking up a lot from out here. So, that's what's going on. that's what's going on.
[34:17] Okay, so, first things first, let's talk about the Skyborn. It's the most controversial and the most interesting. So, Skyborn are high elves that were afraid of the prince in Dire Maul,
[34:33] and they bounced out thousands of years ago. Do we have any lore experts? Did this actually happen, or is this kind of, are they just saying it happened? Was this in any of the Warcraft games, because I don't remember that.
[34:45] was this anything? They're just kind of saying it. So it's new lore, which is fine. Like they started off with. This is not necessarily in the same universe and needs to respect the same lore that retail does, right?
[35:01] Yes, it did. Yes, it did. Chris Metzen did. What do you mean by that? So because Chris Metzen said it did, you're saying it did. Because Chris Metzen can make up whatever he wants because he's Chris Metzen? Is that what you guys are saying?
[35:15] I mean, sure. Sure. Like, yeah. I guess everything is made up, and Grifmetzen made it up. But I was wondering if it was made up a long time ago, or if it was based on anything.
[35:27] Regardless, they're high elves. They're a breed of high elves that are now in the sky with a little more elemental power. That's fine. I mean, I'm fine with that.
[35:39] I know a lot of you guys might not, you know, whatever. I like elves. I like high elves. I think I would have preferred just High Elves, to be honest.
[35:51] But this is good enough. Like, you know, this is good enough. I'm fine with it. I'm fine with it, but I think I would have preferred High Elves. What else?
[36:03] What else? What else? What else did we just watch? Skyborn. Lower underpinnings. Fog. Yeah, Fog looks good.
[36:17] SD models. Graphic updates. No, that was from the last panel. Just right now, what else did they talk about? We haven't heard anything about PVP. Nothing. What the heck? Wait, that was the last panel, right?
[36:30] There's a hardcore panel, but there's nothing else. Wait, are we going to learn anything about PVP at all? So the new zones, the river glades, that looks cool. I mean, we don't know too much about it.
[36:43] them adding quests is sick um yeah I'm gonna learn more about PvP in a sec any idea what will happen
[36:55] with sod characters we don't know what's gonna happen to sod characters we don't know what's gonna happen to mob characters and we don't know what's gonna happen to PvP characters I wanna know about this stuff