New zones and Old Gods mark the future of ‘World of Warcraft’

World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth isn’t slowing down anytime soon.

With the Tides of Vengeance update approaching quickly on Dec. 11, Blizzard revealed a whole bunch of new content at BlizzCon coming in the future to keep the furnaces burning, including a deeper look at the Darkshore warfront and the huge Rise of Azshara update with new zones, dungeons, and a raid.

I had a chance to sit down with senior art director Chris Robinson and assistant technical director Frank Kowalkowski at BlizzCon to dive into the future of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, the conflict between the Horde and Alliance, and the new Rise of Azshara additions that send players into the naga-ridden Nazjatar and gnome-filled Mechagon.

Oh and the Old Gods (specifically N’Zoth) will definitely be addressed.

The battle for Azeroth soldiers on

With Tides of Vengeance comes a new raid, Battle of Dazar’alor, which for the first time in WoW history gives the Horde and Alliance two completely unique experiences. 

On the Horde side, players are defending the giant pyramid of Dazar’alor and pushing the Alliance back to the docks, while on the Alliance side players are fighting their way up the pyramid to attack King Rastakahn.

“I love the way that the war campaign leads up to splitting the Horde and Alliance in different areas, and it helps explain why they’re going up opposite sides of the pyramid when the raid goes off,” Kowalkowski said. “It’s a unique opportunity for us to try some new gameplay mechanics, to see a raid that has unique Horde and Alliance perspectives.”

Outside of the raid, the Horde and Alliance continue their battle elsewhere, like with the Darkshore warfront that sees the Alliance becoming a terrifying foe to the Horde after Sylvanas’s destruction of Teldrassil. 

“For Alliance players, the questline’s going to be really cool,” Kowalkowski, an Alliance lifer, said.

And then there’s the development we saw between the Horde and Alliance in Friday’s cinematic, “Lost Honor,” which sees the Horde’s Saurfang agree to team up with the Alliance’s King Anduin to fight back against Sylvanas and the atrocities she’s committed as the new leader of the Horde.

“The Horde is still aligned behind that ideal of honor”

“People are super upset about Sylvanas, it’s very polarizing, but we never want to forget about what brought the Horde together to begin with,” Robinson, a Horde player, said. “The Horde is about the banding together of all these disparate groups under a banner — the banner of honor and family… and Saurfang represents that. He’s the poster child for honor in the Horde.”

Horde players, many of whom are upset with Sylvanas’s act of genocide, will see hope in Saurfang, and see that the conflict and burning of Teldrassil is bigger than the two factions.

“[The cinematic] was a subtle way for us to tell that story and the fact that the Horde is still aligned behind that ideal of honor,” Robinson said. “We want to see that play out and we’re going to see that play out.”

Rise of Azshara and beyond

A little bit further down the line is patch 8.2, titled Rise of Azshara, in which players will be heading to two new zones: Nazjatar, the home of Queen Azshara that has recently risen out of the water, and Mechagon, a technologically advanced gnome colony found under Kul Tiras.

Players’ attention naturally drifts toward Nazjatar, which Kowalkowski said the team put a look of work into to make it look and feel like an ancient piece of land that has just risen out of the water. Nazjatar houses Azshara and the raid Azshara’s Eternal Palace.

Meanwhile Mechagon is an unexpected new venture for Battle for Azeroth, and will house gnomes who are uniting their flesh with technology.

“It’s a whole new take on something that’s such a cool fantasy in WoW,” Robinson said. “The Mechagnomes are up against this curse of the flesh, right, and just as any race in WoW, they’re trying to save themselves from that curse. This is their solution to that — let’s try to turn ourselves into robots so we can stay immortal and not die.”

The environment and the Mechagon megadungeon is a cool culmination of classic fantasy and this new vision for it, he added.

“N’Zoth is out there”

As for beyond Rise of Azshara, the underlying story of the Old Gods will definitely be popping up and will be the next thing that Blizzard talks about, Robinson said. As we’ve seen in the game and in a cinematic outside the game, Azshara is being driven by N’Zoth, the fourth and final Old God of Azeroth that has yet to be defeated.

“We’re going to see hints of it, whether it’s visually in the raids we’ll be doing or in Nazjatar or the Eternal Palace, it’s in the background right now,” Robinson said. “It’s the foreshadowing of the bigger picture of what’s to happen.”

“N’Zoth is out there,” Kowalkowski added. “He’s going to have to be dealt with eventually.”

As for when that will happen, we’ll have to wait and see.

Other makeovers and new additions

With the next few updates, there will be a handful of smaller updates and additions that add up to some exciting new developments in Battle for Azeroth, including makeovers for two of the game’s oldest PvP battlegrounds: Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin.

These two battlegrounds were definitely some of the most outdated environments in the game, visually, and the idea came up from some of the artists on the WoW development team, Kowalkowski said.

“There’s a lot of collaboration and openness to ideas”

“The impetus to change the battlegrounds came from a lot of the artists who said, ‘Hey we should redo the battlegrounds, we think we can do this,'” he said, which shows Blizzard’s approach to projects like WoW and its many, many updates.

“WoW is not one person; it’s a team, it’s a culture, and it’s a thing that will survive long after Chris and I are gone,” Kowalkowski said. “It’s an amazing place where there’s a lot of collaboration and openness to ideas. Anyone on the team can make a difference… I think it’s important to recognize that and create an environment where we can grow those ideas into what the game’s become today.”

More ideas that have popped up with Battle for Azeroth post-launch are new island expeditions which will send players to new islands with new things to do, including Crestfall, which some fans may remember from Warcraft II.

And of course there will be new mounts, new sets of legacy armor, and even new allied races. The Horde will get the Zandalari trolls and the Alliance will get the Kul Tiran humans.

There will also be new profession quests, a new PvP season with new gear, heroic warfronts for greater challenges and rewards, new battle pets, new enemies to fight, a new arena, and more.

And there’s also this adorable pet named Whomper that you can buy to support the charity at Code.org.

From what Blizzard has laid out, it looks like Battle for Azeroth won’t be easing up on releasing new content to keep players interested long after they’ve hit the level cap.