warcraft RPG magic system

What are "vanilla dungeons?"

 

dungeons from the original WoW and its patches, such as deadmines, zul'gurub and temple of ahn'qiraj.

 

As I am almost finished with my sample zone, ashenvale, I'm gonna give a Q&A, with questions asked by the voices in my head. Feel free to post your own questions as well.

Do I have to?

Yes. You are living in my head, and you will do what I say!

... sigh...
What was your general design philosophy regarding ashenvale?
Well, something what we really wanted to show is that ashenvale is the heart of the night elf civilization. Most of the expanded terrain has been used to really demonstrate this. East of the falfarren river truly feels like the heart of a civilization, with many villages, sentinel outposts and fey holdings. But ashenvale is also a zone under attack. Many of the traditionally peaceful regions are now in deep trouble, with the furbolg going mad in the west, the warsong clan founding more and more outposts in the east, as well as the satyr becoming more active again.

Any elements returning from earlier games or the RPG?
Plenty! The barrow dens, the dungeon where the wardens and druids of the claw were found in WCIII, has been added to the game. All of the ancients that didn't appear in WoW, such as the ancient of wonders and the tree of life, are also included in the game. Besides the silverwing sentinels, there are the sentinel groups faced during the orc campaign; the moonhunters, shadowleaves, nightblades and starseekers. The sentinel groups each have their own style of doing things, and as a result, their bases can differ quite a bit. The valley of beasts from the RPG returns, as the place where Malorne fell during the war of the ancients, and the goldcrest mine also appears.



I refuse to ask more questions. Let the other mortal fools here ask some

 

Drie, are you planning on making a game based on warcraft lore or what?

 

not planning to, no. Copyright violations and all that jizz.

Still, thinking up is fun.

 

Why don't you cook up a script and mail it to blizzard? If it was well-polished you could get yourself a contract...

 

Blagh, story is currently being refised, and I almost finished my Kalimdor map. I'm considering scaling down the world to the point where only Kalimdor is included in the initial release. All the region maps I drew to get the feeling had quite a large scale, and I'd like the keep the high level of detail.

As far as game mechanisms go, I'm considering removing the standard melee attack mechanism in favor of a melee attacks mechanism. Scroll mouse to select your base attack move(think lunge, horizontal cut, swipe, rend, hamstring etc.), click to execute. It'd be a bit complicated, but also add a lot of depth to melee combat, allowing for different combat styles and different weapons to have different moves. It would also increase the difference between spellcasting and melee fighting a lot, even control wise, with spellcasters using the action bar and melee fighters using special techniques in other ways (see the wow - attack list for examples).

 

I'm still not sure about the size of the world. The yellow voice in my head says yes, while the red one says no.

Another pitch and new feature:

"This is not a setting where there are a few bands of bandits and some lone beasts, no. This is a world of empires, and we seek to reflect that in the encounters. There will be massive hostile cities, with organised defenses and actual battle-plans. Siege weaponry and powerful defensive spells will stand ready to counter attacks. Dungeon delving is for the low level players. YOU topple empires!"

 

So players will be able to capture entire cities?

 

yup.

 

Does this include the main cities, similar to Stormwind and Ironforge in WoW?

 

yup. We're aiming for cities that can be completely wiped out. Some faction quests will even involve destroying cities.

 

That reminds me. For research reasons, I have been taking a look at the RPG: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1024070-ijffdrie-presents-lore-flubs-and-niggles-of-the-WoW-RPG . As you can read, the books I read did not hold up well, though there are a few interesting ideas.