Art and Narrative Interview with Hirumaredx - Visualizing The War Within

wowhead.com:

In an interview with Hirumaredx, Lead Visual Development Artist Gabriel Gonzalez and Senior Narrative Designer Abigail Manuel discussed the art, story, world building, and zones coming in The World Within!

Visual Class Fantasy

• One of the goals for tier sets in the War Within is to lean back into the class fantasy of visual design.

• Like tier sets, the core fantasy of hero talents is to add another layer of flavor to the class and taking the fiction of the character to a logical extension — not just a Druid, but a special type of Druid that player can get excited about connecting to.

• In terms of visual, each one is intended to double down on their specific theme, such as the Chosen of Elune Balance Druids having light beams upon light beams and more light beams!

Mount Customizations

• The Delve rewarded Gyrocopter is the only customizable mount current coming in The War Within, but the team is always lookin for additional opportunities to do more.

Underground Zone Diversity

• One of the primary concerns in most expansions is how to create distinction between new zones, particularly this time around when they're mostly underground. It's especially hard when you consider 20 years of zones in World of Warcraft, so making a completely different type of environment can be a challenge.

• They haven't done many full-sized caverns though, aside from the recent Zaralek Cavern, so they're focusing on leaning into the stories and subverting expectations of what an underground zone can be. For example, Hallowfall has a giant crystal up in the sky conveniently acting like a proxy sun, which is just one way they can inject interesting identities and push the boundaries of what might be considered a conventional cavern.

• Varied architecture also helps; the Nerubian zone isn't just a whole bunch of Ziggurats.

• Size wise, the zones are meant to be relatively similar in size to those of Dragonflight, with interesting landmarks like that giant crystal