In a series of interviews, Experimental Game Team Lead Software Engineer Orlando Salvatore, Lead Producer Ray Bartos, and Associate Game Director detail the inspiration and inner workings of WoW's new 60-player Battle Royale Plunderstorm event!
Gamespot Interview — Inspiration
In the interview with Gamespot, the developers note that Plunderstorm was inspired by various battle royales, MOBAs, fighters, and RTS games including Blizzard's own Warcraft 3.
«When you think back to Warcraft 3, one thing that's super cool about Warcraft 3 was going around to the different camps and leveling your hero,» Salvatore said. «And level 10 was a major point to get to…What's super cool is harkening back to that. It is a PvP game but there's also PvE elements. Leveling up gives you health, leveling up gives you more damage on your abilities, you can find better loot in different places on the map. You can go around and find these camps of monsters and help level up your character each game. It kind of harkens back to that.»
Arathi Highlands wasn't Blizzard's first choice for Plunderstorm, but they wanted to return to a familiar old world zone. Arathi's history as a contested PvP zone helped narrow it down.
«We wanted this experience to have a familiar space in that sense so that players didn't feel with all the experimentation it wasn't too jarring in the sense of the playspace,» Bartos said. «The playspace still kind of feels familiar, they still have a strong understanding of it, and then we layered the experimental effort on top.»
New Spells and Abilities
It is also revealed that there are a total of 10 offensive and 10 utility spells for players to find and experiment with; each spell has four ranks which are upgraded by acquiring multiple copies of the lower-ranked versions.
«It's exciting to be able to take what WoW is so good at, which is that second-to-second combat, and really break the rules of what's there,» Salvatore said. «That's one of the main reasons
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