Taliesin & Evitel Zone Story and Art Interview with Maria Hamilton and Jordan Powers

wowhead.com:

In a deep dive interview into the zones of The War Within, Associate Design Director Maria Hamilton and Lead Prop Artist Jordan Powers discuss story and art design with Taliesin & Evitel!

Shorter Campaign, More Side Stories

• The main campaign itself is a little bit shorter than the past. The team invested more time into local zone stories with the expectation that players would do at least some of them along their leveling journey.
  
• They want players to understand the area and its characters more fully, but recognize that not everyone is as interested in the story or wants to quest the whole way to level 80, so the campaign covers the important beats, while the side stories can be skipped by players who aren't as interested in them.
  
• They're still tuning the experience rates, and there's a whole introduction players haven't experienced yet, alongside some additional parts at the end of the campaign either.
  

Making a Spider City

• Azj-Kahet was a fun challenge, building upon an already familiar race with new features. Putting themselves in the «shoes» of its inhabitants make them ask questions like how and why they live there, what they eat, where they sleep, and how they construct their environments.
  
• Being a race of arachnids, they wanted the city to feel like it was built for a race with multiple appendages. It feels somewhat alien and different from what we're used to; even tables and chairs should feel a little bit… off.
  
• It was fun to work on, but they have an arachnophobia mode for people who aren't as into the spiders too!
  
• The city is very Suramar-esque, but more otherworldly. Internally, they like to say there's «dark elegance» throughout the zone.
  

Cultural Storytelling and Seeding Stories

• The team made a conscious effort to focus more on the background of Mereldar and the Arathi, their founding, legends, and prophecies. This is a group of people who are at war all the time, and in Hallowfall, the team wanted to let players see what they're like