Insider interview, Blue posts, Wallpaper

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Insider Interview - Fury of the Sunwell and Beyond
An interview was posted on the official site yesterday, nothing really new but it's still a good read if you're interested in Sunwell and Wrath of the Lich King (and you probably are)
Quote from: Blizzard (Source)
Insider: Speaking of Wrath of the Lich King -- How is Northrend progressing? What are your feelings about going from the world style of Outland to the very different Northrend setting?
Chris Robinson: Coming up with the high concept look of The Burning Crusade was a great experience, and as a team we really enjoyed working in this style. For a designer, it’s always a breath of fresh air to have some new elements to play with. So naturally it’s great to now have this opportunity to go back to the more traditional elements of fantasy that comprise the look and feel of Wrath of the Lich King, even though this poses new challenges in and of itself. Northrend has a very Nordic, gothic fantasy feel that’s a departure from the wild scenescapes of Outland.

One way we’re attempting to reflect these new visual themes is by making sure all the item rewards of Northrend faithfully embody the new style. From the get-go, players will earn trophies of war that are very “Northrendy” -- for example, say, a two-handed axe that’s made of a dragon jaw, covered with spikes, leather, and other traditional materials. We want players to see the new gear and think, “Yeah, that guy’s been to Northrend.”

Insider: What sort of challenges are there in this artistic transition from The Burning Crusade to Wrath of the Lich King?
J. Allen Brack: [...] Another challenge was how to balance Northrend’s cold northern climate with the need for diverse environments. We can’t just cover everything in snow and ice, because players would get bored of that quickly. But if we approach the snow and the ice as environmental clues for the player, we can actually use it as a powerful storytelling tool. There’s a story arc that ties all the zones of the expansion together, and the snow becomes a visual component of this common theme. The relatively green and “temperate” starting areas will be fairly densely populated, but as the story progresses we expect players to get more spread out. By slowly adding more and more snow, we can enhance that growing sense of isolation and dread. It’s very much what Arthas must have experienced when he wandered the wastes of Northrend after destroying Mal’Ganis.

J. Allen Brack: [...] That reminds me of another example: the turtle boat. If you look at Northrend, the continent is shaped a little bit like a crescent, with the two starting zones, Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra, at the ends. There’s a port located in the middle of the coast between these zones, and we wanted to have an easy method for traveling between the zones. The method of transportation we settled on is a giant turtle with a deck mounted on top of its shell, very much like the turtles from Warcraft II. It’s simple, effective, grounded in Warcraft lore, but it’s also one of those light moments that are so important to create the iconic Warcraft feel.

For more details you can read the full interview on the official site




Item designs and color changes
If you've been reading this site for some time, you already know that there are tons of item recolors in the game files, Drysc explains why we're seeing so many of them lately.
Quote from: Drysc (Source)
Contrary to popular belief (?) designing a new item set does take a while. We usually use color shifts on the same designs to save time, the exception to that would be the arena sets where we want the items to specifically match the PvE counterparts. The choice to color shift is usually when an item isn't something that would benefit from having a unique model, usually a leveling item. In the case of the badge rewards I can see the reasoning to use color shifts for the level of investment taken to acquire them. Is buying an item with badges the same as clearing Black Temple? No, no not really. So, it isn't so horrible if a shift is used.

What I find odd is that in this particular case we seem to have gone against what would normally be shifted, which is the matching dungeon items, and instead shifted from a previous dungeon's/quest items. My only guess is that those shifts were already done, or the artists preferred them to the new design.

Now that the entirety of the art department's is focused completely on Li...




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