After nearly eight months delayed by controversies and COVID-19,World of Warcraft:Eternity’s Endis almost here. The patch will take players to the ancient realm of Zerith Mortis to pursue the Jailer in an effort to stop him from using its esoteric machina to destroy all creation. Serving as the conclusion to theShadowlandsstory,Eternity’s Endalso aims to provide closure for several lingering story arcs, most notably for Sylvanas Windrunner, who until recently had been serving as the Jailer’s enforcer. Sylvanas in particular will be called upon to answer for her many crimes done at the Jailer’s behest, even if she helps players defeat him and save Anduin Wrynn from his clutches.
Game Rant spoke withWorld of Warcraftlead narrative designer Steve Danuser and lead encounter designer Morgan Day about the impending patch. World building in theShadowlandsis a complex thing, and both developers shared their experiences in designing a story in an otherworldly place, including design philosophies and vehicles they used to do so. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Q: In the cinematic “Shattered Legacies,” it seemed Sylvanas’ will was not entirely her own for as far back as her death inWarcraft 3. His dialogue inChains of Dominationalso suggested Kel’Thuzad was also in league with the Jailer sinceWarcraft 3as well. Do you think tying their accomplishments, motivations, and goals to the Jailer invalidated their characters or their free will?
Danuser: I think an important distinction I want to call out in the question, with some of the revelations implying Sylvanas’s will was not her own. That’s definitely not the case. We’ve shown that her soul was divided at the moment of her death, and a part of it went into the Jailer’s menagerie of souls we saw duringChains of Domination, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have choice throughout her life, like when she was resurrected and became the Banshee Queen, leader of the Forsaken. She made choices that were her own, and ultimately she did come in contact with the Jailer, and she did decide to go in league with him, but she was not mind-controlled, she was not manipulated, she made those choices herself. She went in with eyes wide open. Next month, we’ve got theSylvanas novel coming out, and that will delve into her history and show some of those moments in greater detail, so I encourage you and other fans to look for that, because I think that will have a treasure trove of events, both from when Sylvanas was alive and some from after her death.
Regardless, in the game, we have shown that she has these two fragments of her soul: the one that was the Banshee Queen that we’ve seen her through the expansions and made the choices that she did, including the burning of Teldrassil, and then we’ve now seen this other fragment of her that was kept away. That was theRanger-General portion we see represented in the cinematicthat’s showing the battle going on inside her mind. The fate of Sylvanas, and the conclusion of her story arc, will involve how she can reconcile these two pieces. Because they can’t stay two separate things, they need to be one Sylvanas, and she has to come to terms with that. That will involve confronting the things she has done, as we saw hints of in that cinematic, and also trying to find, if she can, a path forward, and what shape that might take. We’ve got an entire chapter of our Covenant campaign storyline–the final epilogue chapter–that we didn’t put on PTR specifically because we wanted players to experience it in the game, rather than seeing it laid out for them. That final chapter will culminate a lot of those choices and the fate that she has to face.
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When it comes to Kel’Thuzad and the Jailer, while we have talked about him being in league with the Jailer, the biggest part of that was during the events of Maldraxxus after he had gone to the Shadowlands, afterhis final defeat on Azeroth. He was someone who was touched by the power of Death, the power of Domination. He was in a position of power, and he was very ambitious, and that is why Maldraxxus was an ideal landing spot for him. But, we also saw Sire Denathrius and the Venthyr reached out to him, and drew him into that conspiracy. They funded him with anima, which was in short supply due to the drought. He wormed his way into the leadership structure of Maldraxxus, rising up to whisper into the ear of Margrave Sin’dane and manipulate her and Margrave Gharmal to attack the other houses, and incite this civil war in Maldraxxus. That was the point in which Kel’Thuzad was embroiled into the greater conspiracy. While he may have been able to have hints of a darker power earlier on, those choices we saw him make duringWarcraft 3and some of his machinations there? Those were his choices. Things that he did. It’s just that those choices put him in an ideal position to be brought into this conspiracy. The Jailer was working with his closest ally, Denathrius, to put these pieces in motion. The Jailer was confined; Denathrius was the one on the outside. He had his Nathrezim as his agents to architect a lot of these plots and plans.
Q: Tyrande is one of the most noteworthy and outspoken of those who seek justice from Sylvanas, but can you tell us what other characters might play a role in deciding her fate, such as representatives of the Forsaken?
Danuser: Without giving away specific spoilers, one of the things we did want to show in this final chapter was some of the people, both in positive and negative ways,Sylvanas has crossed paths with throughout her life and her existence, and the things she has done in the course of the war, in opening the way to the Shadowlands, and so forth. We wanted to put some moments in there of reflection on the part of some of these characters. So, there will be some nice things you may interact with. Some of those characters get their gossips, and in some cases, there are some “Stay Awhile and Listen” conversations that will be available during that chapter that will again give some depth and more personal takes on what’s going on.
We acknowledge that Sylvanas has had tons of interactions with many characters throughout the course ofWoWand its various expansions, and we can’t tell in-depth stories about all of them in one Covenant chapter, but we did try to at least acknowledge a lot of those key individuals that have had particularly meaningful interactions with her and give players a little sense of being able to chat with them and hear some of their perspectives on some of these events.
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Q: Anduin has been put under a lot of stress since becoming King of Stormwind, and had been faltering in his struggle against darkness as seen inShadows Rising. Are players going to see physical, emotional, or psychological scars of that stress, compounded with his traumatic time under the Jailer’s control?
Danuser: Certainly these events, not only the things that have happened inShadowlands, but from Legion onward, when Anduin had to step up after the brutal way in which his father was killed by Gul’dan, and was thrust upon the throne to follow this great king who had done all of these heroic things, and Anduin was a very different kind of person. He had to learn a lot, and adapt a lot, and then we went right from the Legion threatening to overrun all of Azeroth to a war that broke out that divided the world and pitted Horde against Alliance in some of the most vicious ways that they had ever fought one another. Anduin had to really rise up and a lot of thecinematics that we had duringBattle for Azeroth–the Saurfang line–really showed Anduin’s struggles with what he was going through, and how much it hurt him to have to fight that war, but also knowing it was necessary–it was what a king must do. And so he struggled for a long time with that duality of him wanting to be a person of peace, and wanting to unite people who have struggles, versus having to be a soldier and a commander.
Now, going through what he has done with being dominated by the Jailer, which is another whole set of trauma on top of that. So dealing with those repercussions is not something that he is going to be able to resolve simply. If he does manage to get freed from that Domination, it’s not that he goes back to being normal and free of this weight. It’s going to be with him for a very long time, and we will see the repercussions of that being carried outinEternity’s Endand in content beyond.
Day: One of the other awesome opportunities this story with Anduin has afforded us with the Sepulcher of the First Ones–theRaid we will be releasing withEternity’s End–is that for the first week, Anduin is actually the final boss of the raid. Right when it comes out, you won’t be able to progress past Anduin. We talked a lot about that when we were developing the story ofEternity’s Endand the Sepulcher. In any other raid inWorld of Warcraft, Anduin could be an end boss in his own right. So, not only did we approach it that way from the encounter design perspective, but also from the narrative perspective too.
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There’s a lot of incredible, yet-to-be-seen events that will play out when youencounter Anduin within the Sepulcher, but a major motivator with that decision was how we resist the Jailer’s Domination. We’ve seen how powerful he is. We can’t just go guns blazing in there toe-to toe, we know how that’s going to end. The opportunity to come face-to-face and fight Anduin within the raid as well as the opportunity to talk to him afterwards–if we’re successful, I don’t want to spoil anything there–but there’s obviously some information to glean from that.
Q: There are a lot of characters that haven’t had the chance to show up who have ties to major players inShadowlands, like Velen, Malfurion, and the Windrunner sisters. What insight is there into the decision to not have those characters appear in the story? Might we see some of them before the end of 9.2?
Danuser: One of the things we did right from the beginning of planning theShadowlandsstory is talk about what characters we wanted to feature most and involve in the story.Warcrafthas such a wide and varied cast of characters, and fans have great reason to love so many of them, that it is natural that depending on who is playing they might have different opinions. “Oh, I’d really like to that character there.” The team felt the same way; we all had discussions and debates, like this character versus that character. Ultimately, we wanted to decide on a cast that we really felt was pivotal to these events and who would have certain perspectives that might be unexpected in ways.
Choices like Draka, for example. That’s someone that at first blush might not have come to mind as, “Oh, that would be a really cool character to feature in theShadowlandsstory,” butshe was an ideal personification for Maldraxxusand what that afterlife represented. It was about making some choices we felt would be expected, and some choices we felt would be a twist on those things. There’s only so much time to feature characters, so we had to make some choices and say, “Okay, we’ll let some of these other ones wait on the sidelines for now.”
And, I don’t want to give any spoilers, but that said, there will be a few of thoseadditional characters that might make an appearance in those final moments of theShadowlandsstory, and some people you might expect to hear from, as well as a few you wouldn’t be expected to hear from. That’s part of the fun of giving a story an epilogue chapter–you get the opportunity to pepper in some of those characters that didn’t feature the main storylines, but who still might have some interesting perspectives. So that was a lot of fun to do, and is something we look forward to doing as we get those opportunities in the future.
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Q: Several characters from Azeroth have come to Oribos through the portals to Stormwind and Orgrimmar, like Sunwalker Dezco and Ol’ Emma. What effect would access to the Shadowlands have on the people of Azeroth? Could it cause crises of faith, since you could just walk through and sell bread to people in the afterlife, or seek out your lost loved ones?
Danuser: That’s certainly an interesting thing to think about. That’s not one of those main-line stories we put a lot of emphasis on. We have these character arcs that we really wanted to set up and showthrough the course of theShadowlandsstory. It’s always interesting–the game is in a way, one representation of this world that exists, called Azeroth, that would be much larger, and have much more to it than we can ever represent in just one game, or one book, or anything like that. We’re just showing this slice that is most appropriate to the kind of game thatWorld of Warcraftis. But as you muse and think about the world, you can think about, “What is the experience of that average person who might have just had their cheese store in Stormwind, or a weapons shop in Orgrimmar, whatever they’re doing, and hear about these fantastic places the heroes of the world have gone to and fought for?”
Despite the fact that, in a gameplay sense, these portals are gathered together in rooms and things like that, it’s not like that cheese shop vendor can just stroll anywhere and go through these things. They would have to askthe Death Knightsto go through, and the Death Knights probably want to verify average citizens aren’t in danger of going through portals and that sort of thing. But I think it is interesting that, if we had the opportunities to explore those ground-level, personal stories of what it means for someone to get caught up in these events. Like for example, in one of the campaign chapters inShadowlands, where you went back to Azeroth and saw the poor farmer in Redridge getting struck down and him going into the afterlife; that was one of those little moments, so we do like to do that from time to time when there’s an opportunity to do so.
Day: Do people in the Shadowlands eat bread, Steve?
Danuser: People, Morgan, have to eat bread, so they eat bread if they’re in the Shadowlands, yes.
Q: Some of the recipes in the Shadowlands certainly are interesting. How did you come up with some of those?
Day: When you mentioned the elements of world building in the Shadowlands–that’s why I made that joke–those are the types of considerations the team does think very deeply about. The world building, like, “What is food like in the Shadowlands?This is the Afterlives– do they eat bread?” Those are the actual questions we spend a lot of time discussing and having conversations over. That element of world building we love to build up where we can, but like Steve said, there’s so much we want to explore that some of those, like “Can the bread guy walk through the portal?” We don’t always have the opportunity to answer those questions.
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Danuser: To Morgan’s point, I had many conversations with the professions folks as they were looking at food recipes to make, and they were like, “What can we do with this!?” So we had a lot of fun discussions, like, if these Brokers in Oribos, for example, are giving you some food recipes, they don’t know what mortal food should be like. They might know some of the ingredients, but they don’t know how they should be combined, or any of that stuff, so we had some fun making some very off-beat recipes that, in their own way, tell the story of coming into this land where living mortals were not supposed to walk. So, it was a great opportunity to show that everyone on the team is a storyteller, not just the narrative team or the quest team; it’s everyone working together to infuse story into everything they do, and that’s one of the hallmarks of what makesworld building inWoWreally stand out and resonate with fans year after year after year.
Q: In Battle for Azeroth, players were spoiled with several pre-rendered cutscenes featuring Saurfang, Anduin, and Sylvanas, butShadowlandshasn’t had any since the battle on Icecrown and a short one at its launch. Can fans look forward to another one, either with the conclusion ofEternity’s Endor with what is coming afterwards?
Danuser: Cinematics are one of the tools in our storytelling toolbox. We always attempt to use those to the best opportunity that we can, and how we use them really depends on the type of story that we’re telling. So,in the case ofShadowlands, we really wanted to have that moment of the sky shattering, Sylvanas holding the helm–Will she put it on or won’t she?–and the tearing of it being a cool twist there. We really felt that the pre-render was the best vehicle for telling that super high-fidelity moment, and seeing the sky break like glass was just super awesome. But that said, the other type of cinematics we have in game, our real-time cutscenes, our in game cinematics that are kind of the in-between of high-fidelity cinematics versus real-time renders, we’ve done a lot more and evolved those technologies as well to reach a higher level of quality.
In our previous update,Chains of Domination, at the very end of the campaign, there was a moment where we were in game in Korthia and we interacted with Anduin’s locket that he dropped in the raid, and we saw the cinematic models of Anduin and Sylvanas interacting in a new kind of real-time cinematic that uses that higher-fidelity content. That was our first foray into it, and it proved very successful, so that’s another type of cinematic storytelling that is now one of the tools that we can use. And you will see some of those types of cinematics used inEternity’s End’sconclusion storyline. Those are really great because they allow the characters of the world to be represented in high-fidelity, but also show your character in those scenes as well, because now you can be in those real-time scenes with these high-fidelity models. It’s something that we’re really excited about; Terran Gregory and his team put a ton of work into making that technology able to happen, and we’re excited to see where that cinematic storytelling continues to evolve in the future.
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Q: Any final thoughts aboutShadowlands,Eternity’s End, or what may be coming next forWorld of Warcraft?
Day: I can’t speak to future spoilers, although there was already information about a9.2.5 update that we’re working on with cross-faction play. I know there’s been a lot of buzz and excitement in the community around that. Like Steve mentioned with some of the epilogue ideas and some of these characters, there’s more to come, but forEternity’s Enditself, I personally am extremely excited for–well, all of it–but the raid I think is going to be fantastic. We’re releasing the final three bosses of the raid having never been seen by the community. That’s not something we’ve done for a really long time. We went through great lengths to make sure we were testing and ensuring the high-quality bar that our players have come to expect from those final raid bosses, but I’m really thrilled and excited to see how the community reacts to that.
Also, Zerith Mortis itself went through a tremendous amount change via feedback, especially on my side of things–on the system side–there was a tremendous amount of iteration with things like reputation, where you get player power from, and the outdoor world and how that’s paced out, as well as things like flying.We took a new approach at flyingwith this update, through a ton of community feedback, and I feel like this is going to be one of our most exciting updates.
Danuser: For me, what I love aboutEternity’s Endin a story sense, it gives us the best of both worlds. We get to go to this really fantastic place that’s unlike any we’ve seen before and learn some hints at cosmic mysteries that tease out some potential future paths that may go well into the future, while also getting that very Azerothian closure to some of these character arcs for people we’ve followed and fought alongside or fought against for years and years, so it combines things that are new and fantastic, with things that feel very familiar and personal to us asWarcraftplayers. The team is really excited about bringingEternity’s Endto life, and we really can’t wait for everyone to be able to dive in and see these things for themselves.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlandsis available on PC.Eternity’s Endreleases on February 22.
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