Browse these pages:Backstory OverviewCinematic and StorytellingDemon Hunter IntroThe Broken Isles
Val'sharahStormheimAzsunaHighmountain
SuramarEnd-Game SystemsDungeons & Raids

 

Legion World Content : Cinematic and Storytelling

Alex: So that leads us to the cinematic that you guys just saw during the opening ceremony. How about that cinematic guys? We got the Alliance in the house? YEA!

You know, I have seen that cinematic probably a 100 times, and we just showed it again and I got goosebumps for the 101th time. It’s amazing, and to think about it… maybe it’s because I know the story of Legion, I know what’s going to happen, and it excites me. Or maybe I am excited because I am excited for you all to get into Legion and find out the story for yourselves; but it strikes me that after working on Warcraft and WoW for almost 12 years now, that the game, the story, the world, the characters can still have a huge effect on me, and hopefully on you too; but I want to tell you something about the cinematic that you probably don’t know.

It’s the first time that we have created a cinematic that ties directly into the main story of the game. It’s a direct hand off in fact. With Legion, we felt like we really had an opportunity to take our storytelling to another level, and our incredibly talented cinematic team agreed and was eager to obligue.

 

Now clearly guys, we wanted to get you all super excited for the expansion. By the way, how do we do? Okay! I think we can check that one off the list. But we also wanted to highlight our greatest heroes, in their darkest hour, and paint a target on the most dominant threat of the universe: the Burning Legion; and in the middle of all of that kick off what we consider to be a really great Warcraft story.

So how does the Cinematic hand off into the game actually work? Well, that takes off to the Broken Shore. Where is the Broken Shore? That is a great question that somebody out there is thinking.

I am going to tell you where the Broken Shore is. Most importantly, the Broken Shore is ground zero for the Burning Legion invasion of Azeroth. The Legion invasion is coming directly from the Tomb of Sargeras, but this is also (equally as importantly) where we as Azeroth’s greatest champions meet up with Varian, Sylvanas, Jaina, Vol’jin, and the rest of the heroes of the Alliance and the Horde to face the Burning Legion.

This is that hands off point in the cinematic when we see Varian and Sylvanas on the shore. This is where we will begin our mission to erradicate the Burning Legion from Azeroth.

With that said, the Broken Shore is the springboard by which we establish the primary plot-points for the expansion, and get everyone on the same page moving forward.

Another thing to know. This time the boost experience is its own separate adventure. So what that means guys is that we can be a lot more consistent with the tuning of the Broken Shore, making things a little bit more challenging; and hopefully, a lot more fun.

What about the content structure? So we want to tell this humongous story with Legion, and we felt to really do it justice we needed to kinda up our game.

So with that said, the Broken Shore is actually a 40-players scenario split down the middle as two 20-player groups split between the Alliance and the Horde who are working in unison, synchronized to ascend up the Broken Shore towards the Tomb of Sargeras where they will face the ultimate evil in the universe, and find out what the fate of the world is.

blizzcon-2015-world-of-warcraft-world-content-panel-transcript-00121

 

So with that said, let’s take a quick look here at a demo of the Broken Shore. I do want to say guys that this is still super-super early. We have got a lot of work left to be done, a lot of iteration needs to still be going with this and to bid our time; but after this is over, Eric Maloof is going to come up and he’s going to knock your socks off with some Demon Hunter stuff.

Demon Hunter awesomeness, and that will be that. So BlizzCon, thank you so much. Let’s take a look at this video and here comes Eric after.

 

Browse these pages:Backstory OverviewCinematic and StorytellingDemon Hunter IntroThe Broken Isles
Val'sharahStormheimAzsunaHighmountain
SuramarEnd-Game SystemsDungeons & Raids