| Browse these pages: | Backstory Overview | Cinematic and Storytelling | Demon Hunter Intro | The Broken Isles |
| Val'sharah | Stormheim | Azsuna | Highmountain | |
| Suramar | End-Game Systems | Dungeons & Raids |
Creating the World: Stormheim
Julian: Alright, Stormheim. This is one of our key inspiration pieces for Stormheim here. Stormheim has this rugged natural beauty to the highlands, and the deeper veins; but it is the land itself super-dangerous, and treacherous land; and it is that treacherous nature of the landscape itself that really closely embodies the spirit of the vrykul that call this place home.
Let’s take a look at the in-game map for Stormheim. It is on the other side of the continent, and it represents a good portion of the east coast of the Broken Isles.
The Vrykul
Julian: After an awesome intro scenario that both factions take part in simultaneously, we are going to come into Stormheim, and pick up on the story of the Vrykul — that left Northrend thousands of years ago, way before the events of Wrath of the Lich King.
They came here in search of their true gods. We are going to compete against the Vrykul god king Skarvald, and you seek to get access to the Halls of Valor.
We are going to dig deep into the origins of the Kvaldir and the Valkyr; and we are also getting access to Hellheim, and the Halls of Valor — easily two of the best dungeons we have ever done (an Ion is going to take us through those with a bit of more detail later on).
There is a range of new Vrykul to meet throughout Stormheim. We refer to these guys as Mystic Vrykul. The guys are religious zealots, and masters of rune magic.
As I mentioned, we are going to take a deep look at the valkyr, and there is a number of Valkyr to meet here. The one you see onscreen here is one of the new Ascendant Valkyr models, which you are going to meet within the Halls of Valor.
This is some concept work for the vrykul god king Skarvald, and here we look at his in-game model. You can see Skarvald is a brutal warrior king. He has been juiced up by his newfound Legion allies, and you are going to cross paths with this guy several times.
We are also going to introduce you to a fledgling new dragonflight known as the storm dragons. The storm dragons make their lairs and their homes within the mountain peaks of both Stormheim and Suramar.
I will hand it back to Gary to take a look at details of Stormheim.
Stormheim
Gary: Since the Vrykul are the main inhabitants of Stormheim, we wanted the zone to feel edgy and bold and sorta larger than life. After all, this is a stronghold of the vrykul, so we wanted it to feel big, and have that strength of the Vrykul.
So we created this concept. This is another one of our foundation pieces. From this piece, our guys can start to work on the zone. Look at these great fall colors, and the big edginess of the cliffs. This is a piece that we can use to start to build the zone.
We even start to explore with these different colors, the different pine trees, different yellows and their sillhouettes.
This piece is our piece that we use to do our environment, so that we can see the relationship between our yellow trees and our interesting pines.
From here were can create the established buildings of the Vrykul. So here are the established structures. These are the camps that we have seen with the vrykul before. These are permanent structures. After all, it is a very sacred land for the vrykul. Full of ancient ruins, and lots of mystery.
Here is a video of our latest version of this zone.
| Browse these pages: | Backstory Overview | Cinematic and Storytelling | Demon Hunter Intro | The Broken Isles |
| Val'sharah | Stormheim | Azsuna | Highmountain | |
| Suramar | End-Game Systems | Dungeons & Raids |
