World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Darkshore Q&A

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm designers Luis Barriga and Craig Amai have fielded a bunch of questions about “the changes to Darkshore’s landscape, the fate of Auberdine, and the challenges of redesigning an old-world zone from the ground up” in a new in-house Q&A over on the official website.

Q. What goes into redesigning a zone like this?

A. Redesigning Darkshore required much more work than we originally anticipated. This was one of the first zones we tackled that centered on the effects of the Cataclysm, so we started out with the modest goal of adding a few themed quests and improving the general flow of the zone. As we piled on the visual changes, though, we soon discovered that a lot more manpower was needed to generate content that correctly reflected Darkshore’s new landscape and lore.

Q. What was the most challenging aspect about implementing these changes?

A. At first we thought that we would be able to work with the majority of the original quests in Darkshore, but most of them just didn’t make sense when viewed in the context of the zone’s new storyline and direction. For example, chasing after corrupted wildlife and investigating washed-up threshers would seem out of place when everything around you is being ravaged by natural disasters, elementals, naga… and worse. Reaching the realization that we would basically have to scrap all of the old content and start from scratch — and then actually bringing that plan to fruition — was probably the hardest part of the process.