World of Warcraft is an old game, and one that may be due for a makeover. With the recent revamping of Silvermoon in Midnight, should other noteworthy cities or zones have resigns as well? As a matter of fact, Blizzard is already open to the idea of a Stormwind and Orgrimmar redesign, if the new Silvermoon is well-received by fans.
Possible Stormwind and Orgrimmar Redesign
It’s no surprise that updates to WoW’s older zones continue to pop up from time to time, but even more recently, as we learn more about The Last Titan. Recently, in an interview with PC Gamer, Associate Game Director Paul Kubit and Manager for Visual Development Gabriel Gonzalez hint at a Stormwind and Orgrimmar redesign could be coming in the future:
“It was a little scary, honestly, to go back into tackle that zone again,” says Gonzalez regarding Silvermoon and the Ghostlands, given their nostalgia-drenched position within the Burning Crusade. “Are we going to make the right choices, visually? Are we going to change it too much? Are people going to feel like we’ve taken something away from them?”
As a matter of fact, Gonzalez admits that “most parts of the city, it was just smoke and mirrors. There were a lot of parts of that city that just were not there.” That’s not too strange to hear—when Cataclysm rebuilt much of the game’s two base kingdoms for flying mounts, there were a ton of zones (previously only accessible via out-of-bounds glitches) that were flat, featureless planes.
Even without that motivation, though, Kubit states that this is a sign of greater things to come: “We’re really anxious to see how players respond,” he says, “If it’s positive, I think it opens up a bunch more storytelling opportunities.” He then tells Heather that reimaginings for the major cities of the Alliance and the Horde—Stormwind and Orgrimmar, respectively—are an example of something they’d like to tackle.
Updating the Old World
We know that updates to older zones are planned for future content updates, as Blizzard has previously mentioned that Northrend is getting a redesign in The Last Titan Expansion. But updates to older zones, cities, and areas are always tricky. With Cataclysm, many hardcore fans didn’t enjoy several of the zone revamps, which in turn has partially fueled interest in playing Classic.
Likely the best approach for handling stuff like this is to listen to the community as much as possible or collect a ton of feedback. Hopefully, we get some respectful updates to the old world in the coming years, while letting players return to the older versions whenever they like.
