Blizzard has confirmed that WoW Classic’s Season of Discovery isn’t intended to offer “any sort of alternate history for World of Warcraft,” but rather to act as “found photographs” that offer more depth to what’s already there.
The developer has held another Community Council live chat, which sees a select group of World of Warcraft fans given free rein to ask Blizzard about the state of the game. One latecomer has ended up asking Blizzard whether or not the story of Season of Discovery will explore “alternative storylines” from other Warcraft games, such as Hearthstone.
“Early on in Season of Discovery development, we met with Chris Metzen to talk about the narrative in the season,” senior game producer Josh Greenfield replies. “In that meeting, we mutually agreed not to treat Season of Discovery as any sort of alternate history for World of Warcraft.”
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Greenfield goes on to say that Metzen described Season of Discovery’s narrative approach as “found photographs.” That means you’re finding out little bits of information about characters and locations that flesh them out further rather than “change characterizations, motivations, or reframe any storylines in a major way.”
“The way I’ve described this to people is this; say you are going through family photos and find a picture of your parents when they are very young on vacation in Italy,” Greenfield continues.
“You realize you never knew they traveled in their youth. Does knowing this now change your relationship with your parents or how you view them as people? Probably not, but it’s just a fun detail you now know that you didn’t before.
“That’s what we’ve tried to do when touching any established lore characters or storylines. Simply create a situation where you get to learn about some other adventure that these established characters were part of that maybe didn’t bubble up in a novel or in-game story previously.”
WoW Classic’s Season of Discovery essentially acts as Classic Plus. On the run-up to Blizzcon, plenty of fans had their own ideas as to what that should entail – a delight for Blizzard – but the common thread through it all is Vanilla WoW with some meaningful changes thrown in to create a fresh experience.
At the time of writing, though, those changes are pointed toward gameplay – like a rune that lets you tank as a mage. Creating an alternative storyline for World of Warcraft runs the risk of dividing people into opposing camps between WoW Classic and World of Warcraft over what story they like more, even if one is the true one. The WoW Classic idea up until now has remained to visit old expansions with new tweaks without messing with the core. While Season of the Discovery dabbles in the ‘what if,’ it appears the mission statement remains the same.
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