By Zoe Guo
Blizzard announced the final patch for “World of Warcraft: Shadowlands: Eternity’s End” on November 12th after the last expansion was released almost one year ago.
As many players may expect, this update provides players with more gaming experiences. Many novel features appear in the latest expansion, such as an ancient realm called Zereth Mortis, where everything obeys the physical rule of the real world. Besides a new area to explore, a cypher system is another new feature, which presents the expectations of developers to create “something unique, that players haven’t seen before.” Players will learn to decode a music-like language to complete the tasks. The main storyline also reaches a climax. Players will confront Zovaal, the elusive Jailer and ruler of the Maw, to stop his scheme.
The new realm, ZerethZerith Mortis, is created by the First Ones. The purpose of this realm is to build the afterworld. In this realm, a group of denizens called the Automa are helping to create everything exiting in Shadowlands. The cypher is a language used by the Automa, and it was created by The First Ones. Although it is incomprehensible to mortal races, players can learn to decode the cypher by finishing new tasks with a humanoid automa sidekick.
While the elusive Jailer, Zovaal, has ruled the Maw, his desire to rule the whole world makes him proceed to Zereith Mortis. His purpose is to change the rule of reality. To stop his malevolent will, players need to fight with the forces of Zovaal in the Sepulcher in a new raid. Before combating Zovaal, players need to defeat Anduin and find out how to defend Jailer's terrifying Domination magic.
To know more details, please see the interview below. The game director, Patrick Dawson, and the chief level designer, Maria Hamilton answer some questions about the design of “Eternity’s End.”
Q1: “Will patch 9.2 be the end of Shadowland and the beginning of the next chapter?”
A1: “We designed to end the story with three chapters, so the story of Shadowland will end in patch 9.2. As for the information of the future chapters, we will disclose it afterward.”
Q2: “Will the secrets of Sylvanas be explained in the new raid or the following plot of patch 9.2?”
A2: “We will disclose the reasons and motivations for her decisions and explain the expression she showed previously. We hope players will like our design.”
Q3: “Is there any difficulty or any interesting story when designing the cypher?”
A3: “The challenge we face is the designing of cypher’s sound. We hope to make it sound like music, so we contemplate whether each symbol should correspond to a sound. Afterward, we decided to design it like the concept of music notation. However, we encounter another problem. For players whose hearing is not well, they will need to play the game with an aid. Therefore, we think about how to deliver the correct messages to these players through aid. These are what we consider when designing the cypher.”
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