Design Director Simon Finch and Lore Lead Nick McDowell reveal some of their perplexing puzzles and lush new locations in a Zones roundtable with community members

There’s a grey zone above the Droughtlands. Are there any plans for it?

McDowell: This is the answer that no one ever wants to hear. Due to production constraints, a lot of great ideas that we have made in the past may not fit in. We designed out Planetouched Wilds and we had a great story there. With Storm Legion we’ve moved forward to another region. Will we go back? We might, but there’s equally a chance that we might go forward.  What our plans are for the design of the zone, for the general flow of it all, for the general consistency of what we’re going to create.

That might mean that the great part of Planetouched Wilds - the story of the warring Bahmi versus Mathosians, seeing where Aedraxis got his start in everything - might go untold. But we always want to deliver a nice, consistent experience with the expansion, and old zones and old plans don’t always fit into that. Even if we here cherish them a lot, and even if people really want to see the map uncovered. So that’s always a hard thing to do, but if we can fit it in, we would love to.

Finch: It’s definitely a possibility. We don’t have any immediate plans, let’s put it that way.

Are you going to use Dimensions to find talented artists and modelers that create amazing things?

Finch: It’s not actually a recruiting tool, but that’s not to say that it’s outside the realms of possibility if somebody does something amazing. We’re all very excited to see what players are going to do with Dimensions, we’re trying to make sure that we give them interesting places from the world to experiment in, and ensure that we give them plenty of fun items to play with. We saw some unbelievable stuff already in the short period of time that these things were available in beta, so once we go live I can’t imagine some of the things we’re going to see. I’m sure they’ll be amazing.

McDowell: Over time we’re going to produce more stuff, more Dimensions, and we’re going to see what players do with them. I look forward to seeing what game types they make, not that we’ve given that capability, but the players somehow find a way. No-one thought there’d be jumping puzzles right off the bat.

Finch: I’ll tell you, we were talking earlier about the fact that we have no lack of ideas. Well, the tome of ideas with respect to Dimensions on their own, is enormous.

I really liked the guy that just started spamming in beta for people to come and play his jump puzzle, and he was giving out prizes for people that actually did it. I thought that was just great, people actually creating gameplay.

McDowell: I really like the inns, and people asking to come take a break. I think that was a nice way of opening up their home, and providing a way for people to just meet each other. We spend a lot of our time constructing new ways for people to have epic adventures, and it’s nice to see that players also have other emotions, and will build things to do that.

Every time we put in an inn, we ask ourselves if we’re spending too much time, and wonder how much people are actually using this stuff. We can see now by player behavior what they are interested in, how many people go there, how many people go to dance parties, how many people go to all this other stuff. I like the hivemind of the players showing us what types of things they enjoy.

Finch: Dimensions are the perfect place to see the different types of players we have. We’ve got the decorators, we’ve got the role-players, and we’ve got the people who create the crazy jump puzzle. Some want a Dimension with absolutely nothing in it so they can start from scratch; others want a Dimension with a cool building that they can decorate. It’s really lovely to see the variety of stuff.

What is the one thing that you really enjoyed about this final phase of development?

Finch: Giving players more of what they want. We have some of the most fun, passionate players.

I was quietly fishing just the other day, in Granite Falls, and there was this couple of role-players who obviously knew the lore inside and out. I was just really enjoying the story I was hearing as they were having dinner together. They were telling stories, talking about their past, and what Ascension was like to them.

To have that kind of passion about what we have created was just so exciting. And you guys too: I want to get all the Shinies, I’ve got to do all the achievements, I want to do every raid...

McDowell: We want to experience your unfinished zone!

Finch: Exactly! The most exciting thing is what’s going to happen on Tuesday, and the anticipation of our players getting to enjoy all this new content we’ve created, I think that is what I’m most excited about.

McDowell: I was most excited about writing scene chewing, glorious monologues. And insane things, there’s a whole section that I’m not going to give any more clues about, where there is just insanity that made the water epic feel very rational.

As we wrapped up the discussion, we were also given some vital details about the Storm Legion launch. The servers will be taken down at 4PM GMT, 11AM EST, 8AM PST on Tuesday 13th November, with the client patch becoming available shortly afterwards.  We’re told that recently updated clients will have a relatively small update, but older clients and DVD installations will need to download 2-3 GB of content. 

Once again, huge thanks to Simon Finch and Nick McDowell for taking the time to speak to us.  

Gareth “Gazimoff” Harmer, Staff Writer