GDE: Dream of Creation, Verdant Plains zone

Call it build 7.0.0.21600

Welcome back to Game Design Exercise, where I try to write up an expansion to World of Warcraft as I would have done it, despite about three or four people total caring about what I post here! As I would have done it, if I had a thousand pairs of hands and a mountain of money to spend. Really, it’s my wish fulfillment fantasy, taking the best parts of various expansions and doing them in the context of the Emerald Dream. Like I said in the last post, I’m in a slightly resigned mood when it comes to these. In the time since the last post I’ve been thinking about various other design options. A Dishonored sequel about an Overseer who becomes the next Outsider! My original game idea about playing as a guild, which turns out to be a lot like Garrisons: the Game! Ultimately, all of those ideas are extremely unlikely to become anything more than ideas and with this one, at least I have a few more people reading it. So I might as well keep going.

Now, to end the rant, today we’ll embarking to the first zone of the expansion proper, Verdant Plains. Like in Warlords of Draenor, I decided to go with an Alliance/Horde split between starting zones. In part because I thought it worked, and in bigger part because I decided the entrances to the Emerald Dream become the racial mini-capitals for the new races. It would be like Alliance players entering the Cataclysm zones through Bilgewater Harbor. So today’s post is the beginning of the Alliance storyline, and involves several factions, including Greymane Crossover (a new Alliance reputation faction), Skettis Exiles (the arakkoa racial faction), a continuation of the Wild Hunt storyline and an introduction to a few new elements.

One step closer to the full ‘Dex

I have a certain respect for the mo’arg. The engineer dudes, not the beefy mooks. They’re smart, they’re dangerous and their appearance incites terror. When you see a mo’arg going at you, you know you’re in trouble. Sure, they’re going a little extreme with the whole “replacing body parts with machines” thing, but everyone has got their own little obsession. I must admit, mine is probably collecting. Not pixelated monsters in a tiny hand-held device, not cards or teddy bears – collecting people. The more varied and stranger their races, the better. Just seeing all kinds of creatures working together fills a certain, warped sense of collectorship in my mind. And I always wanted to have one of these – the mo’arg. I worked with, and fought, Sal’salabim so I know what they’re capable of. But only recently I got the chance to get one of them in my employ.