“We felt like starting off in a place that exemplified the more idyllic or traditional, ‘ah, here’s a place I can get into and feel like I can exhale’,” says Danuser. “There’s something noble and pure about this kind of afterlife.”
One quest has the player help a Tauren pass their trials; once he does, the Tauren transforms into a Kyrian himself. Why help a cool Tauren become a blue human? Isn’t that a betrayal of his fundamental nature?
There’s also room for Blizzard to introduce new plot threads from, well, anywhere. Everyone who dies in the World of Warcraft universe goes to the Shadowlands — even creatures from planets and zones we haven’t seen or heard about yet.
“Now the trick is, obviously, we don’t have character models for the 18-legged arthropods of Praxis-9,” jokes Danuser. But these souls will still show up as amorphous blobs in zones like Bastion, leading to an endless potential field of future possibilities hidden in an already otherworldly, mysterious zone.
