The current update from Blizzard Entertainment reveals the game development team took over 15 years to diversity the ethnic population of World of Warcraft. This fact was given out by Patrick Magruder and Michael Bybee, the game’s senior producer, and lead gameplay engineer.
Asked by gaming news agency Eurogamer during the BlizzCon event, Bybee mentioned that one of the first things they needed to consider was figuring where they needed to spend their resources on. The characters and the art was one of their most significant considerations and had to make decisions on those matters.
The lead gameplay engineer also added several expansions backed the development, which provided HD resolutions to every character model within the game. This update brought the decision to notch higher but took a significant cut on the game’s resources.
Bybee reiterated that this made sense, considering the dev team did not just want to slap characters with new skins and declare them diversity. And because the studio is bent in providing quality gaming, they actually modeled the faces of the characters based on the particular ethnicity they portrayed.
The dev team was motivated to ensure the characteristics of each figure made the game sensible and realistic in terms of their ethnic backgrounds. Bybee also added that it took the studio some time to make everything right, but at the same time wanted to do things correctly.
Senior Producer Patrick Magruder agreed with Bybee’s statement and explained how the dev team has to re-composite the facial structure of each character to reflect their ethnicities. He added that these changes were not only done to the human characters but also all the other races in WoW.
So, not only is the game reflexive of the characters but also on the real ethnicities of the players. To say the least, it took the dev team behind the game 15 years to make everything right.
These changes are also heading to the newly installed Shadowlands expansion, which was also announced during the BlizzCon event. The new Torghast dungeon also has some exciting new features that would surely get every WoW crazy.
World of Warcraft gamers would find the new dungeon exciting as it changes every time they visit the location. The game will also get updates on the starting area with an improved leveling system. This might mean getting your level straight back to 50, helping you make the meaningful game progress.
