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Louisa was helping me take my Druid through some quests last night, and along the way, I decided to go get the Mallet of Zul’Farrak.

Now, for those of you who don’t know, in order to get the Mallet of Zul’Farrak, which is used for a quest to summon a boss later on, you have to go kill a Troll in the Hinterlands and take the Sacred Mallet from him, and then take the Mallet to the top of the troll city of Jintha’Alor, to an altar, and use the Mallet to make it even more awesome, or whatever. Jintha’Alor is this large city which is built sort of as huge teirs, one on top of the other, that climb the side of a mountain, with caves and things at the top. As we were running up the many, many stairs to reach the altar at the top, it occurred to me just how amazing and well structured most of the world of Warcraft is. From a designing standpoint, it’s mind boggling all the little details that add up to be used in the creation of such a location, which is really not much more than a brief pit-stop along the way to much grander locations. Sure, there are a couple of quests that take you to Jintha’Alor, but it is nowhere near as important as many other places that are less thought-out (at least, what I think of as ‘thought-out’).

For example, the Night Elves have a Villiage that is right on the edge of their capital city, Darnassus. Now, it’s called Rut’theran Village, but it consists of one raised, wooded platform with a flight master on it, one dock where a boat comes and goes between here and Auberdine, one Magic Teleporty Tree Thingum that warps you to the top of the island, and into the heart of Darnassus, and one House. One. Oh, and there are about 6 people that stand around the ‘village’ for you to talk to, but the two people in the house (which I don’t recall having any beds), start, and end, a sizable number of quests for a wide range of levels. It just doesn’t make any sense. It was like someone said: “We need a place for people to do some stuff that’s not right in the middle of the main city”, so they built ONE HOUSE.

You go back and look at the Troll city of Jintha’Alor… well, it’s not too spectacular, but it’s a large, aztec-like area, full of buildings, huts, decorations, carvings, and a lot of trolls… there’s also a lot of stuff that doesn’t seem like it has any purpose, except to bring the place to life… Houses, and cooking fires and things that are well off the main path, so you would have to go out of your way to even see it… Plus, someone had to sit down and say: “These are Forest Trolls, which means they have a style to their buildings, decorations, etc, that looks one way, which looks different, but has some similarities to the other trolls in the world (desert, jungle, snow, whatever),” and then they also had to tie in these other places and quests that lead you to, and from the city, so that it’s not just a singe House with a guy in it that gives or receives quests, but it’s an actual, exciting location, and memorable.

I think what impresses me the most is that, unlike the major cities, or the intentionally epic dungeons and things, this is a location that is fundamentally unremarkable. If you strip away most of the locations in the game to the essentials, you’ll find that they’re all the same: it’s a place for some monsters to hang out waiting for a player to come by to meet some requirement for a quest or something… the entire game could be played on a flat, featureless landscape, and there would not be very much of a difference, except that it would be bland. It’s things like this that, when you stop and think about it, bring out the overwhelming nature of worldbuilding. Even if you want to come up with a small village or town for a quick stop along the road for a D&D campaign, it’s far too easy to end up with a Rut’theran Village, and have an Inn, a few shops, and nothing else…

Anyway, this was just something that I thought about, and wanted to share…
Oh, and while I was climbing the seemingly endless series of stairs, and slaying trolls left and right, I came up with a little song:

Up, up, up the stairs,
Up the stairs we go!
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
life is full of trolls!

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