https://www.cybersport.ru/games/articles/dobro-pozhalovat-vo-vremena-korolya-licha-eksklyuzivnyi-tur-s-razrabotchikami-po-novoi-zone-v-world-of-warcraft

The Maldraxus location has long been available in the Shadowlands beta testing. Probably, some of you have already gone through her storyline, participated in the battle of the houses and met with Draka, Lady Vashj and Alexandros Mograine. Cybersport.ru invites you to take a closer look at the necrolord covenant and find out how the process of creating a location went. Steve Danucer, Lead Narrative Designer for World of Warcraft, and other Blizzard staff will help us with this.

A whole ziggurat of nostalgia

The heroes will go to Maldraxus immediately after traveling through the spiritualized Bastion, filled with sublime Kyrians and cute owls. And if the starting location of the angels can be compared with a kind of Eden, in which the experienced fighters of Azeroth will be somewhat unusual and even uncomfortable, then Maldraxus will definitely seem like something familiar – the abode of necromancy and plague, riddled with bones and washed by rivers of rot. Hundreds of abominations and skeletons are stumbling across this land, and necromancers are fanatically busy with rituals and the preparation of infernal concoctions. Sound familiar? We have already met this “picturesque picture” of death and decay in Warcraft III and the Icecrown location from Wrath of The Lich King.

Blizzard designers said that the cult third part of the RTS was the source of inspiration. This can be seen even in small details – for example, the crossing daggers, large sleeves and the giant spellbook of the necromancers. These elements emphasize the essence of ritual witchcraft, which makes it possible to recognize in new NPCs the very necromancers that fans of the universe know so well.

Let’s take a walk along the “cozy” streets of Maldraxus, where we can be accompanied by improved abominations from the House of Cadavers, lychees from the House of Rituals, aranakki from the House of Eyes, similar to nerubians, and a number of other familiar creatures. Many of them will not rush to attack us now, but, on the contrary, kindly, to the best of their ability, will offer a quest.

But not all of Maldraxus’s creatures, called upon to become soldiers of the most powerful army in the Warcraft universe, have retained their minds. Crazy creatures that have appeared as a result of unsuccessful experiments are walking around the toxic swamps. They are skeletons shrouded in green slime. The inspiration for these monsters came to lead artist Kenny McBride while he was “strolling” through the Abomination Quarter in Naxxramas.

You can understand the general tone and mood of the location on the approach to Maldraxus. We are greeted by a huge and ominous structure “Throne of Primus”, outlines reminiscent of the Icecrown Citadel. As conceived by the designers, the covenant lord sitting on the throne should frighten uninvited guests from other locations with one of his looks, and at the same time “ideally suit the album cover in the style of heavy metal.”

By the way, the association between Maldraxus and the heavy metal album arose from another Blizzard employee who created the concept art of a flying mount in the location.

The intertwining with the history of Warcraft, or rather its darkest and most plague pages, is felt throughout Maldraxus. The developers have made a special bet on symbolism and visual attributes so that all objects feel their connection with this new world for the players, but at the same time so that they still seem familiar to us.

However, Steve Danucer noted that the similarities between Maldraxus and Icecrown is not an attempt to play on fan nostalgia, but a visual representation of the story that links the two places. Everything we’ve encountered in Azeroth, be it huge abominations or necromancy, has its origins in this covenant, but here it reaches more impressive proportions.

Broken Template

Have you already felt this slight rotten taste? It would seem that such a location in the afterlife can only be suitable for the lowest, dirtiest and most pernicious souls. By all canons, it should be so. However, the developers decided to challenge themselves and change the standard view of “good” and “evil”. Maldraxus is the shield and sword of the Darklands, and all these huge monstrous creatures are an army that stands guard not only for their covenant, but for everyone else.

Maldraxus has united all the warriors of the universe. In Legion, where class halls were introduced, the abode of warriors was presented in the form of a kind of bright Valhalla at the side of the stern but good-natured god Odin. Maldraxus has a completely different order. The concepts of honor and valor are not important here; only strength, ferocity of spirit and thirst for battle decide. Moreover, strength does not necessarily have to be expressed in the ability to deftly swing a sword – knowledge of dark magic and other arts to destroy enemies, albeit sometimes in a dirty way, also grant the soul a ticket to Maldraxus.

Although when I asked which other famous Warcraft heroes could end up in this covenant after death, Steve Danucer jokingly replied that he does not work as an Arbiter (deity that distributes souls to covenants) to solve such difficult issues. According to him, this can be an interesting task for players who, after passing Maldraxus, will be able to assess for themselves which heroes of the universe fit the criteria of the covenant. I had a candidate in the person of Varian Wrynn, but Danuser immediately upset me, saying that Blizzard did not intend to return to the story of the King of the Alliance who died in battle with the Legion.

In Maldraxus, the designers were really able to successfully change the very concept of separating the “good and bad guys”. After death, the earthly system of moral values ​​ceases to work. In the afterlife, each covenant has a duty and purpose. Therefore, in Maldraxus, Lady Vashj, whom we killed a long time ago in one of the raids (she will remember this in dialogue), the orc Dreka and the eminent paladin Alexandros Mograine, look quite organic next to her.

Despite the dominant style of necromancy, the more familiar warrior spirit in Maldraxus is emphasized by the fighting arena, in which there are incessant battles between arriving souls. There are no rules here – just fight until you deserve recognition and prove that you deserve to be a soldier of the strongest army in the world. Less pretentious and corny speeches about duty, honor and brotherhood – more true, one might even say, bestial strength and fury. Blizzard managed to combine both in the general narrative and in individual details two seemingly completely different elements: military aggression and necromantic essence.

Blizzard has really managed to play with expectations and stereotypes in Maldraxus. Since BlizzCon 2019, where Shadowlands was announced, some users have had mixed feelings about the covenant. The location was seduced only by the rumors generated around it about the possible addition of a class of necromancers, for which Maldraxus would become a kind of springboard. By the way, necromancers, as Danuser told me, are definitely not worth waiting for. However, Maldraxus is looking really interesting in beta right now. Despite the fact that among all the new locations, this zone will stylistically be the most familiar and familiar to WoW fans, from the point of view of its internal content it looks the most original.

“A character is a rope made up of many strands.”

Acquaintance with the afterlife kingdom, in which the souls of all fallen heroes are located, has significantly expanded the boundaries of the universe. This led to new questions for the laws of the world of Warcraft. Traveling to an alternate version of Draenor in Warlords of Draenor can make it difficult to understand how the underworld “works”. For example, in that addon we met Dreka, who lived a completely different life. So whose soul did we meet in Shadowlands? And if this is the soul of Dreka from Azeroth, then what will happen to the soul of Dreka from the alternate Draenor?

Steve Danucer tried to answer these questions. He suggested that we look at the Warcraft character as a rope – from the outside it seems indivisible and tangible, but if you look closely, it consists of many strands. They are all different and run parallel to each other, but in the end they are woven into a single whole. So the characters in Warcraft – the threads of their destinies can go through all kinds of realities and time periods, thereby comprehensively revealing the hero and making his image more complete, but in the end they converge. Danucer noted that in order to understand this principle, it is necessary to correctly identify our perception of the timeline in the game. Shadowlands characters often refer to questions of the laws of time, which operate differently in the afterlife.

Therefore, in Maldraxus, we will get acquainted with the soul of Draka, which became the very “rope”, and not a separate thread presented in Warlords of Draenor. It is for this reason that one of the important events will be her meeting and reunification with Thrall, who was a prisoner of the Dark Lands. No wonder that in the video dedicated to Maldraxus, special emphasis was placed on the moment from the past, when Draka saved her son at the cost of her life.

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