Exclusive Interview
with Tyren

Page Two

The Drainei in WoW have escaped from the Outlands, however the Blood Elves sabotaged their ship. This caused them to crash land on Azeroth just south of Darnassus and west of Dark Shore . The starting zone will most likely be the typical levels 1-7ish and then have another new zone attached to it that will allow you to get close to level 20.

Messia with Illidan

At some point, the new zones will connect to Dark Shore, most likely with a flight point available through a quest or given automatically.

When asked about a new capital city for the Draenei, Tyren could not answer for sure. He said they most likely would, but it was not guaranteed yet as it was still very early in the development cycle and not much more than the low level starting zone was available. The playable demo would only allow us to advance to level 5.

He also showed us the new Drainei racial abilities which are:

• Blessing of Naaru – A heal-over-time for no mana on a 3 minute cooldown. This ability also will grow with level, so while it starts off fairly low, it will improve later in the game.
• Inspiring Presence - Increases chance to hit with spells by 1% for all party members within 30 yards
• +15 to Jewelcrafting
• Shadow Resistance increased by 10

Blood Elf Area Map

Next up on the walk through was the Blood Elves. Tyren showed these off, and talked about all the work that had been done since they were first displayed at Blizzcon, where only the starting zone was complete.

The Blood Elves now have a complete area that will take them to close to level 20. Their starting and secondary zones are located north of the Eastern Plague Lands. Their capital city is called Silvermoon City , and appears to only be half of a once-larger city. The whole secondary Blood Elf zone is divided by a swathe of destruction carved by the Scourge. In fact most of the zone and half of the city is still infested by the scourge.

The main driving force for the Blood Elves is the destruction of the Scourge. They will do almost anything to accomplish this, and have aligned with the Horde with the hopes of accomplishing this.

On a purely comical note, we found out that the Blood Elf male does the dance from Napoleon Dynamite! Cool!

The whole zone and the city were stunning, which led to a conversation about Aesthetics. Tyren said that Blizzard has really take to heart comments from the community that players wanted a pretty-looking race. They have taken this past just the new races, and included the new zones in the new aesthetic look as well.

Both new races include more polygons than any of the other races, and it shows. Movement is fluid and the textures are mapped perfectly to the models. Both new race zones are clean and possess an attention to detail far above what was done in the originals. Of course they have had over a year to perfect their craft, so this is not a complete surprise.

Jumping Attack Blood Elf

Next up on the list of topics covered by Tyren was the expansion itself and the Outlands. He took us into the Outlands to Hellfire Peninsula to show off some of the area and some of the new gear.