Evolution of a Scene

Tyrande and Greymane having a powwow at the Howling Oak in Darnassus

I had an interesting sight into little details of the game in development today.

Last night, I had been playing around in the Beta and I had taken my character to Darnassus and the new "Worgen Tree" the druids made for the Gilnean people. Genn Greymane is there now (I'll have to go doublecheck if he is also still visiting Varian Wrynn as he was before).

I was just about to log out when Tyrande Whisperwind walked up. Tyrande doesn't get out very much, so I thought this might be interesting.  What followed was one of those little color scenes Blizzard puts in certain places.


Tyrande basically welcomed Greymane and the Worgen to Darnassus and hoped that the Night Elves were welcoming. Greymane assured her that they were.

Tyrande then goes on to say that she could use some help from the king and his people to repel invaders in Darkshore. Greymane says he knows just the people to send and that he will do so right away.

And then the scene stopped. Just completely stopped.  Nobody said anything and nobody went away. After a few minutes of waiting I logged out for the night.

This morning, as I logged in with the same character, the scene had changed.

Genn is still there, but this time, Tyrande and Malfurion "Chickenman" Stormrage walked up and they had most of the same conversation as I had seen before.

However, where the scene ended last night, Malfurion "spoke" his thanks to the king. And then Tyrande made her excuses and both of the night elves left.

To that point, the conversation had taken place entirely as text inside the chat frame. Malfurion's words also appeared there, but a sound file played letting the player actually hear the words too.  This makes me think that more sound will be flowing into this encounter.


I have had no idea of how the developers actively work on things like that, I always imagined that they were scripted out fairly completely and just inserted but this shows clear signs of a work in progress rather than just a bug that didn't let the encounter complete. Pretty cool! I wonder if there was a Dev character standing nearby checking out his handiwork.


I went back to the scene once again to get a screenshot for this blog entry, but the scene had reverted to what it was first. Malfurion is gone, and Tyrande is stuck there until she eventually just disappears. I guess they are having problems with it.