On November 23, 2024, the World of Warcraft turns 20 years old. For two decades our heroes have fought off myriad evils like The Lich King and Sylvanas Windrunner, and seen Azeroth torn asunder – both literally and figuratively. Looking forward, we have two new expansions on the horizon with Midnight and The Last Titan, with The War Within paving the way for the next ten years of WoW. To celebrate its twentieth birthday, Diablo Immortal is hosting a WoW-themed crossover event, and I sat down with lead content designer Scott Burgess and senior game designer Nan Jiang to chat about what horrors lurk in the shadows.
Diablo Immortal‘s WoW event features the all-new Eternal War instance, which pits players against the Lich King’s minions and drops a slew of Warcraft-themed cosmetics. Then there’s the PvP-focused Cutthroat Basin (inspired by the Arathi Basin) and, of course, the Frozen Citadel Lich King fight. The latter is very much the jewel in the collab’s icy crown, and promises to be one of the RPG‘s toughest fights to date.
But it’s not a case of scooping up Arthas and his legions from Northrend and dumping them into Sanctuary. Instead, the event reimagines these classic characters Diablo-style, adding some grit, grime, and gore. I ask Burgess and Jiang how they’ve created a WoW event that’s in-keeping with Diablo Immortal’s themes, while still maintaining the essence of Azeroth.
“We want to be true to both franchises,” Burgess tells me. “We don’t want to throw Arthas into Sanctuary and have him walk around and talk to people then blow up the lore. [Instead] that means this [event] takes place in a rift in between worlds; you can bring weapons and cool monsters to invade Sanctuary for a while, but we’re not going to have characters come in and chat with the local townsfolk.” Instead, it’s about giving the traditional Warcraft assets the “Diablo artwork pass,” meaning most of the content is “a little more gritty.”
The star of the show is, of course, that Lich King fight. “In World of Warcraft, people can do a lot of complicated skills, but Diablo Immortal targets the smartphone audience; they don’t have time to sit and understand those very complicated game mechanics,” Jiang states. “We have to make it more intuitive. We try to take the most iconic skills, and remake them.”
He takes Remorseless Winter, the Lich King’s second phase push mechanic that has ruined many an Icecrown Citadel run, as an example. “Our game has to run on phones, so keeping that [mechanic on-screen] for such a long time causes the game to get stuck, so we had to shorten it. But I wanted it to still be impactful for players, so now everyone will freeze if they stay in the blizzard for too long. So, you have to give the players something to hide behind because they don’t want to get frozen all the time, so that’s why we’ve got ice pillars dropping to the ground.”
Some of Arthas’ spells in WoW, however, were “very, very hard to understand, so unfortunately we had to remove them,” he continues. “There could be more stuff, but more doesn’t always mean better. We need the stuff that makes the player feel like ‘oh, this is the moment.’”
As you progress through Cutthroat Basin Eternal War, and Frozen Citadel, there’s a slew of Warcraft-inspired Legendary weapons and transmogs, inspired by iconic weapons like Gorehowl, Shadowmorne, and Thori’dal (no Rae’shalare, Sylvanas’ bow, but I’m already zooming around with it in Diablo 4 and am just being greedy). There’s also the absolutely gorgeous Illidan-inspired premium cosmetic, that honestly, I need right now.
“You play the game, you do the boss fight, and earn these weapons; it almost feels like WoW in that regard,” Burgess notes. “We wanted to make sure that the weapons we used felt like WoW weapons and didn’t feel like you just got another Diablo weapon.”
But of all the cosmetics, my favorite is the Murloc familiar – which, if you’re a fan of my work, is probably not a surprise. For some bizarre reason, I’m obsessed with those ‘lil gurgly guys; so much so that my picture on PCGamesN’s Slack was the Inarius Murloc from Diablo 3 for far too long.
Don’t let their cute looks fool you, however: Murlocs are evil. So evil, in fact, that I’d say they trump even Diablo himself. Sure, the Lich King’s scary and all, but I firmly believe the scariest thing that’s coming with the WoW collab is the Murloc familiar – and Burgess agrees.
“Absolutely,” he says with a smile. “If you look at how integral fishing is to Diablo Immortal, it is very dangerous that a Murloc can come in and just obliterate that fish supply. It could be an ecological disaster.
“A lot of people, when they look at Diablo, they think about the threat of the demons, but no one really thinks about the threat of the famine and you know, pollution and ecological disasters.” As you can imagine, the conversation descends into a chorus of giggles, but I don’t know why we’re laughing – the Murlocs have arrived, and those fish look mighty tasty.
Blizzard’s Diablo Immortal x World of Warcraft collab event is available now, and runs until Wednesday December 11 at 2:59am local server time.
If you’re looking to jump back into WoW to celebrate its anniversary, we have a rundown of all of the essential WoW addons. Alternatively, if you’re looking for something a little more Diablo, check out our list of the best Diablo 4 classes.
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