Rain in Stormwind is a fairly rare sight, even though it’s been part of the game for a good while now. I’ve rarely been lucky enough to actually see it in person, but today was one of those days, and it has inspired me to talk more about weather, skyboxes and ambience in WoW, and why we need more of it.
Old Zones and Skyboxes
Stormwind looks amazing in the rain, and it really goes to show how much so little can do. Even if Stormwind’s buildings are still the blocky, low-resolution (relatively speaking) squares that they’ve been for so many years now. The clouds in the sky are fairly minimalistic, but they look just right. They blot out the sun just enough to make it a little darker, and mixed in with the rain (and I believe there are also some fog effects on distant objects?) it completely changes the identity of Stormwind. It captures a darker, broodier tone that makes everything seem a little more frightening, you want to clutch your coinpurse when you pass through Old Town, and you’re a little worried about what dangers might await you when you take to the high seas. I love it.
The skyboxes in most expansions ever since Mists of Pandaria have been excellent - my favourite skyboxes are the stormy clouds from rainy days in Pandaria - but they have been limited to only appear in new zones. This, of course, makes sense. New zones get to have their own skyboxes tailored to them, giving them a very strong identity and further enhancing the feelings the zones are supposed to evoke. But every time I visit old zones (which is often, I’m a roleplayer after all) I get a little bummed out by the old skyboxes that have been the same since vanilla.
I understand that it isn’t really feasible to update the art of every single zone to be more on par with modern zones, but one good starting step could be to replace the old skyboxes - most of them seem to use the same one but with a colour gradient thrown over it, after all. At the very least, it would be nice to see updated skyboxes in Stormwind and Orgrimmar - as we’re all spending a lot of time there anyway. When the clouds part and the rains dry up in Stormwind, we’re back to looking at the old skies of vanilla.
Weather and a Forecast
Weather effects in games have been a bit of a topic for a long time, and I think it’s something we should talk about more often in WoW. Shadowlands has a lot of cool weather effects, such as the soul storms in Maldraxxus, and older zones have had snow and rain for a long time. Sandstorms also exist! But a rainy day doesn’t hit as hard in some older zones, where the lighting, skybox and fog doesn’t really change alongside it, and neither snow nor rain has that much of an impact on the world. How cool wouldn’t it be to have rainy puddles spawn when it’s rainy, or have the snow actually create little patches over the terrain.
Perhaps if weather was to be expanded, it could also come to influence gameplay. There are already some battle pets that only spawn during certain weather conditions, perhaps more of those could be added. Perhaps a rare is only available when it starts snowing. NPCs could react to the weather and decide to move, put on a hood, or raise their umbrellas. Fun little quirks like that make the world feel more alive.
Weather systems are seemingly very randomised at the time, there is no real indication of when they will spawn. If weather systems were to be expanded, perhaps a more deterministic system could be put in place; allowing us to see a forecast of the zone we are in by checking the map. Forecasts could stretch days into the future, perhaps a new one is generated every weekly reset, allowing players to plan out when they want to head out into the rain to capture that elusive pet, or jump in puddles for fun.
It might take a lot of resources to make this sort of system, so I don’t really expect it to be a big feature any time soon - but I think it would be a very nice addition that would create new avenues for content in the future.
Seasons and Seasonal Weather
Seasons are already a thing. There are some fish, battle pets and so on that only come out during winter, and some only during summer. These seasons don’t have any actual indications in-game, however, and you probably only know about them because you’ve read a guide that told you so. Changes to seasons could be marked by new skyboxes, slightly warmer ones for summer and colder ones for winter, or having the weather conditions change. During winter, it sometimes snows in Stormwind, while it rains the rest of the year.
But… what if zones were designed with the seasons in mind, and the zones themselves also change with the seasons. Dun Morogh is a cold winter mountain year round, but what if it was slightly greener during summer months? The ice on the lakes melts, some caves hidden by the snow are exposed, and the local wildlife change into their summer coats. The Wetlands has a rainy season during summer, making it live up to its name even more than during winter. Of course, it’s unlikely this is something we would see for old zones, unless they were specifically being updated, but perhaps new zones could be designed to change seasonally.
I’ll end this off by saying thank you to the art team, for making me care about clouds and rain, and I hope we’ll see more of it in the future :>