Do we ever get minor world building stuff in WoW? I mean stuff as small as what a Dreaming Glory smells like, or if Highmountain Tauren need to deal with their antlers velveting every once in a while, different races needing different nutritional requirements for their body to function, etc. It would be nice to have stuff like this in the game. It can literally just be flavor text on an item like some trash items have.
I’d imagine we do get stuff like this in some of the short stories, but I don’t personally recall anything like that, though I barely pay attention to that kind of thing in real life so good luck getting me to pay attention to it in game.
Um… That would require them to lose their antlers in the first place, since antler is actually bone that is dying. The velvet is actually skin the act of it falling off means the death of the antler has started.
I know what velveting is, but I’ve never seen anything eluding to it for Highmountain Tauren. I can’t tell if Highmountains actually have real antlers or if they only have antler-shaped horns. Even if they did velvet, Blizzard would likely deem it too miniscule and worthless to actually put in the lore. This is probably why we don’t get small worldbuilding stuff like this in the first place, which kind of sucks.
You’d think a 30 year old franchise would have their universe entirely fleshed out by now, you know?
Honestly, I would not mind if they did something like D&D where they have different editions. They can start all over and do things proper with a WoW lore 2nd edition lol.
I’m guessing you’ve probably heard of the iceberg method for world building and presentation?
In my opinion, WoW’s Dev’s might imagine they have a nice deep iceberg floating in the ocean, but all I’ve seen suggests it’s really just in a shallow pond at best.
Some quest text have provided little tidbits here and there. Most recently some npcs can provide some elaborations through optional dialogue. The barber in Dornogal, when asked, talks about how Earthen hair and, to some extent, general morphology works, to give an example.
This sort of thing, as far as I can tell, seems to be more frequent in recent years.
Addendum:
Another example of the latter case that comes to mind is in Undermine, where one of the rocket drill operators more or less mentions that the zone we have access to is merely downtown Undermine, not the entire city.
This is the first time I am hearing this, but it may be important for me to know considering that I want to create my own universe lol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceberg_theory
That’s a link to the wikipedia page. There’s a lot of different techniques and none of them are the end all and be all of writing as they all have their uses and purposes.
I often include elements of minimalism in how I show my worlds, by showing the people living in them and letting the reader make the inference.