October 27, 2023

Mogloween Behind the Scenes

Last Friday, we had an adventure in a haunted castle filled with ghosts and curses. How about we delve further behind the scenes to spotlight the team members who helped put this spooky release together?

As usual, Crulon made the map art by putting together an old castle that was half dolled up for a Mogloween Gala, and half a nightmare of bones and ghosts.

Ghost has been going nonstop for three weeks from Shadows of Doom's dramatic cutscenes to giving us the resolution of a Mogloween Mystery.

The Cauldron Sisters were given fresh art courtesy of Aranx. 

New to our usual week to week set up is Despera, who designed the Unborn Brood. 

This was my first time working with Despera onboard and they're amazing! I gave them a brief summary of the story, and a few options for what the bosses could be: A nobleman's ghost twisted into the form of a gargoyle, the castle's ghosts fused into one giant spirit, or the ghosts of the lost dragonlings fused into one vengeful spirit.

With just a few references, Despera came up with three super cool concepts! I loved the dragonlings design so much that I decided to put more focus on them in-story, and adjusted the outline to fit.

It's too bad we could only pick one, I hope we can circle back to that rad gargoyle design! 

Darkon worked on the bosses animations. In the process, he taught tus what to do to make brand new monster art easieir to animate.

As for the Mogloween story, I had the outline saved from last year. It was on a list of pitches that will eventually become full releases. The concept was inspired by two stories, "The Picture in the House" and "The Rats in the Walls" by H.P. Lovecraft, but obviously it diverted a lot in the final draft.

The original story of "The Picture in the House" was about a traveler that discovers how an old man became immortal through cruel and unspeakable acts. "The Rats in the Walls" dealt similar cruel and unspeakable acts, which made me think of what it would be like if the ghosts that arose from said actions were dragons instead of humans.

The Lord of the castle recieved a name, a motive, and a connection to the history of Greenguard. The emotional lodestone of the story came to be as the story developed. The timing of the release going live now instead of last year as originally planned worked out well too. The descendant of Lord Andrew Taylor has a role to play when we resume our Main Story come 2024, and you lore hunters were quick to spot it!  

Mogloween is always fun to think up stories for and there's much more to come in the holiday seasons! I hope you enjoyed this year's spooks and this peek behind the scenes!