This island was the first real work I did on World of Warcraft. Building it was technically part of my training, but it was done with the intent of serving as a small landmark to flesh out the coastline of the Azure Span region. I wanted (and was encouraged) to use the space to tell some kind of a story by borrowing some assets from the vast catalogue WoW has built up over the years. I ultimately went with the remnants of a fishing trip gone wrong; three people in a little boat speared a giant fish with harpoons and were subsequently dragged ashore and killed in the crash. If you poke around you can find all three of their skeletons meeting various nasty fates. I think a lot of level designers have a morbid sense of humor; we all seem to love playing around with skeletons like this.

I had figured that my little story would be all there was to this place, but I guess a quest designer must have liked the concept because if you go there in the live game you can pick up a fun side quest where you help the ghost of the boat’s captain get revenge on the ghost of the fish!