Easter Eggs And Fun Facts From Overwatch's Upcoming Blizzard World Map

At BlizzCon 2017, I asked the Overwatch team to tell me the deepest secrets and hidden lore tucked away inside the upcoming Blizzard World theme park map that draws upon all of Blizzard's IPs. Lead character artist Renaud Galand, lead designer Geoff Goodman, and lead software engineer Bill Warnecke teamed up to provide us with a dazzling array of interesting Easter eggs and fun production facts. Enjoy!

• WoW area: The flowers on the grass areas are called the "Peace Bloom" and is an exact copy of the gathering item you need to bring back in your very first quest for that profession!
• Hearthstone area: There is a big book called "The Green Hills - Stranglethorn", which is the name of a very infamously long quest created by Jeff Kaplan back when he was working on WoW.
• Around the level, you can find tourist maps that show a lot more park attractions and fun areas that the actual level has and was a way for the team to still complete the fantasy of a real theme park.
• Almost all the names in this maps are puns or word plays based on all our favorite Blizzard IPs.
  • All the menu item names and shop names in the park are basically puns and funny word plays based on the Blizzard IPs
  • "SNAXRAMAS" was put into this map after it won the popular vote for our "internal name poll idea" for the Blizzard Campus cafe. And even though it was ultimately replaced by another name, we still wanted to pay homage to this pun gem
• If you venture in the Diablo 3 area with Torbjorn, a vocal cue will tell that that you are too short to enter the ride.
• If you shoot the barrels in the Diablo 3 area, there is a random chance that the barrel will explode and trigger a sound/FX event similar to when you get a legendary drop in D3. (You can't pick the item, though)

• In the WoW ride "Flight of the Duskwood", the background image displays a screenshot of the Darkshire area.
• In the WoW ride "Flight of the Duskwood", there is a door that displays the number "131" on it. It's a little Easter Egg based on the first company's real address street number.
• The Shark hanging on the pier is a reference to the famous shark in Booty Bay (WoW)
• The Heroes of the Storm area also has some fun arcade games based on some of the most popular skins in the game ("AZMODUNK"), etc.
• The 4 probes flying around in the StarCraft area are a reference to how they operate when you first start mining at the beginning of a SC game (They'll follow each in line).
• The gameplay announcer is themed with the area you're in (voice from a character from StarCraft, Diablo, wow, etc.)
• When this map hits the live servers, the payload will have a random object (based on of our game) to be escorted. The BlizzCon object was the Skeleton King's crown.
• The Orange balloon in the background is a reference to a very same tourist attraction you can experience in Irvine
• Even though we wanted this whole map to be our way to celebrate the other Blizzard games, we have one tiny OW representation hidden - The poster "Spawning pool" has a Zenyatta chilling in the pool).
• The command center (spawn room) displays a lot of images from the park which are all linked to actual camera objects placed around the map (attention to detail!)

• The sound design in this map is by far the most in depth work our sound team has ever put into a map. Every area, poster and some items will trigger an audio line or sound that will make you smile or give you more info about the area you're in.
• Most of our environment team worked on the other games (Diablo, Hearthstone, WoW and StarCraft) and were able to bring that knowledge and really make these areas as faithful as possible to their original material.
  • We also made sure to involve the other game's art director for precious early guidance and feedback along the process.
• There are A LOT of fun physical objects in this map: Balloons, treasure chest, barrels, chairs, kegs, even turnstiles, just to name a few.
• This map is the result of a long and ongoing learning experience for the team which always manages to push the boundaries of how much detail and content can be placed in a level. You can clearly see the evolution between the first levels we released and what we have been able to achieve with JunkerTown and now Blizzard World. And we can't wait to explore what can be done in our future maps!