When we had written that questline in the Badlands there, we knew that this would be a cool story thread to pick up some day. But if you really think about how long it would take a dragon to mature and start developing his own thoughts, it’d be a long time. Like decades. And we didn’t really have time for that! So I said well, OK — if we ask people to buy into this one thing, that because of these experiments he can have some self-awareness early on, wow – what an interesting character that is!

All of a sudden he’s so compelling. Because let’s see, his father was crazy and tried to destroy the world, his mother was basically raped by the red dragonflight, then his egg was experimented on to sever his ties with his own family – so how do you view the world at that point? Well, you don’t really view the world as a friendly place. You’re probably eager to take control of your own destiny, which he does, even before he hatches. And then you kind of have this thing to atone for – your father tried to destroy the world. Your father went crazy. Are you crazy? How do you not be crazy, how do you make up for what your father did. Suddenly he’s such a cool character! I really want to explore that character. We kind of went nuts with it. So we kind of asked people — well if you can already buy in to the idea that he hatched from his egg and already started hatching schemes, then there’s a whole cool story that can come from that. And we really rolled with it.

That was kind of the genesis of that character. His value to the franchise is he really can kind of stand above Alliance and Horde, and really try and be a good guy, but without all the moral reservations that most good guys have. He really does have the best interests of Azeroth in mind, but his interests may not necessarily line up with our interests. His plan may not be the way that we would think of planning it. That kind of gray area between hero and villain is so cool for us, very cool to explore. And you’re never sure whether you should trust him or not. It helps that we got a wonderful voice actor who really gets that across. He gets that kind of, that air of arrogance and also a little bit of smarminess. You know, like you like him, but don’t trust him at the same time. Wonderful, wonderful characterization.