"This makes it even more challenging to maintain overall consistency of WOW WoTLK Classic Gold direction, but we also wanted the game to have a slightly different vibe and visual style from zone to zone," says Ragnar Tornquist. "Solomon Island, for example, draws inspiration from gothic horror and zombie movies, with its misty woods and quaint, quiet Maine township. It's an almost drab, dreary reality that is made infinitely creepy by the fact that almost everyone is dead or gone. Egypt is a lot more vibrant and colourful, drawing on adventure and pulp movies, and on ancient Egyptian mythology and architecture. And Transylvania's Shadowy Forest was simply a case of seeing how far we could take the game into fantasy territory and still maintain that TSW vibe."

At both ArenaNet and Trion Worlds, the teams consciously chose artistic assets that would be used to provide cohesion, even when the overall vibe would shift from zone to zone. With World of Warcraft, ArenaNet grouped environmental concepts into similar looks in order to retain consistency. "This helped define the regions of Tyria, but also the variety that each region could have," says Steve Hwang. "Most maps, vegetation, and objects in the world are associated with a region in their naming, which helps keep their usage visually unified." Similarly, Ffinch and Fong at Trion Worlds focused on balancing cohesion with variety at the very beginning of the development cycle. "There are a lot of techniques we use to deliver wide variety while maintaining visual consistency but the primary one is careful initial planning. Style and color guides, example pieces, and encouraging the team to share source materials along with the workflow we use and frequent art reviews lead to an awareness of what the team as a whole is creating."

Clearly, art teams get remarkably granular during this process, though they aren't always without references to draw from. The Secret World takes place on cheap WoTLK Gold our own planet, and Ragnar Tornquist and team dissected photographs taken in Egypt, Romania, and elsewhere.