What do you associate Warcraft with? We can recall three strategies that set the course for the RTS genre, an online monster who has done even more terrible things with MMORPGs, a quest that was canceled at the last moment, tons of literature, and even a Hollywood movie… All this is Warcraft, celebrating its 30th anniversary next year. Of course, for such an impressive period of time, some interesting facts concerning this legendary universe have been forgotten and other interesting facts have surfaced. And of course, there is no way to fit them into one collection, so we decided to focus on the eternally young World of Warcraft. Who also has a landmark milestone this year – it’s 19th anniversary.
Back when this game was first released, it was full of bugs, the monsters were super complex, and gamers had to spend many hours completing missions. Today, players have the opportunity to boost wow without any effort and loss of time. Professional gamers are ready to help with any difficulties that arise in the game, including passing dungeons and raids, extracting resources, leveling, buying items, and so on. This service has made life much easier for players. And if you have probably already heard about game boosting more than once, then the facts that will be discussed further may not be known to you.
- At the time of the development of World of Warcraft in 1999, the creation of MMO reboots of popular universes was gaining popularity. No one expected a grand triumph and millions of subscribers, and the game itself was largely created with an eye on the first EverQuest. That is why top players in EQ were attracted to participate in the project, including Alex Afrasiabi, the leader and founder of the strongest guild Fires of Heaven. Although Alex started from a modest position as a quest designer, his word in matters of balance and the overall design of the game had a huge weight. In particular, it was he who insisted on strict specialization, as a result of which the hybrid classes did everything but not well enough and were inferior to the profile ones in efficiency, so that until the very end of the classic WoW, the only normal tank was a warrior. However, against the background of that hardcore mindset (although against the background of the same EQ, the game was considered almost casual), no one paid attention to this.
- By the way, unlike most fantasy settings with an abundance of humanoid races, significant half-breeds in WoW can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Moreover, there will be no main characters or playable characters among them. And this is not the only joke to traditions: for example, it was dwarves who were taught to fly on griffins in World of Warcraft, although elves would look more familiar in this role.
- Following the two strategies, Blizzard was going to release a quest telling about Thrall’s youth – Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans. The almost finished project has not gone into the public domain, officially – because of its quality inconsistency with the high standards of the studio. However, it is quite realistic to get acquainted with the game: not only the beta version (the passage of which has been stored on YouTube since the mid-nineties) but also the final version with all the videos eventually got online.
- It was through the machinations of censorship that some explained the fact that the catacombs under Karazhan (Medivh Tower) remained closed to the public for a long time: because it was a too gloomy and unpleasant place to play with a “childish” rating. Indeed, the situation there pulled on a good horror (which was only worth the location called “Inverted Sinners” – a huge well full of bound drowned people), and to admire it live, players had to use exploits. However, the dungeon was opened in the Legion, but to access it, you need to go through a monstrously complex semi-secret quest, most of the puzzles in which it is almost impossible to solve without the help of a guide (and at the stage with a randomly constructed maze, it will not help either), but a stylish black unicorn will also be the reward. In general, there were as many as five such tooth-crushing quests in the Legion (not counting class ones), and this is a kind of continuation of the traditions of the original WoW, where there were enough long, complex, and intuitive task lines.
- The debate about the relationship between the Warcraft and Warhammer universes has come to naught in recent years. There is a plausible version that the first WoW was originally created as a “monitorization” of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, but something did not grow together. The only reliable fact is that there was some conflict over the intellectual property because in The Frozen Throne add-on, all the names that coincide with the “Warhammer” ones (Steam Tank, Gyrocopter, Chaos) were changed, and the joke about the 40,000 gold warhammer was also removed. This did not prevent blizzard from introducing the Poorly Balanced Warhammer item already in World of Warcraft.
- The list of what, for various reasons, did not survive to be released in the Warcraft series is truly impressive. It’s worth starting with Warcraft II, where aircraft carriers almost appeared (shown in the introductory video). Next up is Warcraft III, which has been changed from an RTS/RPG to a regular RTS with a base. At the same time, the game outwardly became simpler, because then not every computer showed the beauty of the alpha version. The plot also went through a lot of edits: for example, the brother of the archdruid Illidan in the original version was a passable satyr villain, and Jaina was resurrected by Arthas twice already – first to demonstrate the respawn mechanics, and then – completely plot-wise in the form of undead (later she was replaced by Sylvanas). In World of Warcraft, huge chunks of locations existed in the game from the earliest versions and were not opened immediately, and sometimes they were completely scrapped. It is especially a pity for the underground kingdom of Azjol-Nerub, which they did not have time to complete for Wrath of the Lich King and, as a result, they were allowed to use the scenery for two walk-through instances.
Even after playing for many years, the huge World of Warcraft cannot be fully explored – so play, conquer new lands, discover unknown locations, and defeat enemies.
