Warlords of Draenor was released on November 13, 2014.Mists of Pandaria was released on September 25, 2012,.Cataclysm was released on December 7, 2010.Wrath of the Lich King was released on November 13, 2008.The Burning Crusade was released on January 16, 2007.There have been eight expansions to World of Warcraft:
UpdatesĪn original box cover for World of Warcraft As heroes investigated Onyxia's manipulations, ancient foes surfaced in lands throughout the world to menace Horde and Alliance alike. After Stormwind's king Varian Wrynn mysteriously disappeared, Highlord Bolvar Fordragon served as Regent, but his service was marred by the manipulations and mind control of the black dragon Onyxia, who ruled in disguise as a human noblewoman. Meanwhile, dwarves, gnomes and the ancient night elves pledged their loyalties to a reinvigorated Alliance, guided by the human kingdom of Stormwind. Intent on settling the arid region of Durotar, Thrall's new Horde expanded its ranks, inviting the undead Forsaken to join orcs, tauren, and trolls. So head on over and watch it for yourself.Four years after the Battle of Mount Hyjal, tensions between the Alliance and the Horde begin to arise once again. I mean, I didn’t even talk about the draw distance increase that happened in Legion and how the engineering and art teams managed to increase it based on work they’d done going all the way back to Classic, and that’s a huge deal. This is nearly an hour long video that covers fourteen years of game development, so there’s a lot more to it than I’ve mentioned. Battle for Azeroth is going to be an expansion that takes us even further along the path started all the way back in the days of classic WoW. Whether it’s the Mists of Pandaria deep breath and the art design that brought Pandaria to life, the Warlords of Draenor expansion as the beginning of story arcs that bridge between expansions, or Legion’s end of the world demonic invasion bringing new kinds of art design to bring the drama to life, WoW has changed and grown over the years. We’ve been playing dress up in WoW for eight years. The game makes the world makes the game againĪnd of course they talked about Transmog, which has always owned my heart since it was introduced eight years ago. From how flight redesigned the world in terms of its art to how coming up with a solution to a technical problem creates new solutions to problems they don’t even know they’re going to have, WoW has constantly evolved. It’s an example of how technology developed for one expansion led directly to a feature in the next one. I didn’t personally understand how the design of Garrisons ultimately led to the sharding technology that allows Legion to always feel inhabited without feeling overcrowded. The art design team, for example, worked hand in hand with the developers in Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. Ion still considers Cataclysm to be the most arduous task they’ve ever embarked on, the biggest task the design team ever underwent. The video breaks down as succinctly as possible the fourteen years and soon to be seven expansions that World of Warcraft has gone through, from the origin of Dual Spec to the complexity of the Cataclysm redesign and how everything it changed came about in the years of development from 2004 to 2010.
The art direction of the game had to change just because flying existed, and this ultimately led to the Cataclysm redesign for the world.
Burning Crusade brought us all the changes we usually think of, but it also brought us skyboxes as a byproduct of allowing flight in Outland. Many of the decisions made in the early days - Senior Concept Artist Jimmy Lo specifically highlights the decision to not try for a photorealistic art style which has allowed the game to endure over the years - have been built on over and over again. Absolutely no one was ready for a game with the fan demand of World of Warcraft when it came out. If you’ve watched a BlizzCon retrospective or ever heard the devs talk about WoW, you know that nobody knew what this game was going to turn into.