It’s not unusual for a game to utterly dominate the conversation in gaming circles for a while — see this year’s Helldivers 2 or Balatro for example. But it’s another thing entirely for one to grow so large that it becomes a household name known even to people who’ve never played a game in their lives. On November 23, 2004, one game accomplished that feat more than perhaps any other ever has, and it did so in what was at the time an incredibly niche genre to boot.
World of Warcraft didn’t invent the massively multiplayer online RPG, but it refined it, introducing the concept to newcomers and totally changing the concept of the genre for those who’d already written it off. When World of Warcraft launched, the dominant massively multiplayer online role-playing game was still Everquest, an often punishing, inscrutable experience that demanded players entertain themselves. World of Warcraft took the social core of Everquest and turned it into something more rewarding, easier to get into, and altogether more fun.
“A good portion of the team was playing Everquest pretty rabidly,” Holly Longdale, executive producer and vice president for WoW tells Inverse. “As often happens at Blizzard, these great products the team has made came out of the passion for what they love. What came out of discussions of how they loved Everquest was, how do we take this and make it better and make it ours? That was the genesis.”
As reporter Jason Schreier writes in Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment, WoW’s development team was originally working on a post-apocalyptic RPG called Nomad. But as developers lost interest in the project — and started spending more time in Everquest — Blizzard managers voted to cancel Nomad and begin work on the company’s own MMORPG.
While it may sound simplistic, one of WoW’s biggest innovations was its reliance on quests. In contrast to single player RPGs, most MMORPGs at the time lacked strong quest progression, with stories emerging more from player behavior than from anything handcrafted by developers. Blizzard first envisioned quests as ways to guide players to more self-directed play, but realized before release that players felt lost when the quests dried up, and decided to focus even more attention on them.
"It was definitely this big moment where the team was like, 'Uh oh, I guess we have to do ten times as many quests as we thought we were going to do,'” Rob Pardo, original lead designer on WoW told USGamer. “But I think it's one of those great moments that happen in game development, where once you find the nuggets that are really fun, you double down on it."
That focus on quests led to a stronger story, which played up Blizzard Entertainment’s signature lighthearted tone. Where most of its contemporaries told straightforward fantasy stories of battle and heroism, WoW mixed in a sense of humor to set it apart.
“In Warcraft you will find tragedy, tremendous pathos, and epic conflict,” Ion Hazzikostas, director of WoW, tells Inverse. “You’ll also find wacky, zany humor, all the way back to clicking on that orc enough times in the RTS that they yell at you to stop poking them. There’s room for all flavors and approaches to gaming in WoW, and Azeroth reflects the diversity of the player base.”
Through a combination of its engaging storytelling, its more guided gameplay, and its compelling world, players flocked to WoW on launch. It grew so popular that Blizzard had to stop selling the game for a time because its servers couldn’t handle the influx. The more people made Azeroth their second home, the more attractive it became to join in on them. A huge part of the appeal of any MMORPG is its social side, the chance to take on the role of a fantasy creature and go on thrilling adventures with your friends. WoW became a social hub as much as a game for many players, so much so that its virtual community became a subject of academic curiosity for researchers studying communication, economics, and even epidemiology.
Now 20 years past launch, WoW has evolved far beyond the state in which it began. Blizzard has made it easier to group up with players, travel the world, and level up. WoW is set to introduce player housing soon, a feature popular in similar MMORPGs, and one that Hazzikostas says the development team has been discussing for over a decade. Many of those changes have come from player feedback, but Blizzard is also committed to maintaining the unique personality that separates Warcraft from every other game series out there.
“We see ourselves as caretakers of this world that players inhabit,” Hazzikostas says. “We adhere to the shared fiction of the universe, but within that, there’s nearly a limitless palette of colors with which we can paint. We just turned 20, have easily another decade of ideas on hand and so many more dreams. If there are limits or boundaries to what Warcraft can encompass, we’re still far from reaching them.”
