Before I write an article addressing the “state of the game,” I’d like to evaluate WoW in its early history and evolution. It is imperative to understand the unique issues faced by companies given how MMO’s operate and develop. In essence, the games are so large and complex that many issues go initially unnoticed and can catch both developers and players off-guard.

So this first article in a short series will discuss WoW in its early stages and point out positives and negatives of what WoW once was… and still is, in some cases, but I’ll leave that mostly for my entry on the state of the game.

(For quick reference, WoW was released in November of 2004.)

Questing and Leveling

Upon its release, WoW’s questing and leveling system was considered revolutionary. However, it was not an entirely new concept. Many of its predecessors had actually included quest systems of their own. But they were largely skeletal in nature, missing the very flesh and bones that would make them complete. For some, the rewards simply weren’t comparable to those you could obtain through grinding and other actions. For others, there simply weren’t enough quests available to complete. The fact that WoW’s was so much more robust, with a visual indicator included for available quests, was what made it far superior.

However, it wasn’t perfect. Often times, you’d be sent to a different continent to continue a questline you started on the other. For example, you’d pick up a quest in Desolace, in Kalimdor, that would send you all the way to Scarlet Monastery (SM) in Tirisfal, in the Eastern Kingdoms. And it’s important to point out that SM is a dungeon that takes a while for a level 30 to 40 Alliance character to get to. Also, at times, the guidance was considerably broken in nature and you’d be sent back and forth between areas multiple times before realizing there was a better hub somewhere else you weren’t being sent to.

Although this is just a guess of mine, I got the feeling that the zone and quest designers weren’t exactly on the same page. Or at least the quest designers didn’t give enough consideration towards people and how much they dislike traveling between quests.

Overall, however, WoW’s questing and leveling system was a huge step above its predecessors.

“Blue” Dungeons and Instances

Instances are peculiar things in WoW. They weren’t exactly a new concept, but WoW was the first MMO with plans to heavily utilize the feature in the implementation of dungeons.

And WoW definitely had a large amount of dungeons upon release. Just to list them off for you:

1. Ragefire Chasm (RFC)
2. Deadmines
3. Wailing Caverns (WC)
4. Shadowfang Keep (SFK)
5. Blackfathom Deeps (BFD)
6. The Stockade
7. Gnomeregan
8. Razorfen Kraul (RFK)
9. Razorfen Downs (RFD)
10. Scarlet Monastery (SM)
11. Uldaman
12. Zul’Farrak (ZF)
13. Sunken Temple (ST)
14. Blackrock Depths (BRD)
15. Lower Blackrock Spire (LBRS)
16. Stratholme (Strat)
17. Scholomance (Scholo)
18. Upper Blackrock Spire (UBRS)

It is important to note that UBRS was designed for ten players, while the rest were designed simply for five, the traditional group size.

Out of all of these dungeons, only five of them could be considered end-game blue dungeons, and these were LBRS, BRD, Strat, Scholo and UBRS. However, LBRS and BRD were only end-game because they dropped items only a few specific classes considered end-game pre-raiding. The majority of end-game blue loot came from Strat, Scholo and UBRS, initially, until Dire Maul was released in March of 2005.

Maraudon was another instance they added later, but it was not end-game level. It was also placed in Desolace, a zone I wished had never existed.

Raid Dungeons

There wasn’t a lot of raid content at release. Essentially, you had Onyxia and Molten Core. And Molten Core remained somewhat buggy with corpse retrieval for a few weeks or so. Furthermore, the gear available at the game’s release wasn’t exactly designed well enough to help defeat this content, and this raised an artificially high barrier for guilds to overcome. It wasn’t until late January that Onyxia and the first bosses in Molten Core started dropping, once guilds had finished leveling and obtaining everything they possibly could from blue dungeons to help kill Lucifron and Onyxia.

In total, there were eleven raid bosses upon release. This is paltry in comparison to the fifteen possible 25-man encounters at the release of TBC, twenty-five if you include Karazhan (not including the chess event, beast boss, and the fact that opera is essentially three different encounters). But there are some unique factors to consider given the raid dungeons and encounters from vanilla WoW’s original release. And they are as follows:

1. The gear available from blue dungeons sucked until Dire Maul. While I’m sure the itemization team intended to design the gear with further progression in mind, they didn’t really understand what stats were optimal for tanking, DPSing and healing in raid content at the time.

2. Guilds were still building and refining their rosters. I’m sure a lot of non-beta guilds had members who decided to discontinue playing the game after hitting level 60. And I’m sure some guilds were also discovering the shortfalls of many of their members.

3. The raid bosses themselves didn’t have a high yield of loot. Lucifron only dropped two items for forty people. And there was no token system for tier loot, either, meaning the percentage chance for a class to obtain a certain piece of tier loot was also lower than it is today.

So progression was generally a whole lot slower in the beginning days of WoW for these reasons. But it did mean that beta guilds like Ruined had a leg up on progression. I don’t think they would have achieved the world first of Onyxia, otherwise.

PvP

There’s not much to say about the PvP system at WoW’s release. Essentially, it was nonexistent. There was no honor system. There were no battlegrounds. There were no arenas. There weren’t even outdoor PvP objectives. The only thing you could do was /pvp and bait the opposing faction into PvP, or roll on a PvP server. That’s it.

It did lead to the amusing war between PvP and PvE realmers on the forums, however. LOL, carebears! World of Carecraft!

Itemization

As mentioned before, itemization was pretty terrible at release. It even remained so for some classes until the release of TAQ and Naxxramas. But it was at its lowest point at release. Essentially, all blue gear had only the basic stats at release: stamina, agility, spirit and intellect. None or almost none of it had +dmg, +heal, block, defense, etc. So you were rocking up to Molten Core or Onyxia without being crit capped, and relying on shield block to keep you from getting totally gibbed on occasion. And, as for casters and healers, all you could really do was increase your longevity with the basic stats.

Molten Core and Onyxia did offer gear with some of the more valuable stats, however. But even the gear that dropped from raids wasn’t perfectly itemized. For example, some healing gear actually had +dmg/heal, instead of +heal. Lawbringer even had spirit on it, a terrible stat for the paladins it was meant for.

It’s interesting to note that Blizzard has admitted to their past ignorances in regards to item design, however. And this is why most tier 3 gear was well-designed for classes in specific roles.

Zone Artwork and Aesthetic Design

I will say WoW’s environment has always been pretty decent, in my opinion. There was a lot of attention to detail paid when it came to zone design and artwork at release. However, not every zone was all that interesting. The repeated bleakness of zones like Desolace, the Badlands, the Blasted Lands and the Burning Steppes were somewhat irksome. But all of the major cities and zones like Ashenvale, Winterspring, Azshara, Mulgore, and Redridge all have beautiful artwork and aesthetic design. I know it’s a subjective matter, however.

Gear Artwork

The gear design and artwork visually was pretty lackluster for a long while before the art team redesigned some of it. Certainly, it wasn’t at the quality that it is today. I remember when Cenarion and Stormrage were both greenish-brown and generically designed.

The Graphic Engine

It’s interesting to note that WoW’s graphical engine has not changed fundamentally. I am hoping they will upgrade it for Wrath of the Lich King, however.

Sound

The sound hasn’t changed much since day one. But why change a good thing?

Music

A lot of WoW’s original music was synthesized. But it did borrow some elements from the RTS games, primarily Warcraft III, which gave it a nostalgic feel. I won’t say the music was bad at release, however. It wasn’t. It was definitely a lot better than the music in DAoC. And I enjoyed pieces like those from the snowy landscapes and Thunder Bluff, especially. But some of it was very generic and boring. I also didn’t like the recycled music in Molten Core.

Controls

WoW’s controls have been top notch since day one. I always had problems revisiting DAoC after a session of WoW, simply because of the superior controls. The reason you’d see a big /follow train in DAoC was because the controls were terrible. If you didn’t /follow, you’d likely lose the run speed buff of your skald if they turned and you turned too late. I don’t have that problem with WoW, however.

I like the fact that WoW’s bindings are highly customizable. And being able to move my character and camera with my mouse is a godsend. Any MMO that doesn’t let me turn my character and camera with my mouse would be instantly uninstalled, these days.

UI Customization

WoW really pioneered UI customization for MMO’s. Since day one, it’s been highly customizable, even to the point where Blizzard had to put restrictions on some operations to prevent the mods from basically playing the game for people (like the original Decursive and the feature in CT to stopcast a heal when someone is at a certain health threshold).

Conclusion

Concluding the first part of this series of entries, I think WoW did have some major problems in its infancy. It didn’t have enough end-game blue instances, and it desperately needed some kind of PvP system. With early interest only in Stratholme, Scholomance and UBRS, I was quickly growing bored. Luckily, however, I decided to get involved in the raiding game, and that kept me around a little longer (as in to this day). But it definitely drove several of my friends away for months and, in some cases, years.

That said, the questing and leveling systems were the best of any MMO I’d ever played. After smashing my head against a wall trying to level two characters through DAoC, I didn’t think I could have been any happier… until Outland blew my original leveling experience out of the water, that is.

Raiding-wise, once I got into it, I was generally content. By today’s standards, however, the raid content back then wasn’t exactly the most innovative and challenging. But I really liked the way Onyxia and Ragnaros were designed. And the raiding game of WoW was also a huge shock compared to my experiences in DAoC, which were mostly zergfest, aside from a few encounters in Trials of Atlantis.

That said, however, I don’t think spam-decurse encounters like Lucifron were very innovative. In fact, I disliked them a ton, especially considering the way Blizzard’s default UI was set up for raiding at the time (as in non-existent).

But the overall design was well done, in my opinion. I liked the atmosphere. I liked the artwork. The guild system was simple, but functional enough to fit mine and my friends’ needs. The dungeons were generally well-designed. And the leveling system was awesome.