Today the world is simply teeming with an abundance of all kinds of computer and video games. More and more games are being released every day with the introduction of the latest innovations in the gaming world. However, against the backdrop of such an abundance, the legendary game World of Warcraft does not lose its relevance. The game still has a huge number of fans around the world. And the game is already 28 years old… In fact, it is older than many of its fans! Not bad, isn’t it? Let’s talk about how the legendary World of Warcraft game was created, what formed its basis and how it all began… Are you intrigued for The Legendary Game ? Let’s go!
It all started with Dune 2…
The inspiration for the creation of the Warcraft gaming series came largely from Dune 2 real-time strategy. This fact is known from the memoirs of the programmer and producer of the first parts of the game, Patrick Wyatt. Since 1991, he has worked for Silicon & Synapse, which released games for the Nintendo, Sega, and MS-DOS desktop systems. A little later, this company will be called Blizzard Entertainment.
Wyatt said that many of his colleagues simply adored Dune 2. They literally took up the game all their free time, played during lunch and after work. However, there were some things that could be considered flaws in Dune 2. For example, you could only play against the computer, and at a time the team was selected and given to only one unit.
Then Wyatt, having analyzed such moments, decided to correct such shortcomings in the project, on which he began working literally alone in September 1993. At the very beginning, the programmer even used cuts from Dune 2 screenshots for game elements, since the project had not yet been assigned its own designer. The first interesting and important detail of the project was the rectangular selection of a whole pack of units. At first, they could be used indefinitely. Later, the developers decided to limit it to 4 times. Thus forcing the players to think more about tactics. Fans of World of Warcraft know exactly what it means to build tactics. That’s why sometimes they feel especially important about mythic raid services, which improve their positions.
As life in the World of Warcraft is very similar to our real life, saving and buying the best in order to further strengthen your position, your character and make your tactics more effective is hardly superfluous.
In 1994, Wyatt was joined by several more members of the legendary game’s team of creators, namely several developers, artists, game designers, and Mike Morheim, co-founder of Blizzard. At that time, less than a year remained before the release of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. At that time, the company employed only about 20 people who could work on two to four projects at the same time.This may sound surprising to some, but it is important to understand that there was no need for large development teams to create games at that time, while today many more people are working on projects.
According to Wyatt, the development process for the first Warcraft game did not require business plans or technical documentation. There wasn’t even a special system, brainstorming could happen in the hallway, at lunch, during a smoke break. The developers exchanged ideas, constantly arguing, cursing, and then putting up and throwing in new ideas about the world, units, spells, scenarios and much more.
Warhammer is the second half…?
The inventors of the game drew their inspiration not only from Dune, but also from the universe of the popular Warhammer tabletop war game. Inside the organization, there were even thoughts about buying the rights to use it. However, after some deliberation, the team nevertheless came to abandon their idea, largely due to the experience of a problematic collaboration with DC Comics. Also influenced by the desire to fully control their game and not depend on anyone.
Time and online play
The game was planned to be released in the winter of 1994. That is why the team worked very hard to be on time as quickly as possible, so we had to give up a lot. So, for example, the project did not include the third resource (stone) and, accordingly, some buildings associated with it, NPC races, as well as the formation of troops. All this required more time and resources. The fact that the first release of Warcraft was rushed can be concluded from the fact that the final history of the game world took shape only a couple of months before the release. And the possibility of online play appeared only in June 1994.
A full ten years later, on the same day, World of Warcraft was released. The same multiplayer online game where every person, every player is of great importance. During all this time, the company has grown a lot and created many games that soon became cult series …
