DGC Ep 187: World of Warcraft (part one)

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where we this week we start a new series with a bit of a different goal: a game we'll play for an initial couple of episodes and then return to from time to time. We discuss 2004's seminal and crowning MMORPG World of Warcraft, discussing the year in which it came out, a history (personal and not) of MMOs, and then dig a bit into the initial hours of the game. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played:
Up until level 8

Issues covered: revisiting our chat with John Romero, looking at 2004 in games, a live game model in EverQuest, self-cannibalization, early history of MUDs, a sad discovery, reflecting on Brad McQuaid's career, sharing games as source, MUDs and theming, talking through the history of a number of MMOs, talking about the market and approachability of other MMOs, peak users, the influence of other Blizzard games on WoW, Brett's confession, introducing characters through the RTS, modding and Warcraft III, launch and WoW, pulling the games from the shelves, server queues, revenue gross, Brett does some on-the-fly math, Activision-Blizzard merger, the starting area for gnomes and dwarves, inviting you into the world like a DM, learning the design language of the game, usability of the quest system, shifting the focus to quests (vs combat grinding), doing multiple things with the quests and rewards, changing your character's look, each race having its own animation set, differentiating races strongly, pre-rendered introduction, RTS influence again, seeing your first human (on a horse), simplifying WoW in the modern version, having to read the text to understand where to go, adding user interface mods, increasing intrinsic reward through difficulty, managing your own grouping, growing the scale of what you see, scale of towns and villages, growing up with the world through exploration, experience ramp.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: John Romero, LucasArts, Republic Commando, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, Half-Life 2, DOOM 3, Metal Gear Solid 3, Fable, Halo 2, Far Cry, Chronicles of Riddick, Katamari Damacy, Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, Source Engine, Troika Entertainment, Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, The Outer Worlds, EverQuest & EverQuest II, 989 Studios, Sony Online Entertainment, Rob Pardo, MUD, Roy Trubshaw, Richard Bartle, DikuMUD, Brad McQuaid, Zork, Adventure, MOO, Pantheon, Saga of Heroes, Habitat, LucasFilm Games, Randy Farmer, Chip Morningstar, Meridian 59, Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Asheron's Call, Raph Koster, Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Underworld, Turbine Entertainment, Lord of the Rings Online, Mythic, EA, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Blizzard, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, Bill Roper, Diablo, David Brevik, Warcraft III, Chris Metzen, DotA, Icefrog, Riot Games, Dark Souls.

Next time:
To level 20

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