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World of Warcraft

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This page details pre-release information and/or media for World of Warcraft.

Eastern KingdomsScreenshots taken on the Eastern Kingdoms map. KalimdorScreenshots taken on the Kalimdor map. Unknown locations and Test mapsScreenshots taken in locations lost to time.

Art, Renders and Magazine articles#

3D Model Renders3D character renders supplied to the press. Concept ArtIf you look closely, you can see that it was all part of the Jailer's plan.

Development Timeline#

Various early video footage from first trailer until release is available as a bundled development timeline video. Watch on YouTube

  • 1999
    • Game begins development.
  • 2000
    • WoW codebase splits off from the Warcraft 3 engine, no longer tied down by the RTS engine.
  • 2001
    • September 2 - WoW was announced at ECTS.
  • 2002
    • The final version of the UI is developed.
  • 2003
    • Friends and Family alpha client was leaked.
  • 2004
    • November 23 - WoW releases in North America, Australia and New Zealand.
  • 2005
    • February 11 - WoW releases in Europe.

Images released by Blizzard#

The following images and descriptions were officially released by Blizzard at Blizzcon for an anniversary celebration.

Earliest known screenshot#

This is the earliest existing screenshot of World of Warcraft using the Warcraft III engine. 
This shot shows World of Warcraft's incredibly humble beginnings were merely that of a rescripted modification of Warcraft III.

Early Race Models#

The World of Warcraft races in 2000. 
This shot shows some undead designs whose identity fluctuated throughout early development.

World-of-WarcraftPR-Blizz-Early-Races.png

A shot of a few of the playable races in a very early Elwynn Forest.

This version of the game is still using the first version of the interface UI.

The image also contains some debug information in the top left, which shows the amount of loaded chunks and doodads. Notably, the bottom left of the image contains the co-ordinates: -19582, -2277, 0. The zero at the end of these co-ordinates indicates that this image was taken on mapID 0, which corresponds to the Eastern Kingdoms map in the final game. The 0.5.3 game client will crash when attempting to go there in-game due to them being located outside the map boundary (it is located far off in the void south of Eastern Kingdoms), this indicates that the co-ordinate system was changed during development as the final game only allows for a max x/y co-ordinate value of +/-17066.

Unused Town Valguard#

An early look at World of Warcraft in 1999, in the placeholder town of Valguard. 
Almost none of this version's code or artwork exists in the game today and the whereabouts of "Malbourn" are unknown.

Untextured Cairne Bloodhoof#

Cairne Bloodhoof's birthday

World-of-WarcraftPR-Blizz-Cairne.png

This image was taken with the final UI, dating it late 2002/early 2003. Debug information about this NPC is present on the tooltip showcasing many internal values, such as the NPC's Strength, Agility and Intellect, as well as showing its positional co-ordinates and faction group.

Earliest Flight Path#

The first flight point test in WoW. 
Gryphons weren't animated at this point, hence the Alliance character riding a Wyvern.

World-of-WarcraftPR-Blizz-Flight-Path-Test.png

This image was taken with the final UI, dating it late 2002/early 2003.

Arathi Basin WoWEdit#

"After the "Atari Map" was completed for Arathi Basin, Jim Chadwick began laying out the level in WoW edit. 
At first we only focused on the heights and distances of the capture points placing all of the points of interest so they could be seen from each other."
-Jeffrey Kaplan

Early Ruins of Lordaeron#

The Ruins of Lordaeron. Originally, Undercity was going to be Lordaeron featuring wrecked human architecture. 
But the artists wanted to build an "undead" kit of buildings which later became Undercity.

World-of-WarcraftPR-Blizz-Lordaeron.png

This image was taken with the final UI, dating it late 2002/early 2003. Note the chat box message talking about "Attribute points", a feature that was cut from the final game.

Early Outland#

Originally Outland was to be a zone that shipped with the original World of Warcraft. 
This is a look at the earliest work on the zone.

World-of-WarcraftPR-Blizz-Outland.png

Outland actually did ship with the original game's launch and was even located on the Eastern Kingdoms map, however because it was isolated far off of the playable map area you could only access it by editing the terrain to allow for players to cross the void separating it from the mainland.

Early Bag UI#

One of the earliest World of Warcraft screenshots taken during development.

World-of-WarcraftPR-Blizz-Early-Alpha-Westfall.png

This image was taken with the very first version of the UI, dating it 1999-2000.

There are many things to note in this shot.

  • The game's icon is a black box with red text in it.
  • There is text at the top of the screen stating "Dhuman: areadeath 500" which is a debug command used to kill all NPC's in a 500yd range.
  • The minimap is completely white with only two small icons, one of which is denoting the player. This suggests that the game minimaps had not yet been generated at this point in development.
  • The item the player is selecting are pants, but seem to have weapon statistics. It has the stat "AC", this most likely stood for Accuracy, and was later changed to Hit rating in the final game.
  • The character seems to have equipped a bugged foot item and is displaying the boot Geoset with the human skin texture.
  • The player has 3 different resource bars, the red denotes health, the blue denotes Mana and the yellow one is an unused resource known as Endurance.

Early Character Creation#

The first character select screen built by Aaron Keller. 
Originally, World of Warcraft had only six races. Trolls and gnomes were added later in development.

World-of-WarcraftPR-Early-Char-Select.png

Note the Dwarf with a bugged face texture and the Tauren with purple missing textures. These character models still remain in the game files to this day, missing textures and all.

European Computer Trade Show#

ECTS Login Screen#

World-of-WarcraftPR-2002-Login-Screen.png

The early login screen seen here was first shown off in 2002 at ECTS. It was created as a quick mock-up screen for the event, as an actual login screen had yet to be created. The UI design is somewhat similar to the one in Warcraft III, but is more skeuomorphic. WoWPR 2002 login.png

ECTS Character Creation#

World-of-WarcraftPR-ECTS-Char-Create.png

The character creation screen shown off at ECTS 2002. The character model in the center would spin 360 degrees while playing a walking animation.