Eastern Kingdoms

This is a sub-page of Prerelease:World of Warcraft.

Eastern Kingdoms#

Eastern Kingdoms, known simply as Azeroth in the game files, has a mapID of 0, making it the first ever map to be developed for the game.

This image of a full map of eastern kingdoms as it was in September 2002 was released by John Staats in his "The WoW Diary" book. It looks quite different to the final game. Noteably the northern portion of the map is far less developed than the southern. Some differences are as follows:

• Gillijim's Isle and The Isle of Doctor Lapidis can both be seen on this map. These areas were small islands located off the coast of Stranglethorn, but were cut from the final game. The only currently available client that has these islands intact is the leaked 0.5.3 build.
• There is a large landmass extending outwards towards the sea from behind Stormwind, what this landmass was supposed to be is unknown.
• Dun Morogh is in an early state, the west side of the zone is much more developed than the east. It is unknown whether Ironforge was implemented when this map was made.
• The Eastern Plaguelands is still in the concept phase at this point and has no texture work done to it. The green zone above it is a prototype Zul'Aman which did not release until the Burning Crusade Expansion. The Zul'Aman prototype zone was repurposed into a development zone known as Programmer Isle, which is the only surviving view of this early prototype.
• The very top of the map had a raid labelled "Dragon Isles", the only surviving remnant of this raid is an untextured model which can still be found in the game files to this day.
• Gilneas was much longer than in the final release.
• There is an early untextured Scarlet Monastery located in the middle of Tirisfal Glades.
• A large island is present where Menethil Harbor should be in the final game.
• The eastern edge of the wetlands has odd tree root like terrain where it meets the water.
• The Stranglethorn Arena doesn't seem to exist yet (or it is very small on this map).
• There are what looks to be docks behind where the Stranglethorn Arena is supposed to be.

Elwynn Forest#

One of the very first zones to be created, most pre-release shots were taken in either this zone, Westfall or Duskwood as they were the first to be finished.

Northshire Abbey#

This image showcases a very early design of Northshire Abbey not seen in any other prerelease shots. The design and texture work suggests that it was made pre-2000 when the game was still using a realistic EverQuest like art style.

Mirror Lake#

Probably one of the most famous pre-release WoW screenshots. This image shows the character "Valkryst" standing in front of an early version of Mirror Lake.

• The two houses in the background are completely unused and do not appear in any public clients.
• It is using the Warcraft 3-esque interface design.
• The character only has two resource bars like the final game, dating this shot late 2001 early 2002.

Another famous Pre-release screenshot, again taken with the character "Valkryst". This shot has some differences from the above screenshot, indicating that they weren't taken on the same build.

• This can be seen in the minimap, where the first shot didn't have water showing, but this shot does.
• The health and mana bars are a slightly lighter shade of red and blue, although the last image had an empty mana bar.
• This shot has the day/night cycle clock indicator at the top right of the minimap, which cannot be seen in the first shot.

Westfall#

Here is a very early version of the character stats screen. At this stage of development is is extremely bare-bones without any artwork.

• All of the stats with the exception of Endurance exist in the final game.
• All of the stats are labeled with "DUMMYSTAT" suggesting that stats were not implemented at this point in development.
• The players class is listed as just "CLASS" suggesting that even classes were not yet present in this build.
• There is an odd brown brick like structure in the bottom left.

Another screenshot seemingly taken on the same day as the above, shows a human player jumping? Awkwardly waving? In any case there is debug information printed to the bottom left of the screen which says Updating unit data Character/Human/Male/HumanMale.mdl, whats interesting about this is that the player model is using a format known as .MDL, which has never been seen in any clients including the leaked 0.5.3 alpha which uses an updated version of the Warcraft 3 model format .MDX.

This screenshot shows a Tauren player interacting with an ogre npc with a test quest.

• The quest has various colored text present which was replaced with just plain black text in the final game.
• The quest is telling the player to click a link on the quest, this is something that is not possible in the final game.
• The minimap is weird, it looks like it is showing a very grainy image of ...somewhere in westfall but it is hard to say exactly what the minimaps look like at this point in development.

An image of the development team dated 2001, shared in John Staats' "The WoW Diary", depicts a house sporting a texture using an early art style. This house does not exist in any known builds.

Loch Modan#

An early look at WoWEdit, depicting an unspecified place in Loch Modan. It is using an old co-ordinate system, so it is not possible to match up to the final game.