While I was looking up some old Blizzard news announcements, I came across this old article from IGN. It's always interesting to see these old posts detailing the future of games. =]

It talked about various things that Blizzard had planned before beta testing began.. so, unfortunately, I can't really add these items to that WoW Nostalgia post.

Anyways, check it out:

- Warriors had defense skills that were limited buffs (no stances).
- Warriors had an ability called "Slice and Dice" that granted additional damage when using swords.
- Shamans had an armor spell called Rockskin and could cast grasping roots (which grows roots from the ground to snare enemies).
- Shamans had a spell called "Immolation" for setting enemies on fire and burning slowly.
- Mages had a spell called "Fire Shield" that did damage to attacking players. (Although this never made it, the similar Molten Armor was later introduced in TBC.)
- There were core skills, secondary skills, and trade abilities. Secondary skills allowed Warriors, for example, to have first-aid, sneaking, thief abilities, etc. I wonder what other secondary skills they had considered?
- Core skills was basically weapon training (and possibly spells or certain skills like "Taming") by the way.
- This was interesting: "We do know there will be two continents however, Azeroth and Calendor." They even italicized "do", meaning that Blizzard confirmed to them that the two continents would be called Azeroth and Calendor. They might have misheard Kalimdor as Calendor (or maybe that was the original spelling?). Eastern Kingdoms was once known as Azotha, but in the Warcraft 3 manual Azeroth is a continent, not the planet.

Very interesting indeed. =]

Here are some other interesting details collected during that time (From E3 2002 Previews, the June 2003 issue of GMR, and forum posts).

- There will be over 100 dungeons in World of Warcraft. (Also confirmed by gamesdomain.com who had a private preview by Blizzard.)
- World of Warcraft ended up having 36 total dungeons by the way. BC had 26 dungeons by the end and WOTLK 29. Cataclysm launched with 10 new dungeons (and there are 2 new ones to be released later this year).
- Gnolls were changed to Gnomes as the playable race. (Textures were re-purposed for NPCs.)
- Entertainment on public transportation, like gambling.
- Mounts provide a bonus to armor when travelling, but could "not be used in combat yet". That feature was supposed to be implemented in the future.
- There were supposed to be hundreds of secondary skills (the only ones known at the time were First Aid, Thief (aka Pickpocketing), Lockpicking, and Sneaking which could be obtained by any class.)
- Players accumulate Special Points (SP) to unlock secondary skills.
- Druids could shapeshift into "unobtrusive animals" that are native to the area, such as a small rabbit. Basically, they could become "Critters" to stay hidden in plain sight. =]
- Mages could summon Fire and/or Air elementals.
- Blizzard stated that servers could support 2000-4000 players.
- World of Warcraft budget was about $40-50 million, was being worked on by 60 people over a 3 year period. (Good to know information to separate development costs from all other costs.)

And finally: when asked about possible new races: "There will be playable evil races, very evil races in fact".

I'm not sure what they had planned. Maybe they were just referring to the Undead race, or Horde in general? It's hard to say.. I wouldn't really consider the Horde evil, considering the amount of lore painting them as honorable and misunderstood warriors. If any race was considered evil, it would have to be the Human race considering all of their actions (and how they followed the order's of Azeroth's most evil villain for years). But that's a debate for another day. =]

* UPDATES:

- Confirmation from Warcry that "Calendor" was a typo - they meant to write Kalimdor. Azeroth was still called a continent however.
- Apparently, the Cathedral in Stormwind was to be used for virtual weddings, and Blizzard had plans to rent the space and to buy/send out invitations for players. (Early plans for paid services perhaps?) =]
- Another old mention of monthly content updates "created by an ongoing live development team that continuously designs new lands, quests, and monsters."
- Blizzard planned to have dynamic quests assigned to NPCs on the fly.
- Another funny one: "Every drop can be either used, worn, or used in crafting. Of course some things will be better than others, but there won't be any junk."
- Oh, and of course: Player Housing. =]

Back in 1995-96, Flatline Studios, LLC. pitched a game demo to Interplay and they were signed on to do a title which was eventually called AI: Alien Intelligence. Unfortunately, Interplay shelved the title after their unsuccessful IPO (and Flatline's 2 years of development). It was cancelled in 1999 just prior to the retail release.

Flatline consisted of about 20 employees at the time and they were responsible for all aspects of development (video, sound, coding, gameplay, cinematics, etc.) They were royally screwed over in the deal, and the company died after AI was shelved.

Being an avid Starcraft player, I was really looking forwards to the game back in 1998. It was a very ambitious project for it's time and it had the potential to succeed Blizzard's Starcraft. If history played a little different, we might all be playing "World of Alien Intelligence" right now. =]

So, imagine this scenario: It's about one year after Starcraft is first released and another Sci-Fi RTS arises. It has superior graphics, cinematics and sound. You can manage units on multiple planets throughout a universe (which you can also explore) and you can also travel between (ie, trade with), colonize, or conquer other (un)inhabited planets. All of this is in realtime Starcraft-style but with simultaneous land and space combat.. and even planetary bombardment. Oh yeah.

Not only that, but throw in:

- Massive technology research trees (150 levels of tech that you could develop or steal.)
- Six alien species (with their own characteristics, technologies, play styles, and combat strategies.)
- More advanced NPC A.I.
- Over 10,000 ship designs
- A playing field that spans multiple star systems.
- Diplomacy, trade and resource management (4X features).
- Non-linear sandbox-style gameplay in an realtime game universe (more of an epic feel rather than linear missions).
- Superior multiplayer support (LAN, Modem, Serial, and TCP/IP Internet).

(Historical Note: Starcraft 1 provided no method to play TCP/IP games over the internet other than through Battle.net which was extremely slow and unstable at the time. Many players couldn't even access Battle.net due to lack of internet connectivity (school, university netorks, LAN parties). There were also other major problems with Battle.net such as substantial cheating and the inability to locate friends.)

Anyhow, here were some old videos I was able to dig up:





Descriptions for each race:

1. Psionids - "highly evolved, possess strong mental powers that they use to confuse the enemy in the heat of battle."
2. Strixthes - "Insectoid, behave like ants with mindless drones being controlled by a queen."
3. Arkanians - "Insectoid, more like roaches that can construct anything out of garbage - they're also excellent thieves."
4. Munzoids - "Closest to the human race. Descended from Mongolians captured and enslaved by an alien race. The Munzoids are extremely aggressive and never surrender."
5. Metalloids - "Somewhere between Star Trek's Borg race and the T1000 from Terminator 2. Artificially created as servants, their individual thought processors are controlled by a central computer known as The One. They reproduce by absorbing metal and then splitting, amoeba like, in two."
6. Drache - "Dragon-like. These former slaves are skilled workers and can transform a barren landscape into a habitable world."

Here was an old write-up about the game:

"The planets that you colonise will give your race not only a place to grow, but also many resources. At the same time, planets have their own ecosystem which could be upset if you choose to meddle with it. For example, you may decide to eliminate a creature that becomes a pest, but in doing so, the predators that live off those creatures might start viewing your race as an alternative food source.

Once you've successfully populated one planet, you will want to expand and for that you need ships. In addition to outpost and colony ships, there are seven basic hull types for each race, all of which can be customised to some degree. Some of these are ideal for ferrying troops to newly discovered planets, while others are combat specific. Not only can these interstellar behemoths face off against enemy fleets, but they are also capable of bombing planets.

War is avoidable, though: diplomatic relations are a large part of the game and you can maintain neutrality, enter into hostilities or even form an alliance with another race. Trade is another area and will provide you with resources that you cannot get for yourself and money, which goes towards the development and running of your colonies.

Naturally, careful resource management is central to the success of your empire. For your colonies to flourish, you need sufficient food, as well as plenty of buildings and structures. You can't have buildings without metals, which must be mined, and power, which is derived from radioactives. And of course, you can't build anything without money, which you'll need for units, ships and structures. Fortunately, resource management is made easier because materials can be used anywhere, not just in the area they were acquired."

I was sitting on this blog post for quite a while now, but I was hoping to get some more information before posting this (e.g. more details, screenshots, videos), but my contact (Eric Smith - former President of Flatline Studios) got a little busy and forgot all about me. =[

Maybe if he finds this blog in his travels, he might get back in touch (I'm looking at you Eric!). Apparently, he still has Pre-Production boxes and a few Demo/Beta CD-ROMs lying around somewhere. I'd love to get my hands on some old videos or screenshots of live gameplay!

While preparing this entry, I also pleasantly discovered a recent post about Alien Intelligence here. Glad to see that it's memory is still being kept alive.

It has been described by some as a Turn-Based Strategy (what MOO3 should have been) and by others as a Real-Time Strategy (like Starcraft but on an epic scale). The demos seem to indicate that most of the game was a real time strategy - so I assume it had a lot of features like a 4X game (ie, resource management, diplomacy, espionage, etc) but there might have been a way to task a NPC to micromanage certain aspects of your empire for you. And, if you had time between building construction, combat, or travelling to other planets, you could do some micromanaging on your own. Without playing the actual game, though, I can only fill in the gaps with my imagination. =]

Oh well. At least I'm comforted in knowing that A.I. Alien Intelligence survives somewhere in a parallel dimension where Interplay made smart business decisions, the game shattered sales records, and my counterpart was addicted to it for several years.

With the upcoming release of Cataclysm, I was reminiscing about how overpowered the "original" Death Knight was when WOTLK was first released.

Here's a link to the Original Death Knight Talent Tree. You can also see old talent trees by version number on wowprovider.com. For example, 3.0.1.8303 Alpha talents and 3.0.2 Beta talents.

My First DK PVP

I was level 58 at the time (wearing the DK starter gear) in Outlands. I had a Unholy AOE build and was grinding the Shattered Hand Grunts just outside Hellfire Citadel. I was typically soloing 4-5 Grunts at a time with no issues (it's important to note that I was 58 and they were level 62-63). It was amazing to say the least. =]

So, I had just killed Force Commander Gorax while soloing two other mobs, and then I repositioned myself to aggro 3 other mobs to keep the AOE grinding going.

While I was AOE grinding the 5 grunts, a level 77 NE Druid Boomkin (wearing the highest tiered 70 PVE gear at the time and some Northrend epics) flew over top of me, stopped, and then assumed a very safe distance from me. He starting blasting me with Starfire, Wrath, and Moonfire. I was able to keep my HP up with Death Strikes on the 5 mobs until a couple of them were dead, then I re-focused my attention on the pesky annoyance.

It was my first PVP experience with the DK and it's clear that we were both very surprised. =] While 3 other mobs were beating on me, I Death Gripped him and laid a beating that he would never forget. At the time, diseases removed HOTS so he couldn't heal himself very well, and the amount of damage I was doing to him must have been a huge surprise considering the 19 level difference. It was pretty much a faceroll on my part, and he ended up blowing through all of his cooldowns (and using pots) trying to escape.

I managed to get him down to about 5% health by the time the other mobs I aggro'd eventually took their toll (about 5-6 beating on me by then and because of his high level, he didn't aggro any mobs like I had).

He thought he was safe, but didn't anticipate (or knew about) the talent "Shadow of Death" however. =]

I transformed into a Ghoul and quickly ripped him to shreds.

Ahh.. good old "Shadow of Death". Here are a couple old videos of SoD in action: Link 1, Link 2. I apologize about the video quality (switch to 720p if available), but there are very few SoD videos out there.

When he returned to his body, he flew away never to return. So I quickly fired up my second account and whispered him:

Me: Dude! That 58 just kicked your ass!
Boomkin: what r u talking about?
Me: I was flying overhead and saw that fight.
Me: He totally owned you.
Boomkin: no.. i killed him..
Me: Barely. But he was 20 levels below you, and you died too.
Boomkin: i was on the phone

It was pretty funny. =]

History Will Repeat Itself With Cataclysm

WOTLK was released just before Christmas (Nov 13/2008) and a friend of mine kept saying how right after Christmas, Blizzard would nerf the Death Knights explaining how it was all part of their "business plan". Being a "Hero Class" I had hoped they wouldn't undergo too many changes - but it made sense and I knew that it was going to happen as well. Releasing a completely overpowered class during the best sales period of the year is an excellent way to boost sales, and then you can simply nerf the class after the busy sales period ends. And that's exactly what happened. The "Hero Class" really became nothing more than just another class that happens to start at Level 55.

With the new Cataclysm changes, I'm certain that history will be repeating itself.

Some of the new spells, abilities and masteries are completely overpowered. And you'll see a major nerf a few months after Christmas, yet again.

Every class has a turn at being OP'd for a certain amount of time, and this time it appears to be the Hunter's turn again.

(Note: These abilities are currently in beta testing, but keep in mind that the OP DK was also tested for months and months in beta but was still released in retail.)

Hunter Camouflage: Not only makes you look very cool, it also makes you completely immune to all forms of damage! You're invisible when standing still, you can't be targeted, you can change aspects while running, enemy traps will not trigger, AOE spells don't affect you, you don't aggro mobs even when right on top of them, and you can remove DOTs if they were cast on you prior to camouflage. It can be activated as long as you're not in combat - if you are, just hit Feign Death or Shadowmeld if you're a NE. And you can practically have it turned on all the time. =]

Here's a video that explains better:


The new Trap Launcher for Hunters is also a pretty overpowered ability, depending on how you use it. (Note: If you liked the ending "I'm A Hunter" song, you can listen to the full song here.)

For the DK, overpowered abilities include Dark Simulacrum and Necrotic Strike.


Necrotic Strike is interesting, it was "meant to bring back some of the old flavor from when death knights could dispel heal-over-time (HoT) effects." I'm happy about that.

And then other OP'd PVP spells include the Prot Paladin's "Blinding Shield" (AOE "Blind" with added damage) and the Mage's "Firestarter" talent (run while casting Scorch). "Curtain of Frost" still needs some work, but it could be OP'd for PVP if it does what the developers intend.

If you want to see all of the new Cataclysm spells, follow this link.

Of course, many of these new spells (if they make it to retail, which they probably will..) will allow a select number of classes to be massively overpowered for about 3-6 months and then they'll be dramatically nerfed after sales decline (the Paladin has been OP for awhile now, I think it's time). It's a good thing that I have 80's in every single class. =]

This is actually a little bit of history which I'd like to preserve on the blog.

Back in late January 2009, Blizzard's advertisements were accidentally swapped out with Gold Seller ads. (Links: wow.com, cgenetwork.com, 1up.com)


Other than this one incident, I recall that it happened a few times actually: on BNet Forums, WoW Forums, and the waiting room of Diablo 2.

But in each case, most (if not all) news instances started to "disappear" and people later forgot. It didn't help though that threads were locked, forum entries were deleted, and Blizzard told sites to remove the news either.

So it's difficult finding information on these accidents now and it's something that Blizzard would prefer that you forget. =]

Reading over the forums, you'll see that Blizzard employees and players alike will all insist that "Blizzard has NEVER been breached. They've never been hacked. They have security measures in place that make them foolproof and 100% protected."

(Note: I never understood that logic so I simply chalk it up to "Blizzard Indoctrination". It's funny because if a game developer creates games that melt video cards and are full of bugs, cheats, issues that take years to fix, exploits, and can easily be hacked and exploited.. why would anything else they create be so different?)

Although employees insist that "To this date Blizzard has never been breached", in an earlier post I listed many cases of Blizzard database breaches, how Blizzard employee accounts have been compromised (and used to spread keyloggers on official forums), and other hacking activities. When the Blizzard employee accounts were compromised, Blizzard sent notifications to websites to remove the information ("Reputation Management"). And those were just the breaches that made public headlines! Who really knows how many breaches there have been?

Some of these are just accidents and "glitches" while others are major security breaches.

This has been going on for years, but it's obvious that it has been forgotten by most. That's why preservation is so important. =]

With all of these posts about Blizzard/WoW, I was feeling a little nostalgic and broke out an old list I had created back in April 2008. It was originally posted to gamefaqs.com (moderator removed it - he "didn't consider it appropriate for the WoW Forum" for some reason) and then I posted it on the Age Of Conan Beta forums too.

Here's the list so far. If you can remember some fond (or not-so-fond) memories of World of Warcraft during the beta and first couple years of retail, please let me know.

• Block values were added to shields. Blocking an attack used to avoid ALL damage of an attack.
• There were Shields and Bucklers. Pallies/Warriors had shields & Rogues/Shamans had Bucklers.
• Rogues had the "Block" ability in their skillset.
• There were "Spear weapons" and Druids could use them. Druids could also equip Polearms.
• Players earned skill points based on experience points from killing monsters. Skill points could be spent on tradeskills (changed to "Professions" later), weapon skills, purchasing mounts, and to increase attributes!
• "Plainsrunning" was the Tauren's only Racial Trait. Here's an excerpt from Blizzard on mounts: "Mounts are expensive and race specific, but players can spend skill points to learn how to ride other mounts. Mounts can be bought or acquired through quests. In order to summon a mount, you must use a specific scroll. Upon dismounting, the mount disappears (though the scroll remains in your inventory). Mounts come in a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes, and provide an armor bonus." Taurens did not have mounts, they "instead have a special racial ability called Plains Running which allows them to run very quickly for a certain amount of time."
• Zeppelins and Boats frequently dropped you into the sea (sometimes resulting in death depending how far out you were).
• You auto-dismounted on all STV bridges.
• Hunters had focus, not Mana. (Note: this is making a comeback in Cataclysm)
• Dwarf Mages! Although this was removed at one point, players were able to keep their Dwarf Mages until end of beta. (Will be coming back in Cataclysm, yay!)
• Mages had the spell "Sleep". Polymorph replaced it later.
• Cross faction mounts (Gnomes on Wolves).
• Frost Armor and Ice Armor Stacking.
• Mages had the Invisibility spell at earlier levels. There was Lesser Invisibility, Invisibility and Greater Invisibility. They could also cast while invisible. (Invis Pyroblasting FTW.)
• Undead spoke [Common], not [Gutterspeak].
• Shamans had spell "Molten Blast".
• The Warlock talent Ruin was called Holocaust. (Guess why it was removed.)
• Innerfire gave Attack Power.
• Cities had no maps and guards didn't provide directions. Difficult to navigate cities.
• Quest rewards were not soulbound. High levels were paying well for [Sticky Glue] from newbies.
• There were no auction houses.
• Guild Creation by just typing a command.
• Before BGs, massive raids on enemy cities. Hillsbrad still hasn't changed much.
• Alliance outnumbering Horde by atleast 3:1 (in some cases 4-5:1) on all beginning servers.
• Warlocks could summon anyone from anywhere.
• Spell damage had no "up to" coefficient so you could cast level 1 spells for 5 mana and 1 second cast times and get crazy dps.
• Mage Frost Nova looked like a blue shackle. (YouTube Link: "Warcraft Beta Mage".) Remember those ogres?
• Mana ALWAYS regenerated.
• Shaman Water Walking did not break on damage. Could stay in Ghostwolf form while on water too. (They re-introduced this as a Glyph, except for dmg part)
• SM Cath was the endgame.
• Warlocks could heal themselves and resurrect other players.
• Undead Players were completely immune to Sleep, Charm, Fear, Polymorph, etc (Passive ability). Shackle Undead and Turn Undead worked on them.
• Rogue Feign generated a combo point.. and it didn't break Sap.
• Warriors could charge anywhere, in or out of combat, and didn't need a target.
• Instant cast Mind Blasts.
• Warlock DoT "Mind Rot", Mages had spell "Phantasm".
• Lockpicking was a tradeskill that anyone could learn.
• Weapons/gear had no durability.
• Killing guards gave Honor points.
• Bandages could not be interrupted. You could run while 'casting'.
• You could sap multiple targets, and it could be used while they were in combat.
• Enchanting took herbs.
• Warlocks could speak Demonic.
• The sludge in UC has harmful to non-Undead.
• The character models looked human, and not cartoonish.
• Warlocks could banish Humanoids.
• Hunter pets grew bigger and bigger as they levelled. Caused raiding problems, unable to target.
• Undead could breath underwater indefinitely.
• Shadowform increased damage by 20%, and reducing damage taken by 20%.
• There were human druids.
• Shamans could lay down as many totems as they wanted, not just limited to 1 per element.
• Warlocks could wear leather.
• Outdoor world PVP was actually fun.
• Could cast "Curse of Doom" on players.
• Captain Placeholder! (YouTube Link: The Lament of Captain Placeholder)
• There was no language barrier. You could gank and trash talk players.
• Rogues had "Feign Death" ability, and Druids had "Play Dead" while in Cat Form.
• Polymorph affected Beasts, Dragonkin, Dragons, Giants, and Critters.
• Priest ability: "Brainwash"
• Mind Control was amazing. Could use all of the enemy's abilities, and you could buy items/mounts with enemy NPCs.
• BoP was called "Bind on Acquire"
• Bodies decomposed slowly when you rezzed.
• Players could use Ghost Form to travel long distances, and rez at far off locations.
• Blizzard said that at level 40, you could specialize in skills to become a Hero Class. The available hero classes would depend on your base class and race. Human Paladin became Death Knight, Dwarven Warrior became Mountain King, Night Elf Hunter became Demon Hunter, Orc Shaman became Far Seer, etc. (This was all long before TBC keep in mind. You can still see old WoW posts via archive.org)
• Blizzard promised that they would fix player ganking by introducing Dishonor Kills (DK). This was changed to Battlegrounds a few months later and ganking was never fixed.
• Blizzard promised Player Housing.
• Blizzard promised substantial new content each month. There were supposed to be major content patches every month with "new quests, new items, and new adventures" (Link) as well as new zones/dungeons/etc.
• "Track Humanoid" was called "Man Tracking".
• You could eat or drink while engaged in combat.
• Levels were capped at 45, and then 50, and so on.
• Shamans were once the most overpowered class by far.
• Classic Shaman bugs: Sentry Totem trick, no fall damage, and lava swimming without taking damage.
• The naming policy was very strict and heavily enforced. You wouldn't be able to get away with the name "Spam", "Teabag" or "Chucknorris". All names had to be unique, and not named after "real life" words or names. Special characters were also not permitted.

Here are some old screenshots promoting the game when it first came out. I'm searching for an old Forum post where a Blizzard representative stated "substantial content updates every month" and showed a list of planned areas, new instances, items, classes, etc. I suspect they quickly stopped doing that once they understood the time and resources required, and just decided to create the expansion packs instead.

Old WoW Webpage #1
Old WoW Webpage #2
Old WoW Webpage #3

*UPDATE: I found the Gamefaqs.com appeal email. Tee hee..

ORIGINAL ARTICLE POSTED - 5/6/2008 9:27:53 AM

TOPIC DELETED BY MODERATOR - 5/6/2008 5:29:01 PM

Action: Topic Deleted
Reason: Off-Topic Posting
Status: "Upheld - This moderation has been upheld by another moderator. This means that two different moderators have agreed that this message is a TOS violation."

TOPIC DELETION UPHELD BY 3RD MODERATOR - 5/10/2008 3:18:34 PM
"It was a topic about the WoW beta mainly."

Apparently, 3 moderators (who really knows if it was more than 1 person though) decided that WoW beta nostalgia didn't belong on the WoW Forums. It was also posted on the Official AoC webpage forums though (there was a discussion and comparison to WoW prior to launch), and ended up getting over 5,000 views, 250 views, and I received ~50 private messages thanking me for the post. The moderators there didn't even have an issue with it.

Apparently there weren't too many lists out there that collected this type of information. It always gives me warm fuzzy feelings everytime I look at it though since I was in the closed beta myself. I hope you have fond memories as well reading this. (If I missed anything, let me know.)