Filed under: WoW Archivist

The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold.

Previously on WoW Archivist, I discussed how the tone of Warcraft and its associated world changed drastically as time went on and the first expansion pack, The Burning Crusade, was released. Each time World of Warcraft changes its setting, the tone of the game (from the way the environments make the player feel to the actual mechanical development of the product) changes significantly. The tonal change makes WoW a unique specimen in the MMO sphere, allowing it to grow, adapt, and target a vast array of audiences opposed to growing stagnant over time. Incorporating each new tone and focus with each new expansion lets World of Warcraft move forward despite its age.

For a long time, we jokingly referred to Wrath of the Lich King as "The Frozen Crusade" because Blizzard took the best parts of The Burning Crusade and began to build the next expansion. It was hard to understand the tone of the newest expansion before you actually played it. In the beginning all we saw was two new ores, 75 more profession skill points, and greens that were going to replace our purples again. For me, the tone looked like it was going to be "here we go again" -- that is, until I first stepped into Northrend.

Before we learned about Mists of Pandaria and where we stalwart adventurers would be exploring in the coming months, I wrote a post discussing how an expansion about Pandaria, specifically its title, would change the tone of World of Warcraft. Mists of Pandaria would be the first expansion that does not directly reference or reveal the main villain of the expansion's storyline. Blizzard and the WoW development team has been incredible stewards of tone, from the early days of Warcraft to Cataclysm's world-breaking motif. Tone is one of the most important aspects of the MMO because your game world needs to be compelling enough to call back players at any point. Good MMOs set good tone.

Tone has evolved in WoW after each expansion pack, changing considerably each time we swap settings and install the latest content. Alex asked me to write an article that spanned the history of World of Warcraft, and I could think of nothing more dynamic than the tone of the story and how masterfully Blizzard has handled it.

The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold?

Remember Grom'ogh, the legendary axe once wielded by Grom Hellscream? No, of course you don't. Because it never existed. Some enterprising WoW player in The Burning Crusade beta made it up, doctored up some images of Gorehowl from Karazhan and made merry sport of those of us who weren't in the beta and had no idea what kind of awesome drops were out there. (You can tell Grom'ogh is the Gorehowl model and not the Warsong Howling Axe because it has the same spikes on the back of the head that Gorehowl does.)

Amusingly, for those of us who actually got to play The Burning Crusade eventually, there was a two-handed legendary axee, Devastation, which is only useable during the Kael'Thas fight in Tempest Keep. Devastation's stats aren't all that far off from Grom'ogh's proposed stats, except of course for Grom'ogh's ludicrous total fear immunity. Grom'ogh is hardly the only way people have gummed up the works with fake news, though. It's still going on, in fact: fake patch notes, fake expansions (Vengeance of the Void, anyway), made-up new races and classes ... Everyone likes to have a hand in fake game development, it seems. It's so common, people even write guides telling other people how to do it.

The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold?

I'm not ashamed to admit when I've made a mistake. Which is good, because today's Archivist would be awkward otherwise. Last week's classic WoW recap was a smidge premature. I haven't covered patch 1.12 yet. Why? Because I thought patch 1.12 was patch 2.0. Patch 2.0 would go with the Burning Crusade-era patches. Patch 1.12 isn't patch 2.0, however, so we're mired in classic WoW for one more week.

Patch 1.12, Drums of War, released in August of 2006. It contained the feature that has set the standard for all group content in World of Warcraft: cross-realm Battlegrounds. In addition to cross-realm Battlegrounds, patch 1.12 also included sanctioned world PVP (which didn't work) and a number of UI improvements that you probably take for granted all these years later.

Let's dive in, shall we?

The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold?

The Archivist has come a long way. We've just about wrapped up the chronological history of classic World of Warcraft. Sure, there are still bits and bobs that have gone unexplored for now ("The Ashbringer ...") but we've covered every single major patch from the World of Warcraft from prerelease all the way up through the final raid tier of level 60 content. The next time we tackle a set of patch notes, we'll be firmly in The Burning Crusade territory. Exciting, isn't it?

Before we leap into that sweet, sweet Burning Crusade, let's recap what we've covered already, starting way back in July 2009.

The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold?

Raid design has changed more times than there have been actual expansions in World of Warcraft, mostly because original raiding concepts were forged in the endgames of EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, and the pre-WoW generation of MMOs. Patch 1.11.0 introduced Naxxramas, one of the most ambitious raid environments in the history of WoW. The massive necropolis floated ominously above the Eastern Plaguelands, tempting the best raiding guilds with 15 punishing boss encounters. Naxxramas was ultimately removed from the game with patch 3.0.2, when it was replaced with new 10- and 25-man versions of Naxxramas retuned and reitemized as the starter raid for Wrath of the Lich King. The retuning of Naxxramas is one of the best examples of the changing raid dynamics from the original vanilla WoW to the new Wrath dynamic.

Back in the original Naxxramas days, raids were tuned for 40 players. Half of the challenge of raiding in the old days was putting the raid together in the first place, and then actually getting boss strategies down. There was even an attunement to Naxxramas based on your Argent Dawn reputation, which scaled in price depending on how close to exalted you were. Suffice it to say, it was a very different world. Naxxramas' difficulty at the outset was the hardest dungeon WoW had ever seen, and in consequence, not many raid groups got to see the inside of Naxxramas, much less its final encounters.

Over time, the raiding dynamic greatly changed and 10- and 25-man encounters were the new norm. The huge success of Karazhan made 10-man raiding a staple in future WoW expansions. When Naxxramas was poised to make its return as the beginning raid in Wrath of the Lich King, people wondered how certain encounters (which were built for 40-man raid groups consisting of upwards of six tanks on some fights) would be rebuilt for 10- and 25-man raiding groups. Many people didn't think that the flavor and epicness of the instance would stay intact.

The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold?

In last week's Archivist, we looked at patch 1.11's April Fool's Day patch notes, but this week we're digging into the real deal. Patch 1.11 included the original 40-man version of Naxxramas, which was the final raid zone of classic World of Warcraft. The game had seen no expansions yet. While we all knew it was coming, the idea was still foreign and nebulous to players who had limited prior experience with MMOs. "Green is the new purple" was something nobody grasped yet. Naxxramas was seen as the true pinnacle of raiding in classic WoW ... and in some ways, it's still seen that way by WoW's raiding veterans.

The trailer for Shadow of the Necropolis is probably the first patch trailer I remember in vivid detail, as it's one of the first patch trailers in which Blizzard tried to tell a story. Previous patch trailers showed off new bosses and new environments completely without commentary, merely showing off pretty pictures set to new music from the patch's soundtrack. Shadow of the Necropolis slowed things down a bit, showing you some of who Kel'Thuzad was in life and how he came to be lich lord of Naxxramas. Patch trailers have continued to build on what patch 1.11 started.

Let's take a look at what else this patch held, shall we? As usual, we'll first look at the patch notes and then we'll get into commentary.

The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold?

Today's Archivist topic would have been a grand one to save for the next April Fools' Day, but that's half a year away! Sticking strictly to chronological patch order, what the heck, let's just tackle it today. In the early months of 2006, World of Warcraft players were eagerly anticipating patch 1.11, Shadow of the Necropolis, which would implement the original 40-man version of the Naxxramas raid. On April 1, 2006, former Blizzard community manager Caydiem decided to go fishing for trolls: She posted what is known as Evil Patch Notes.

Some of the false patch notes released for patch 1.11 on April Fools' are timeless, immediately obvious jokes that just click, even five years later. Others are relics of their time, references to popular complaints and hatreds of 2005 and 2006. Players who have only just started playing World of Warcraft in the last year or two may not understand them at all. Others, years later, are closer to the truth than Caydiem may have ever expected.

Patch 1.11's Evil Patch Notes will now be presented in full, where they may speak for themselves. Enjoy!

The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold?

It is sad to me that it seems the only players who have access to truly epic quest lines these days are the ones on the receiving ends of legendaries -- Shadowmourne and now Dragonwrath. If we turn back the clock to vanilla, we'd come across perhaps the most epic quest line of them all. Monstrous in its time commitment, material needs, and far more random and diverse than the chain for Thunderfury, it was the mother of all quests. Not only did it require the participation of an entire realm in order to be able to complete it, but it took the effort of at least one raid team of 40 (if not more) to coordinate and organize the energy needed to get a very small handful of people very rare and very special rewards that have yet to be duplicated by Blizzard.

This quest chain is the Scepter of the Shifting Sands.

The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold?

Personally, I find patch 1.10 to be one of the most memorable patches of classic WoW. It was a
patch dedicated almost exclusively to giving nonraiding players more content, access to better gear (without trivializing raids), and generally making the world a prettier place. Patch 1.10 was the patch that implemented weather, as its Storms of Azeroth title implies.

More than that, patch 1.10 taught non-programmers everywhere how version numbering works. "Patch one-point-ten? You can't do that! Shouldn't it be patch 2.0 after 1.9? Isn't 1.10 the same as 1.1?" Nope, sorry! Version numbering doesn't work that way! These aren't decimals, folks. The .10 does not represent a fraction of a whole; it's part of a versioning scheme set up like so:

expansion.major.minor.build

Patch 1.10 indicates that this is the first retail software release and it is in its 10th major revision. While I'm writing this, World of Warcraft version 4.2.2.14534 is on the PTR. Build 14534 of the second minor revision of the second major revision of the fourth expansion/retail release. These aren't decimals, and this isn't math. Patch 1.10 is neither patch 1.1 nor patch 2.0. Got it? Good!

Now on with the show.

The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold?

As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, patch 1.8 did not include a brand new raid tier. Players thought nothing of it at the time. It was perfectly normal. What patch 1.8 did was lay the groundwork for the following patch. It revamped Silithus, and that revamp was utilized in patch 1.9 with the opening of Ahn'Qiraj and the massive world event surrounding the parting of the gates.

In addition to the opening of the Ahn'Qiraj gates, patch 1.9 also includes:

• Linked auction houses
• Raid lockout revamp
• Paladin class review

Follow along, won't you?

The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold?

This week's edition of the Archivist will be a little different than what you may be used to seeing. Rather than exploring a specific event in World of Warcraft's history, we're going to look at a bit of antiquated game design. Specifically, we will be looking at one of Blizzard's old development practices: trying to hide content development in progress on live realms.

Before I begin, I want to note that to my knowledge, none of the hidden locations outlined in this article are accessible anymore. If there are still ways of accessing them on live realms, I want to request that none of you discuss the methods of entering these places on our site. Blizzard hid these places for a reason, even if it didn't do it very well.

Follow along for a look at the Emerald Dream, an early Outland testing ground, and other Z-axis shortcuts and secrets.

The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold?

Who says every content patch needs a new raid tier? Patch 1.8, released Oct. 10, 2005 (just slightly under one month after patch 1.7), laughs at your raid tiers. It was actually quite a small patch as far as content goes, and there wasn't anything particularly world-shattering in it, but it still did something interesting: It built up future content. Patch 1.8 implemented the following:

• The Dragons of Nightmare world bosses
• A revamp of Silithus
• The groundwork for holidays such as Hallow's End and Winter Veil

None of these things, on their own, were very large events. They were cool pieces of content, but they weren't supported by a raid or dungeon. Quite the opposite -- they laid the groundwork that would herald a raid coming in a later patch.

Let's dig in, shall we? First the patch notes in full, then the analysis.