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World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. Set in the Warcraft fantasy universe, World of Warcraft takes place within the world of Azeroth, approximately four years after the events of the previous game in the series, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne.
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May 3, 2024 · World of Warcraft. The War Within™ Announced! Prepare to descend beneath the surface of Azeroth to explore subterranean worlds full of hidden wonders, earn the trust of the new Earthen allied race, and face an ancient evil lurking in the darkness. Pre-Purchase Today! Learn More. Latest News & Updates. View all news. May 3, 2024. This Week in WoW.
Oct 22, 2020 · published 22 October 2020. For first-timers, Blizzard's seminal MMO is daunting. Here's where to get started. Comments. (Image credit: Blizzard) World of Warcraft is an iconic, ground-breaking...
- Overview
- Selected World of Warcraft articles
- Plot
- Updates
- Account levels
- Features
- Availability
- Subscriber numbers
- Development
- Creatures
, often abbreviated as WoW (or, when referring to the original game, vanilla, classic, or pre-BC), is a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) developed by Blizzard Entertainment and released on November 23, 2004, on the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise, three years after its announcement on September 2, 2001. It is the fo...
Character »\t
•Classes
•Races
•Factions
•Reputation
•Professions
Four years after the Battle of Mount Hyjal, tensions between the Alliance and the Horde begin to arise once again. Intent on settling the arid region of Durotar, Thrall's new Horde expanded its ranks, inviting the undead Forsaken to join orcs, tauren, and trolls. Meanwhile, dwarves, gnomes and the ancient night elves pledged their loyalties to a re...
There have been nine expansions to World of Warcraft:
•The Burning Crusade was released on January 16, 2007.
•Wrath of the Lich King was released on November 13, 2008.
•Cataclysm was released on December 7, 2010.
•Mists of Pandaria was released on September 25, 2012,
•Warlords of Draenor was released on November 13, 2014.
•World of Warcraft: Free Trial - Try World of Warcraft for free - level to 20.
•Veteran Edition - Accounts that had a subscription at one point that are currently inactive. It allows these accounts to use the same benefits and limitations as a free trial account.
•Subscription / Game time (monthly payment). Also get access to the Classics.
•Latest expansion release - requires subscription.
Player Customization
•2 factions: Horde and Alliance. •24 playable races: •14 core races: Human, Dwarf, Gnome, Night Elf, Orc, Troll, Undead, Tauren, Blood Elf, Draenei, Goblin, Worgen, Pandaren, Dracthyr •10 allied races: Void elf, Lightforged draenei, Nightborne, Highmountain tauren, Dark Iron dwarf, Mag'har orc, Kul Tiran, Zandalari troll, Mechagnome, and Vulpera •13 classes: Mage, Warlock, Priest, Rogue, Druid, Hunter, Shaman, Warrior, Paladin, Death Knight, Monk, Demon Hunter, Evoker •14 professions, enabling resource gathering and item crafting: •11 primary professions: Herbalism, Mining, Skinning, Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Enchanting, Engineering, Leatherworking, Tailoring, Jewelcrafting, Inscription. •3 secondary professions: Cooking, Fishing, Archaeology. •(First Aid, a secondary profession was removed with Battle for Azeroth) •Different specializations for each class that define the player's abilities, strengths and role in the game. •The talent system allows customization of the character's passive and active abilities. •Glyphs are additionally used to customize the character's abilities.
Gameplay System
General System •A casual-friendly character progression system. •Being offline (resting) increases your experience points gain. •In-game trading, mail service, auction system, text and voice chat. •Two server types: Normal and RP. •(two server types PvP, and RPPvP were removed with Battle for Azeroth) PvE and PvP Systems •PvE System: •Thousands of quests. •Repeatable quests and world quests. •Timewalking Campaigns. •Dungeons, Raids, and Scenarios. •Island expedition scenarios. •Invasion Point scenarios. •Warfront scenarios. •1 to 5 player content: Horrific Visions and Torghast, Tower of the Damned. •Solo only content: Brawler's Guild and Mage Tower Challenges. •Garrisons, Class Order Halls and Covenants. •PvP Honor system: •PVP talent system. •Turn on or off War Mode for PvP in the open world. •13 Battlegrounds: Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, Alterac Valley, Eye of the Storm, Isle of Conquest, Battle for Gilneas, Twin Peaks, Silvershard Mines, Temple of Kotmogu, Deepwind Gorge, Seething Shore, Battle for Wintergrasp, Ashran. •PvP Brawls with only 1 accessible a week in weekly rotation. •( Strand of the Ancients a battleground was removed with Battle for Azeroth) •Arena PVP System for 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5 intense, small area combat (12 different PVP arena locations). •PvP objective world quests. •Dueler's Guild. •PvP difficulty island expeditions. Events •A variety of seasonal world events: Darkmoon Faire, Children's Week, Midsummer Fire Festival, Love is in the air, Feast of Winter Veil, and more. •More events were added in later expansions: Brewfest, Pirates' Day, Day of the Dead, and Pilgrim's Bounty. •Unique one-time events: Gates of Ahn'Qiraj, Scourge Invasion, Dark Portal opening event, World of Warcraft anniversaries, and others. •Micro-holidays (patch 7.1.5): including Call of the Scarab, Hatching of the Hippogryphs, Glowcap Festival, and others. Lore •Continues and expands the lore from the Warcraft universe. •Streamlined questlines and NPC-voiced storytelling. User Interface and Customer Support •Customize AddOn and Interface with some game commands support. •Client seamlessly supports both Mac and Windows operating systems. Linux users can play via Wine, however this is not supported and can be buggy at times.
•North America (English-US - US & Canada).
•Oceania (English-US - Australia, Hawaii, New Zealand).
•Latin America (Spanish).
•Brazil (Brazilian Portuguese, 2011).
•Europe (English-UK, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese-Brazilian, Italian).
•South Korea.
s subscriber numbers have fluctuated tremendously over the years. With a peak of 12 million monthly subscribers in October 2010, World of Warcraft remains among the most popular MMORPGs and holds the Guinness World Record for the world's most popular subscription-based MMORPG. Though World of Warcraft had dropped to 7.4 million subscribers as of the release of patch 6.0.2, when the Warlords of Draenor expansion released a few weeks later it briefly jumped all the way back up to 10 million before settling back down to 7.1 million. In the final report in October 2015, there were 5.5 million subscribers.
In January 2014 it was announced that more than 100 million accounts and 500 million characters had been created over the game's lifetime, with players in 244 different countries.
In November 2015, Blizzard announced that they would no longer give regular updates of subscriber numbers, as they felt there were better performance metrics they could use. For a graphical representation of subscriber numbers up to November 2015, click here.
As of Q2 2021, World of Warcraft is among the three largest franchises of Activision Blizzard, alongside Call of Duty and Candy Crush.
Nomad
The history of World of Warcraft has its origins in Project Nomad. Accounts differ as to the timing of this project, some stating that work began on it after the release of StarCraft, others that development on the game had begun prior to the "crunch period" of StarCraft's development, and as a result, developers were transferred to work on the RTS game. Nomad itself was to be a sci-fi squad-based shooter, some of its developers taking inspiration from Necromunda, others from Final Fantasy. Those in the former camp conceptualized a squad-based game where players would build up squads of soldiers, upgrade their abilities, find new guns, and go online to challenge other players' armies. Its gameplay would be similar to that of the X-COM games. Those in the latter camp wanted an adventure/RPG game. The lack of direction didn't help and the game was scrapped in favor of World of Warcraft. During development, Kevin Beardslee and Bill Petras wanted to make something else entirely different from what Nomad was, specifically a more accessible version of EverQuest. Nomad was scrapped and development on World of Warcraft began two days later.
Pre-release
Development of World of Warcraft was first announced in September 2001 at the ECTS tradeshow. There was little fanfare in the original announcement, and the original development team consisted of around fifty individuals. Inspiration was taken from other MMOs such as Ultima Online and EverQuest, using the lore and characters of Warcraft as the basis for the setting. It would be a risky venture, as the company had grown used to games passing the 1 million sales mark, whereas EverQuest had peaked at the 500,000 subscriber mark. While a subscription fee would help recoup costs, there was unease as to whether the game's reception would be as positive as Blizzard's previous games, and it was thought that the game would only appeal to pre-existing Warcraft fans. Furthermore, few members of Blizzard had experience in developing MMOs, and while they enjoyed playing them, there was fears that the game would be overshadowed by Star Wars Galaxies and EverQuest 2. When the game was first announced, members of the press often asked Blizzard as such, seeing them as "the RTS company." By 2002, the game's visual design was being worked on. There was initial pushback in Blizzard as to the Alliance/Horde faction divide, as some feared that some players wouldn't like it because they couldn't play with friends (if they chose different factions). Development of World of Warcraft led to the solidification of the "Warcraft style" (of artwork), according to Samwise Didier, though the first shift towards said style occurred in-between Warcraft I and II. The game originally had a true to life day-night cycle, which dictated when events and spawns would happen. This idea was scrapped so that players wouldn't have to disrupt their real lives to do these time-specific activities. The game had a significant "crunch period" of development.
Post-release
The game released in late 2004. Surpassing expectations, the game had reached 5 million subscribers by the end of 2005. Blizzard had to develop tech and customer support on the fly in order to keep up with the demand. Not only was it well received by the critics, but it also became the best selling PC Game of 2005 and 2006. It was recognized at the 2005 Spike TV Video Game Awards where it won Best PC Game, Best Multiplayer Game, Best RPG, and Most Addictive Game. In 2007, Blizzard predicted that the game would last for five more years, which spurred them to develop Titan as their successive MMO. As of 2014, Blizzard's intended development pattern is to keep content at a relatively steady pace—still producing expansions, but with shorter gaps between content implementation. The game has been likened to a sandbox with content being added over time. Expansions are planned out in advance, with narrative threads in one expansion leading to events in the next. On October 30, 2014, lead designer Ion Hazzikostas stated that World of Warcraft will still be around at its 20th anniversary, in 2024. As of June 2016, the World of Warcraft team comprises around 235 people.
is inhabited by a large number of creatures. The following creatures were added in Vanilla World of Warcraft before the release of expansions:
Humanoids
•Centaur
•Dryad
•Earthen
•Dwarf
Apr 26, 2024 · Catch up on all the latest World of Warcraft news from the last week—embrace the spirit of spring with May's Trading Post, take a dive into Norhrend Cup, mark your calendars for the next content update for Dragonflight—Dark Heart, learn more about the Cataclysm Classic Pre-Expansion, and more! 7 days ago.
Nov 23, 2020 · MMO. World of Warcraft timeline: A brief history of Azeroth all the way up to Shadowlands. Features. By Marloes Valentina Stella. published 23 November 2020. Prepare to dive...
Jun 29, 2018 · The History of World of Warcraft, Explained by Blizzard Entertainment - Wowhead News. Blizzard Posted 2018/06/29 at 12:22 PM by perculia. Game Director Ion Hazzikostas, Lead Gameplay Engineer Patrick Magruder, and Visual Development Supervisor Jimmy Lo tell the entire history of World of Warcraft to WIRED.
