Alpha WoW screenshots

[rokomales]

 

[Windrunner29]

Cool ! where did you find this ?

 

[Razosh]

Stranglethorn Vale looks pretty much the same but one look at the human houses and you realize that they used quite a lot from WarCraft III even more so then they do today.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

They had a lot of WC3 assets as placeholders throughout the alpha. Am I the only one who thinks that some of the character models had a lot of expression and a more warcrafty feel to them then the current higher poly models? I like the orc and human female models, despite being blocky.

Interesting: the Nightelf model looks exactly the same as the release model.

 

[Razosh]

When you say "warcrafty" I would agree somewhat, since they are of a lower quality they look more like WarCraft III models. When you say more expression I would agree with you prior to the model update.

 

[Windrunner29]

Am I the only one who thinks that some of the character models had a lot of expression and a more warcrafty feel to them then the current higher poly models?

No you're not

I thing these models and "old Wow" models were better than the new ones from WoD...

 

[Garodar]

I love how rain of fire has blizzard icon, lol.

 

[Razosh]

You know what I just realized? The look totally reminds me of Murloc RPG.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/574187

 

[PurgeandFire]

I always love seeing alpha screenshots of Blizzard's games. Both wc3 and WoW looked like completely different games during their alphas. It takes a lot of guts and decisiveness to make such dramatic changes. Games like WoW are fascinating from a design perspective--the scale is enormous and the player base they were catering for was previously unheard of. I'm not just talking about visuals--the character design and content design is pretty amazing. It was pretty fascinating to learn (from Rob Pardo's key notes) that so many of WoW's quirks, imbalances, and design were intended:
http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/09/06/agc-rob-pardos-keynote/

Kinda sad to compare that to their current mottos. As mentioned in that link, immersion and the "feel" of your class was emphasized. Later xpacs turned towards homogenization. The ability prune was very saddening, but I hope they'll look back to their old ways when implementing the new abilities moving forward.

@Windrunner: Scrolls of lore is the one-stop destination for all your pre-release/alpha/beta screenshots:
http://www.scrollsoflore.com/gallery/

@Razosh: Wow! I can't believe anyone else played that. That game was very addicting. Hell, that was probably the precursor to pet battles.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Wow, that was an interesting read; thanks purge.
It's a shame that they later removed several of the quirks that were intentional at first, like tradeoff between flightpaths and teleports. They just made the game more and more convenient with time, up to the point where the open world feeling was almost completely gone.
"Have group, will travel" was the sad end of the road here; a raid-wide mass teleport that even Blizzard realized was just way too convenient so that they removed it from the game again.

But here is one thing I found especially interesting:

More classes are not always better. Once you get enough different units or classes, players can only handle so much. When you see someone, you might not know what they can do, and this matters because when you want to form a group, you lose track of the strengths and weaknesses. In battlegrounds, you need to know instantly what the opponent can do to you. Even if you have 50 completely different ideas that are cool, it’s still important not to use them all.

This is basicly in a nutshell why so many other MMO competitors just failed at creating the same buzz as Blizzard did with WoW.
In their attempts to be unique and not have all the typical fantasy tropes in spells and classes, the games actually shot themselves in the foot for being inaccessable.
The great thing about being a gnome mage that shoots fireballs is, that everyone knows that gnomes are little, mages are glass cannons and fireballs hurt you with fire at distance.
You know all this without reading a single tooltip or ever having to play that class.
You know that a Tauren Warrior will tear you a new asshole if you let him touch you in melee. You instantly know that a priest in the enemy group will have to be killed first.

Compare that to the games with all the strange invented races, class names that nobody knows what they are about (what the fuck is a mesmer or an oracle?). Compare that to the games with dozens of playable classes (Rift) or hundreds of skills that are only different in small details (Guild Wars).

I think one of the major parts of WoW's success was that everyone instantly knew what it is about. "I'm an orc warrior from Orgrimmar and I tear up the ass of humans in the Alliance with my Axe." is descriptive. Try the same in Guild Wars 2. It doesn't work.


And the weird part is; you often get criticized for being uncreative when following this principle. I actually received critics about classes being boring and unoriginal in Gaias. To which I responded that I don't think a ranged missile spell needs a fancy original name when it's technically just a fireball with a different art. You can be original with designs and concepts all you want; what matters are the mechanics. And having designs and concepts that distract from the mechanics is just not a good practice.
Having intuitive and well-known fantasy tropes allows you to take more freedom in other gameplay elements that are original. It concentrates the amount of explanation and tooltips needed onto the stuff you want to emphasize. In a way, unimaginative classes and abilities will make your original stuff shine brighter.

 

[Stormwind Marine]

[Well-Used Sword]
I believe...

 

[andreasaspenberg]

it is interesting to see the alpha screen shots. there might still be icons that appears in both world of warcraft and warcraft 3.

 

[Yousef]

Ban for misleading title! (Jk) I thought it was alpha WoW Legion.

 

[Razosh]

Ban for misleading title! (Jk) I thought it was alpha WoW Legion.

Well this was uploaded prior to the the reveal or even the reveal of the reveal of Legion so not really misleading in anyway.

 

[Eagle XI]

http://imgur.com/gallery/BNHuc