Today we look at a video game that defined generations, World of Warcraft. Blizzard Entertainment went from a small team creating games in relative obscurity to a powerhouse of the industry. Through many iterations of Azeroth in the form of Real-Time-Strategy games, books, and lore-building – we arrive at the alive and thriving community we have today. We take a deep dive into the successes and failures along the way. From game breaking bugs that are now analyzed by the CDC, to an unreleased Warcraft game that never saw the light of day (or so we thought). These historic moments in the development of WOW all come together to give us the game we have today.
With a massive community over the course of 20+ years, we also take a deep dive into the connections and progression of massive multiplayer online role playing. Questing, In-Game Lore, Orcs, Raids, Guilds, Live Markets. We have not only WOW, but many other important games along the way. EverQuest, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Final Fantasy 14, Warhammer Online, and many others both cloned, inspired, and build the MMORPG genre into a global phenomenon.
Whether or not you are a diehard fan of the game itself, or just the genre as a whole, no one can deny the impact World of Warcraft has had on the games industry. With billions of dollars in total revenue, fans all around the globe, books, movies, comics and more based off of it, it’s no wonder that it has managed to last as long as it has, with no end in sight.
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Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:56 Origins of Blizzard
3:36 Warcraft 1, 2, and 3
6:44 World of Warcraft
7:50 Mechanics of the Game
9:38 Patches
10:10 The Bug that destroyed Azeroth
11:30 Expansions
13:25 Clones and the MMO Genre
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Written by: John Aljets
Narrated by: Michael Keene
Edited by: Michael Keene
For copyright matters please contact us at: legal@valnetinc.com
Do you believe a more recent game made as much of an impact on the gaming world as WoW did? If not do you think there is still hope for one to come out in the next few years?
If you held this video for like 2 weeks longer before releasing, there would be a WHOLE NEW STORY to tell…
Oh, yeah! I remember how this game introduced me to toxic players, who told me to delete my account and to kill myself. Good times!
I don't think we'll ever see a game expand and have as much pull as we did with WoW from Vanilla up to Wrath. Those really were the golden days.
Uh wow want to know something fucked up? This game is closest I ever came to having a social life
NO! BABS 🙁
changed the world and then runied it self.
Darrowshire Vanilla WoW is releasing 30th July with patch progression, updated pvp system with no honor decay, no world buffs in raids, zero tolerance for botting and much more 3500+ discord members and rising
as an EQ player since 2002 i'm glad they at least gave some credit to them as being an inspiration
Very well done, but you skipped the biggest developments that shaped current WoW. Namely the corporate takeover that sucked the game’s soul dry, caused most of the talent to leave or be fired (which of course led to the ridiculous delays because … hey, we have no one to do the work!), instituting systems that make it more of a grind job and endless greedy micro-transactions.
It’s all about the bottom line anymore. Corners are cut and quality is minimal all for the sake of a better quarterly report. If WoW was a cartoon character, they’d be Mr. Burns from The Simpsons.
The fun is gone and sadly, so am I.
I actually avoided WoW. I was into Guild Wars.
Nice. Used to love this game…still do but I decided to put on my life jacket as Chris left Blizzard. I had a feeling of a leak in the boat. I was right. Now I'm watching it sink safe and sound from the shore. Idea for the Next video: How the world changed World of Warcraft.
500days on /played . No regrets but no time to play anymore.
Maybe after my kids grow up ill pick it up again
Hahaha laughable. What WoW predicted covid? Scientist use a game to make theory , wtf ….
Wow that intro was Cap
Much much props for showing a brief clip of Shadowbane. Shadowbane is the greatest pvp MMO OF ALL TIME!!!
It’s just got released on steam this year btw. The best moments I’ve ever had in 30+ years of gaming was in Shadowbane.
Changed the World?
Exaggerating much?
Go Play FFIV.
It's just better in every single way, and the devs actually care about the game being good, and not just money and getting people to pay 6 month subs because they know their game is bad and no one would subscribe for more than a month or 2.
I loved the original WarCraft and WarCraft II because I liked playing by myself. WarCraft III you could see the changes coming. While I still enjoyed it, I was hooked on WarCraft ii, both the single play and the 1-on-1 play. When WoW came around, I bought a copy for myself and at that time, my girlfriend. I never opened either copy. I even bought the first and second expansions but again they have to this day never been opened. So I can't complain about the game itself. Where I had a problem was the $15 a month change. Being that money was always a problem, I spent mine just buying the game and couldn't handle a monthly fee. I always felt if they were to charge by time used instead, I could have handled it because there were times when I could play non-stop for days and other times it would have been weeks to months without any play. So I just decided to stay away with becoming addicted to WoW. A mistake, maybe. But it has saved me a lot of money. I started playing StarCraft and Dunec 2000 at that time.
damn thats a sad ass story bro.. rip babs
…for the worse.
Started in December 2004 and what I remember the most was getting stuck in Mauradon with my friends for four hours.
Comment for engagement
Yo forgot they ripped off Warhammer.
,"How World of Warcraft changed the World" – of Warcraft, let's not get carried away here, guys
I've met two of my absolute best friends in vanilla wow back in 2006. We've met up a few times and constantly cross paths in other games. Great bonds.
wc3 is a big part of that wow is actually pretty bad hobby
This video fails to do what the title says, and is kind of a waste of time for anyone not interested in WoW.
How WoW changed the world. Blizzard released a game that filled a huge hole that needed to be filled, but they did it so poorly that despite the fact that it was a massive success, it was no where near what it should have been, since then it has been replicated a ton by business people who don't understand the people they are trying to sell to, but all of these failures are preventing a good MMO from being created.
Because of WoW, MMO's always end up as low skill, progression based PvE games. They have a ton of potential to allow players to create unique characters and compete in great PvP, but the tab targetting, right click camera, and low effort building systems that WoW created plagued the genre and are still here today.
Games like Tera show that it's very possible to make a good 3D MMO, but the devs and western publishers for Tera didn't understand the PvP playerbase and ultimately opted into the same shitty design that tab target games with horrible cameras are locked into. PvE Gear Progression games.
Kill a monster, chance for gear, get gear, use it to be allowed to take on the next one, kill that one and get the next set of gear, when you finally have the best set of gear, use it to ?????? Uh yea, use it to rematch the boss you got it from. Still a big hole waiting to be filled for PvP MMOs but damage WoW and Tera-VM3+ have done is making it very unlikely for a long time, all of the popularity that it would have is instead being wasted on lesser PvP games like LoL.
Those first 60 levels were great fun, then the game became swamped with cheats and thieves. This is making me nostalgic.
City of Heroes is waaay better… =)
Great video. You should look at hearthstkne
All this information is cool and all but you forgot to mention that blizzard didn't even let the scientists study how the blood plague would work and how it would spread for very long which could have helped them in the future and blizzard decided not to and just patch the game without letting them study this a little bit longer
Sad that blizzard has ruined their game doesn't play the same the changes are just really saddening
No mention of TESO in the Clones section?
Me: Sees Screenrant is talking about WoW
Also Me: Knows there will be so many errors in lore and pronunciation.
Me By The End: Surprised and happy that they got someone who knows what they’re talking about.
Omg I’m so glad u finally did a video about WoW!! This game’s one of my favourite things to play!
Your opener brought tears. RIP Babs
Haven't played since Mists released… this video has re-sparked my interests… wonder if I still have my stuff 🤔
Ryan George is the only reason to follow this channel.
They also made a matrix mmo. And a superhero/villain mmo
After so long on top Ffxiv has surpassed it with active subscribers and knocked it off it's perch as #1. That being said the way it changed culture and the many lives it enhanced over the years is a feat I doubt we see again in our lifetimes from a video game.
Great video. I have a critical take on the video itself that is intended to be constructive:
The flashing, strobing light effects on the sides of the screen (seen at 7:28 during the quote from the lead designer and at 8:15 during the EQ flashbacks) don't add to the video, and the effect is really distracting and unnecessary. I believe the video would be better off without that off-putting effect being used.
Me, my wife, and my youngest son played from 2005 to 2011. It was a lot of family fun, we especially like the Alteric Valley battlegrounds. But all things must pass I reckon.
The community aspect of wow was pretty cool. My dad was very into wow for many years and actually went to a wedding of a couple guild members on the other side of the country and met a few different guild members irl and I think he’s still friends with a few people
Don't tell anyone but I retired just to play World of Warcraft. And I still do…[edit] I make sure I get my $15.00 worth every month.[edit] My 118 was not very pleased with the level squish. Sure I get it had to be done (I guess) but she's really pissed about being a 30 something again. I'd say she'll get over it but you know how DK's are.
WoW was revolutionary by the time it's released, by making MMORPG's much more player friendly, questing system and a living open world design. The problem is that, since for almost two decades MMORPG genre stopped evolving. Sure graphics got much better and some newer games added new elements, but mainly the gameplay system stayed the same. Repeating the same fetch quests over and over, endless grinding etc. Nothing revolutionary came like vanilla WoW did to the gaming world back in 2004. Instead MMO genre got worse with implementing of microtransactions in almost every game. Still waiting for a new MMORPG that rocked the gaming world like Wow did back in the day.