Curious how vanilla was made

[Sevenrabbit-moon-guard]

Just wondering how long did it take the dev team to make vanilla in early 2000’s? Since it has around 40 zones and over 20 dungeons. Also how much did it cost to make and did they have a much bigger team working on it back then than they do have working on WoW expansions now?

It’s just I 'd love a new expansion to have like 15 new zones or something. And was wondering if vanilla took probably 4 years or so to develope and make 40 amazing unique zones and 20+ dungeons. Why does it take 2 years now to make just 5-7 new zones with a few dungeons. What happened?
Why are they more limited in what they can make now than they were almost 20 years ago?
The world in WoW feels like it’s getting smaller every expansion weirdly.

[Cailah-dathremar]

The waste was all the leveling dungeons they designed which hardly ever got used. Some had some very interesting fights.

A couple were made into heroic versions, during cata I think, one of them being deadmines.

[Virus-nagrand (Virus)]

That was back when Blizzard’s main goal was making great games, they weren’t concerned about ROI and engagement metrics, their first and last questions were always “Is this fun?”

[Sasarai-blades-edge]

They werent wasted in vanilla. Though some were less desirable

[Chroesire-bleeding-hollow (Chroesire)]

The WoW dev team was pretty small and scrappy early on. Development started around 1999, so yeah it took about 4 years total.

What’s changed sense then:

Zone density
Vanilla zones were big but not very dense. Modern zones are tiny but jam-packed. Placing all of those NPCs, objects, and doodads takes a lot of time, and so crafting one tiny “modern” zone takes as much time as doing the same for 2-3 vanilla zones.

Zone verticality
Vanilla zones were relatively simple in topography, with most being relatively flat with mild rolling hills and the occasional cliff. Modern zones have much more prominent verticality, with caves, ledges, cracks, chasms, etc all over the place. In other words, sculpting the zones is more involved and takes more time than it did back in vanilla.

Ability to fly
Flying mounts didn’t exist in vanilla, which allowed Blizzard to take big shortcuts when sculpting both continents. Zone borders didn’t actually have to match up and fill all available space on the map for example, and the tops of the mountains weren’t player accessible which meant they didn’t have to be textured and sculpted. This meant that both continents were only around 60-75% player accessible, with large untextured voids sitting between zones. Modern zones on the other hand have to look good from all angles.

Uniqueness of art
Vanilla zones very heavily reused art assets (textures, models, music, etc) – for example, Elwynn, Loch Modern, and the Hinterlands all share some tree/shrub/rock assets between them. Zones with unique music were rare. Modern zones on the other hand make extensive use of new or partially-new art, which is very labor intensive.

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All that said, I don’t think that current zones are all that more effective at their job than Vanilla’s were. Certainly they fix some problems that Vanilla zones have, but they also brought their own problems (like being tiny). I too would like an expansion that adds at least one EK-sized continent instead the usual tiny islands.

@Cailah-dathremar

The waste was all the leveling dungeons they designed which hardly ever got used. Some had some very interesting fights.

When I came on board during patch 1.5 all those leveling dungeons got plenty of traffic, even the ones out in the middle of nowhere. I wouldn’t say that they were a waste necessarily, and I wish new expansions had such great numbers and variety.

[Seffer-malganis]

Well you need milk, sugar, ice, rock salt and vanilla beans and annice cream mixer…

[Virus-nagrand (Virus)]

@Chroesire-bleeding-hollow

Vanilla zones were relatively simple in topography, with most being relatively flat with mild rolling hills and the occasional cliff.

Oh how i miss simple terrain like this, the new zone is a pleasure to navigate compared to most places we’ve experienced in recent years however, hopefully it’s a sign of things to come.

[Chroesire-bleeding-hollow (Chroesire)]

Yeah, I’m with you there. I’d love to get a Wetlands or a Tanaris for a change, because relatively flat landscapes are real too haha. I get that those types of zones were overrepresented in Vanilla, but now super craggy types are overrepresented.

thanos_balance_meme.jpg

[Denona-khazgoroth (Denona)]

@Chroesire-bleeding-hollow

Flying mounts didn’t exist in vanilla, which allowed Blizzard to take big shortcuts when sculpting both continents. Zone borders didn’t actually have to match up and fill all available space on the map for example, and the tops of the mountains weren’t player accessible which meant they didn’t have to be textured and sculpted. This meant that both continents were only around 60-75% player accessible, with large untextured voids sitting between zones. Modern zones on the other hand have to look good from all angles.

This is why it would be a while until we can fly in the 5 TBC Azeroth zones. Although both Azuremyst and Bloodmyst Isles are mostly fine tbh. Silvermoon City though has a lot of cut corners. Which you can easily see if you have a demon hunter xD.

Revamping and redesigning the old 1-60 vanilla zones for Cata took up a lot of time. To the point that blizzard didn’t get to finish all of them. Dustwallow Marsh, Arathi Highlands, Elwynn Forest and Silithus are zones that barely got touched in Cata.

Dustwallow Marsh got the Theramore Highway and that was it.
Arathi Highlands got a tunnel to The Hinterlands and a horde camp on the western side of the zone with a few “revamped” quests moved over to there from Hammerfall. Alliance side never got touched.
Elwynn Forest got Northshire Abby revamped and a few NPC’s relocated (goldtooth and Princess) with Hogger getting a different fate.
Silithus had a whole quest chain removed and another quest chain got cut down.

[Chroesire-bleeding-hollow (Chroesire)]

Hah yep. Silvermoon alone is likely responsible for the devs kicking a revamp for those zones down the road as far as possible.

I know it sucks for the TBC race players but to be honest, I kind of like those starting areas being time capsules of sorts. Eversong and Ghostlands especially have aged pretty well and are a nice contrast to newer leveling areas.

[Denona-khazgoroth (Denona)]

@Chroesire-bleeding-hollow

Silvermoon alone is likely responsible for the devs kicking a revamp for those zones down the road as far as possible.

I would say Silvermoon and outdoor Zul’Aman (to some extent), MGT & Sunwell Plateau. With Zul’Aman they could do some smoke and mirrors like they have done with Stratholme with an invisible wall reaching the skybox all around the area. While only showing some of the outdoor instance.

[Shredow-moon-guard (Shredow)]

I started playing right before Wrath came out. All the old world dungeons and most of the early TBC dungeons had players throughout Wrath. And this was before cross realm grouping was even a thing.

[Bkwalker-area-52]

It was way easy.

1. Whisk the cream, milk, sugar, vanilla and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Beat the egg yolks in a medium bowl. Slowly whisk 1 cup of the hot cream mixture into the beaten yolks, then pour back into the saucepan, whisking, and return to medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until the mixture thickens, coats the spoon and reaches 180 degrees F on a thermometer, 6 to 8 minutes. Remove from the heat and strain the custard through a fine-mesh sieve into a large bowl or measuring cup; discard the solids. Stir often until the mixture cools to room temperature. Lightly press plastic wrap directly against the surface of the custard to prevent a skin from forming. Chill until cold, about 3 hours. (For faster chilling, set the bowl of custard in a bowl of ice water and stir until cold.)

[Chroesire-bleeding-hollow (Chroesire)]

It also doesn’t help matters that Stratholme occupies the same physical space as Deatholme in Ghostlands (oops) which complicates merging the Eversong/Ghostlands map into Eastern Kingdoms proper.

[Saángreal-moon-guard (Saángreal)]

Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t Molten Core just a quick thing. They put so much effort into the quests, zones and characters and raid design was in its infancy and not really a big focus or desire.

Then over time so much development time went into that form of content so much so that it nearly always dwarfs the other content now.

Also, not having a deadline might have helped. Not expecting a huge turnout. Look at launch and basically scrambling to make new servers.

[Chroesire-bleeding-hollow (Chroesire)]

Yes, Molten Core was glued together in literally a week lol.

[Denona-khazgoroth (Denona)]

Doesn’t help that the map files for those 5 Azeroth TBC zones are on the TBC map files as well. hence why you go through a loading screen when you enter them.

@Saángreal-moon-guard

Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t Molten Core just a quick thing.

I believe it was just the layout of the raid. Not the full raid itself.

[Frowstmourne-area-52]

While some of those points stand, others don’t when you look at the size and density of areas in Wrath, Cata, and MoP that just doesn’t exist today

[Chroesire-bleeding-hollow (Chroesire)]

I dunno, the density of NPCs, quest objectives, etc in WotLK at least still isn’t that high. In Cata and MoP it was ticking up but from Legion onward zones were hypercompressed with the objectives all sitting on top of each other.

Actually out of “modern” WoW I’d say WoD Draenor was the biggest anomaly in size and density. Huge zones that were more dense than Outland’s by a fair margin, but a lot less dense than that of Pandaria or Broken Isles.

[Saángreal-moon-guard (Saángreal)]

@Denona-khazgoroth

Not the full raid itself

What strikes me most is that considering all factors that go into an expansion, the raid (when I finally get to visit it in LFR) is the pinnacle of effort. It has some of the best visuals and incorporates more lore and more cutting edge design

I’m trying to think of a comparison, but I think it needs to be said that (if we traveled to some other dimension without WoW raids) the overworld would be super detailed and intricate. It probably would be 20 zones with possibly a dozen smaller dungeons.

Not saying it’s a bad thing, but they have obviously set priorities in place. People expect these epic raids. Plus, it’s content that can be easier to edit versus 20 zones.