If Elon Musk played wow he’d want to rapidly iterate game improvements. At least I think so. He’d make a “Development build island” where people could test different ideas and provide feedback.
This wouldn’t be some huge 8 jigawatt download and would be optional with a checkbox on the login screen (not launcher). And we could vote on the enjoyment of the experience with a simple “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” at the end of 30 minutes of play or so.
At least that is how I think Elon would do it.
Are you kidding or did you not know about developer island?
Does the dev island even still exist? I know they made it impossible for us to get to it anymore, but is it even still there? Didn’t seem much point in it existing in the first place tbh.
Dammit…! It was 6 years before I learned you could pause leveling. Now this…!
they removed that island in 8.2.
My understanding is that GM’s would login and logout from GM Island.
Some activities they did/do involve moving about the game world, such as inspecting a portion of the game world that might genuinely be glitched out somehow. Seeing it first hand might have been easier to assess; as opposed to trying to look at a bunch of code. They might also simply “hang out” with other GMs while they handle tasks.
Basically anything they might need to be in the world to do they’d come and go from GM Island. That way they had a central location to come and go from instead of just randomly spawning into Orgrimmar and being seen accidentally.
One thing of note is that not all GM’s kept the same in-game name over time. So a GM who needs to step into the world will “create” a new instance of themselves into the world, and it’s spawn point is GM Island.
The island itself doesn’t seem to have much of a function, though. GM’s almost never enter the game world anymore, and are said to be mostly not allowed to do so. GM’s, in the past, pretty much never really seemed to use the island as anything other than a spawn point. At least, if I recall, there used to be a video “Life on GM Island” way back in the day as sort of an amusing way of bridging players and what it was like to be a GM; they pretty much spawn in and teleport to where they want to go, there’s nothing useful on the island to interact with.
Though, as some have said, the Island appears to have been removed; unless it’s now stored server side and player clients don’t even have the data necessary to see or perceive the place.
They removed GM Island in 8.2
Developer island is different.
Only one way to find out.
GM island is not Developer Island. On developer island it’s all free pizza, beer, and candy. With space ex inspired goblin rockets. They just blow up less frequently.
If Elon was involved in wow. Our mounts would blow up and kill us every so often.