Certain ideas and assumptions about what World of Warcraft is, ranging from character progression to faction rivalries, have long felt gear up in stone, baked into the game from its earliest days. It may have taken close to two decades, but some of those assumptions are finally beginning to change.

Blizzard's landmark MMORPG is almost 20 years former. Plenty has changed in the 18 years since the game first released, both in-game and out. WoW has received eight expansions, new dungeon and raid difficulties, new classes, new races, cross-server play, visual updates, and more. But equally much as diverse pieces of WoW accept inverse over time, much of the core design philosophy behind the game has stayed the same. Some of those core pillars that have long divers WoW are now changing, at what can only be described as a critical moment in the developer's long history. Amidst ongoing sexual harassment and discrimination allegations at Activision Blizzard and a planned $69 billion acquisition past Microsoft, the WoW team is looking to forge a new path, one that challenges long-held ideas on what WoW is, how it'south played, and who it's for. So far, the results are promising.

In that location is no better example of sometime assumptions that in recent years have held the game dorsum than the divide between the game's two factions: the Horde and the Brotherhood. For almost 20 years, WoW has been defined by the Common cold War-esque battle between Azeroth's ii superpowers, so much so that the WoW portion of Blizzard's almanac BlizzCon convention would often begin with a competition amidst players in the packed convention hall to see which faction was the loudest. The faction rivalry, at least in Blizzard's listen, has always been i of the nigh essential parts of WoW's DNA. Never mind the fact that the Horde and Brotherhood teamed up in the game's story to defeat world-ending threats time and time over again, dating all the manner back to Warcraft III. Never mind the fact that the leaders of both factions regularly cooperate and are fifty-fifty friendly with each other. The war betwixt the factions, and the divide between the game'south 2 playerbases, needed to persist, because that'southward what WoW was all nigh when it kickoff launched in 2004.

Only a few years agone, this made the idea of cantankerous-faction play unthinkable. Developers even said as much. Humans and orcs fighting together? Off the table, despite the game'due south narrative supporting the idea and the fact that the game would benefit from a larger, connected playerbase when it came to enjoying endgame content. The idea was even popular with many players, only that didn't matter. There were certain ideas that couldn't be touched, and this was one of them.

WoW is no longer defined by orcs versus humans
WoW is no longer divers by orcs versus humans

Now, in 2022, it's finally happening. Cross-faction back up is coming, allowing Horde and Alliance players to team upward for dungeons, raids, and rated PvP. It'southward a monumental shift in the thought of what WoW is and tin can be. The initial response speaks for itself. Players largely seem ecstatic about cross-faction play, proving they are set up for change. While rethinking the iron drape between the Horde and Alliance is merely one assumption the team took a hard look at, there are other changes that accept been made or are in the process of being made that reexamine other ideas that were one time thought to be untouchable.

The seeds for this kind of alter were planted months agone, prior to the release of the game's 9.one.v patch (a patch that notably reworked or removed certain systems from the game'due south most contempo Shadowlands expansion that were widely unpopular with players). It was around that fourth dimension game manager Ian Hazzikostas said the team has, at times, clung too closely to old traditions instilled in them by some of WoW's original creators.

"Information technology's patterns we've been trained to think in and accustomed to think in," Hazzikostas said in an interview with GameSpot prior to patch 9.1.5. "Working on World of Warcraft this long, that tin can atomic number 82 to what seems like stubbornness to the outside, and I become that and I go that is frustrating."

One of those patterns, the idea that progression in WoW is largely on a per-character ground instead of account-wide, is now being reevaluated.

"Earth of Warcraft at the start was rooted in the paradigm of 'you lot play your character,' and you switch to a different character, going back to Classic in 2004, aught was business relationship-broad," Hazzikostas said. "Everything lives on your graphic symbol. If you lot played an alt, it was a brand-new journeying, y'all'd accept to earn everything and do everything from scratch. And that'due south pretty standard across RPGs, unmarried-player or otherwise. Yous make a character, this is your character's journey."

However, every bit the game aged and new classes and races were introduced (and Blizzard began to offer level boosts both free and paid), more than and more than players had a number of characters to play. Having "alts" became less of a niche part of the game and something a majority of WoW players do. Despite that, few aspects of the game's progression carried over to multiple characters, resulting in players having to repeat pieces of content or reputation grinds that were not designed with repeated playthroughs in mind.

Whereas the WoW squad once looked at almost game-arrangement decisions from a character-first perspective, only occasionally unlocking things account-wide, the inverse is becoming true. Evidence of this alter in mindset is already evident in WoW'southward well-nigh recent patch, which introduced alt-friendly changes that were praised by the game'south community.

"I think now increasingly we are asking the question in regard to almost every reward, every piece of content, is this something that holds up for multiple playthroughs?" Hazzikostas said. "Is this something that's going to experience meaningfully different on a dissimilar grapheme? Or is this something, and depending on the reply to those questions, we'd like to make more and more things business relationship-broad or easily attainable to alts from the kickoff?"

As for what's side by side, the team has connected to update various elements of the game that could be seen every bit offensive, problematic, or that have otherwise aged incredibly poorly. These changes have ranged from reworking achievement names to altering quest dialogue, all with the mindset of creating a more welcoming and inclusive game world in the wake of the shocking allegations that have surfaced as role of ongoing investigations and lawsuits into Blizzard's workplace culture. Whereas altering older in-game content might have once been off the tabular array, that is no longer the case, and Blizzard seems committed to making sure the game in its entirety is reflective of the current development team and playerbase's values. The current squad taking ownership of what WoW is and should be in 2022 is a good thing, fifty-fifty if some of the changes made to older content may seem frivolous to long time players.

It's clear that Blizzard is looking to chart a new path forward for the MMO that made the developer a household name, one more informed by the modern needs of players and their feedback and less dictated by decade-old ideas about how the game must be. Whether Blizzard is able to chart that path successfully remains to be seen. Fans are still eagerly awaiting news of the game's next notwithstanding-to-be announced expansion, hoping that what Hazzikostas has said "is a new perspective going frontwards" for the team since patch 9.1.5 will translate into new ideas and a new era of success for the MMO. It'southward still unclear what the adjacent yr and beyond of WoW will look like, but if zilch else, it'southward refreshing to run into Blizzard bandage off old assumptions that take long held the game dorsum, one update at a time.

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