It’s Blizzard’s 30th Anniversary and the World of Warcraft Twitter account, @Warcraft, has been treating us to a few gems “From the Vault.”
First up, this amazing map of the World by Chris Metzen drawn in 1999 with charcoal pencil. It is fascinating to see what has been part of Azeroth from the beginning – even when Azeroth was just a zone! Kalimdor was so little back in those days, and Northrend was Northrond, but it was there. The map we know and love grew out of this and it is easy to see the roots of Azeroth as we know it here.
Next is a concept sketch featuring a dwarven mountaineer and watchkeeper. These sketches really show that the key elements of early concepts of the dwarven race are still present in game. These fellows may be the ancestors of the dwarf in the first WoW cinematic. Love the sun goggles!
The third piece that was posted hits really close to home. This is an early build of the user interface. My, that came a long way. Even so, the basic elements like the rounded character resource bars, the character window with the gear slots, the ability and utility buttons at the bottom of the screen, and even the hand cursor (albeit changed from an orcy green hand to a race agnostic mail glove), are all recognizable in some form in today’s default UI. So who is Malbourne anyway?
It is really cool to see these old concept pieces and get a feel for the roots of World of Warcraft. Thank you for sharing, Blizzard Twitter peeps. What a long, strange trip this has been!
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