World of Warcraft developers reveal one of the game’s key features was created by mistake
'Phasing', which became they key storytelling mechanism from the game's second expansion on, was created by mistake - and only discovered thanks to a bug report
ONE of the revolutionary features in World of Warcraft that has kept the game going for almost 14 years was created by mistake, the developers have revealed.
Talking to Sun Online, World of Warcraft chief Terran Gregory revealed that 'phasing', which was first introduced in the game's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, was created entirely by mistake.
The technique, which has since become standard in massively-multiplayer online games like WoW, lets different players see the same areas differently, despite being on the same server and in the same virtual space.
"It was essentially created from a bug," Gregory admitted. "In Burning Crusade [the game's second expansion, released in 2007] someone got stuck in a quest that caused them to not be visible to other players," he said.
In the process of hunting down this bug some of the designers said "you know what, we can do something with this," and the new technology that has come to define every expansion since.
First used in 2009's Wrath of The Lich King, the game's third expansion, it revolutionised how much of the game worked.
The technology allows maps and characters to change as the game's story progressed for individual players while still maintaining the integrity of the world as a whole.
Talking ahead of the launch of Battle for Azeroth, WoW's seventh expansion Gregory and level design boss Gary Platner explained how the technology at the game's core has come on and now allows them to tell the more "mature and cerebral" stories that the audience is coming to demand.
This "richer and more immersive fiction" sees the game moving on from the "comic booky superhero versus supervillain" stories that have dominated previous expansions, Plattner says.
The latest expansion sees the tension between the game's two defining factions finally exploding into all-out war.
The new expansion comes out on Tuesday, August 14, . In a bid to win back long-term lapsed players and gain some new ones, Blizzard recently made the base game and all previous expansion packs free.
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