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It was decided that the team of the defunct project would be moved to Blizzard's own shot at an MMO.

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Members of the Blizzard Entertainment crew were already avid MMO fans, as 1997's Ultima Online and 1999's Everquest were fairly popular when it came to PC players. What was that team to work on next? That's where the genesis of World of Warcraft came from.' The other team was working on a totally different project which didn't come to fruition and we decided to stop development on it. 'One of them was working on a project that would eventually become Warcraft 3, but it wasn't obvious at the beginning that that was exactly the way it was going to go.

'There's a time period that happened after Starcraft, where we kind of split the teams down south into two separate teams,' explains Pardo. Blizzard Entertainment founders Frank Pearce, Mike Morhaime, and Allen Adham at the Video Game Awards 2011. They also shared some staff, like lead designer Rob Pardo, who worked on both projects. They didn't just share development time at Blizzard's offices. World of Warcraft was actually revealed at the same show in 2001, launching in November 2004. Warcraft 3 was officially announced by Blizzard Entertainment at the European Computer Trade Show in September 1999, launching in July 2002. While the in-game story of World of Warcraft springs from characters and storylines established in Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos, many don't realize that the games shared a development timeline. Together, they help provide some structure to the story of World of Warcraft's early and continuing development. Current World of Warcraft principals like Battle for Azeroth game director Ion Hazzikostas, principal artist Jimmy Lo, and technical director Patrick Dawson are joined by former Blizzard Entertainment chief creative officer Rob Pardo (lead designer of World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade) and former lead systems designer Greg Street (World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria). We spoke with just a fraction of the folks that have been behind Blizzard's decade-plus hit. Over these past 14 years, World of Warcraft has benefited from its developers designing around player perception or learning to talk more with the community. That's clearly evident, due to the litter of defunct competitors World of Warcraft has left in its wake. Launching a successful game is difficult, and keeping a game successful for more than a decade is a combination of craft, passion, and luck.

Games fail all the time, sometimes because they're broken and other times because they simply don't find the right audience. In comparison, World of Warcraft was a breath of fresh air. I played those early MMOs myself I remember the anarchy and player-killing (Corp Por, anyone?) of Ultima Online, or the mob trains, corpse runs, and vicious grind of Everquest.

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Those players could explore a vast world full of heroes, villains, gods, and monsters, combined with an experience that was far more player-friendly than its contemporaries. On the backs of titles like Ultima Online and Everquest, the team at Blizzard Entertainment transported players to the world established in Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos, Azeroth.

Mists of Pandaria Pre-Release: 2011-2012ДЇrom the beginning, World of Warcraft was designed as a response to other games, with players of successful MMOs wondering if the experience could be made better.

Wrath of the Lich King: November 13, 2008.

Wrath of the Lich King Pre-Release: 2007-2008.

Some of World of Warcraft's past faction leaders strike a pose. With the release of its seventh expansion, Battle for Azeroth, WoW still boasts a thriving fanbase. World of Warcraft has sold millions of copies, made billions of dollars, and won hundreds of awards. It didn't define the massively-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) genre, but continues to evolve with it. For 14 years, World of Warcraft has remained not only active, but relevant.

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