World of Warcraft
The original World of Warcraft’s tone was less about the world and buy wow gold more about the mechanics. The Azeroth that we first stepped into back in 2004 was an Azeroth built from the ground up with the previous generation of MMOs in mind. World of Warcraft was going to be the best of the old guard with new ideas and technology to create a mostly loadless world where the horrors of the MMO were a thing of the past.
Vanilla was, for all intents and purposes, a continuation of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne in terms of tone and focus. We were the lab rats set free in this Azerothian maze, with a focus on questing, fighting, exploring, and finding our old favorite places from the previous games. We compared maps, marveled at our favorite heroes rendered in the new world, and gracefully said goodbye to a lot of the awful MMO tropes of the past generation.
Tone in the classic game was a carryover from Warcraft III. The serious moments mixed in with the pop culture and the humor equally in the quests players would complete wow items and the storyline shifted from the dramatic retelling of Darrowshire to the jokey fun of Booty Bay. The one constant was that this was undeniably Warcraft, from the bad to the good. Vanilla was the origination of how we would approach the game from here on out and understand the direction that the developers would take.
While the title of the original game “World of Warcraft” never told us who the enemy was or who the big bad causing all of the problems was, we had enough information in that this wasWarcraft. The raid game began to take on a real set of ideals and its own tone as players embarked on the quest to end Onyxia and venture into the Molten Core. The stakes were high and felt real, culminating in Ragnaros’ emergence out of the Firelands and into his little “too soon” pool. It was suspenseful.
Blackwing Lair was similar in scope and tone. Nefarian was teased during the game in humorous ways and, as a villain, he was Warcraft’s first troll (except for the Trolls … you know what I mean). While Nefarian’s presence was daunting and suspenseful, his joking and mannerisms made the whole instance feel fun in the presence of a world-threatening evil.
Ahn’Qiraj and Naxxramas let the WoW development team put the tone of the next content updates in front of the players in a very real way. As Orgrimmar and Ironforge began to build up their resources for the coming war, physical manifestations of the fight would begin to appear in the cities. Resources piled up, hides stacked high next to a mint’s worth of ingots. When the gong was rung and the gates swung open, a real war had begun. We felt it. We worked for it, and our payoff was war. The tone changed to immediacy and wonder as we passed through the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj and stormed the floating citadel of Naxxramas, all while C’thun whispered to us our deaths and Kel’thuzad screamed about his slain kitty cat.
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