When the World of Warcraft Anniversary mini-site was unveiled last November, one of its features was a photo-mosaic dubbed the Battlecry which would unlock little art goodies each time a certain milestone was reached. The Battlecry mosaic called for player submissions to submit their pictures with a logo of their favored faction, with a modest goal of 20,000 player-submitted pictures in order to reveal the final artwork created specially for the event.
It’s come along rather smoothly, and some really cool player pictures have been submitted, with the seeming abundance of Horde-aligned pictures prompting us to ask where the Alliance pride was. But what really surprises me is how long the whole project is taking. When the site was launched, one of the first questions that actually ran through my head was how long it would take to fill up the whole mosaic. With over ten million active players, you’d think getting to 20,000 would be easy. Out of ten million, that’s like a drop in a bucket. But after almost two months of the site being active, we’re still only at 32% of the goal. Why?
In celebration of today ushering in five years of WoW, let’s take a step away from traditional Moviewatch material and look at some early alpha and beta footage from Stormwind and Ironforge.
The footage is quite astounding when you watch it. You’ll notice that there are entire sections of both cities which have changed dramatically, and indeed Ironforge itself was nearly entirely revamped to remove the “second level” from it. You can see remnants of the second level of Ironforge today in that there are some oddly placed balconies and doors — it all looks normal to us now, but when you watch the video you can see that it looks much more natural the way it was.
The “internet consensus” is that alpha Ironforge was changed because people were getting themselves lost all the time in it — something which isn’t very good for a starting city. However as far as I can tell that never came out of published comments from a WoW designer, so take it with a grain of salt.
And yes, before some you inevitably ask, Patches of Yesteryear will be returning this week — although we’ll only be running it once every other week due to time constraints.
Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.
We at WoW.com are a sentimental bunch. I always privately thought that, but now I’ve got the sort of ironclad proof beloved by canny blackmailers everywhere. In the weeks before WoW’s 5th anniversary, a backchannel team discussion sprang up on our memories of the game and the players with whom we’ve had the great privilege of playing, and we decided to collect them here in honor of WoW’s birthday.
Some of us are hardcore gamers with lots of experience with other games. For others, WoW was their first (and in some cases, only). Most of us raid, and some of us PvP or theorycraft. A few of us are nuts for hardware arguments, but others are surprised to discover that WoW does not actually play on our toasters. Many of us are pretty easygoing in our approach to the content; others would sell their grandmothers up the river for a server-first. One among us hates warlocks, and everyone else just hates rogues (unless you’re Chase).
But we do share one thing in common, and that’s that we love the game no matter what we’re doing while playing it — and we hope you do too. From all of us at WoW.com, happy birthday, World of Warcraft!
Today is November 23rd, and that means it’s the fifth anniversary of the release of World of Warcraft. That’s a long time! Especially in the high-risk world of MMOs, where a bad launch can mean your whole game is doomed, or a sudden change in gameplay can make your whole audience rear up on its hind legs at you.
Thankfully, Blizzard has made WoW a living, breathing document, a world that constantly changes and evolves to match its players, which is what makes it so accessible. Throughout dozens of patches, tiers upon tiers of raid bosses, waves of dailies, faction grinds and honor grinds, legendaries and greens, WoW has managed to keep growing and growing along with its subscriber count. And of course, you’ve been there, too. Maybe not for the whole five years like some of us, but everyone’s experienced the game in their own way.
So what about you? How long have you been with the game? What’s your favorite memory of “growing up” in WoW? Will you keep playing for another five years?
Happy anniversary, everybody. Here’s to five more!
In what appears to be the start of the World of Warcraft 5th anniversary celebrations, Night Elf Mohawks have entered WoW! You can go visit Mr. Night Elf Mohawk outside any of the races starting zones. In particular we were able to see the Night Elf outside of the human starting area of Northshire, and near the Undead starting area of Tirisfal Glades — on any live server, not on the PTR. This is also only on North American servers right now. Reports indicate that the Night Elf Mohawk will appears on EU and Korean servers starting November 24th.
When you get there you’ll want to talk to him, make him pity the fool. And in return you’ll get a five Mohawk Grenades that let you make others wear a Night Elf Mohawk mask. You can get more grenades once your five are all used up.
There is a 50 minute buff called “Mohawked” with the flavor text of “You pity the fool” that gets placed on you when you wear the mask. You can right click the debuff to remove it.
Check out the gallery below for images from this little Monday afternoon surprise. And just for kicks, the original Mr. T WoW commercial after the break. When you watch the commercial again, note how Mr. T’s in-game self looks exactly like his character does in the commercial, quite neat!
Update: There is now an FAQ on the Night Elf Mohawk, which is reproduced after the break.
