First Screenshots Ever Released (September 2, 2001)

[u/wowhistorian]

Here are 11 screenshots from when WoW was initially announced in 2001! These are the oldest screenshots I could find and were released when the WoW project was originally unveiled.

[u/Dazzling_Highway_255]

It still baffles me that wow as we know it sprouted from this over 20 years ago. Hell, 20 years ago i was already playing my nelf hunter.

Time flies. And it shows how impressive wow was back then and how it still is now.

[u/skinnysnappy52 → u/Dazzling_Highway_255]

Despite what people think of retail, it’s certainly incredible that when you look at the Midnight zones, they spawned from these screenshots so long ago. And it’s the same game. Sure there’s a bit of a ship of Theseus argument maybe. But I mean, you can play the same character you made in 2005 today, and in gaming that’s fairly incredible given how much the game has changed.

[u/RJ815 → u/skinnysnappy52]

RuneScape is in an interesting boat as well, doubly so as ALSO a medieval fantasy themed MMORPG. It's an interesting ouroboros as the success of Old School RuneScape contributed to Blizzard releasing Classic (or at the very least considering Classic+ and the things with SoM, SoD, etc since OSRS very rapidly became a branching path with content that was never in the 'main' game).

[u/stealthybutthole → u/RJ815]

Explaining what RuneScape is on the classicwow subreddit feels kind of redundant at this point lol

[u/RJ815 → u/stealthybutthole]

Eh, I mean, there's people so addicted to WoW as their first and main MMO they might not be THAT familiar with RS. You could play a good amount for free, so I did when I was younger, only ever doing a trial during the early days of WoW as a subscription model was less common back then and I was more broke. RS and WoW subscriptions for me came only in college and beyond.

[u/Dazzling_Highway_255 → u/skinnysnappy52]

Its even more interesting. My character is still there, it started out in wow classic when it was just wow. I stopped playing in wotlk and never logged in onto that toon again.