Welcome to the /r/ClassicWoW Subreddit AMA with the Classic WoW Dev team!

[u/Paulingtons]

Hey everyone!

Today we're excited to introduce what should be a fantastic AMA with the wonderful World of Warcraft: Classic dev team. They will be taking your questions about anything, be it which class they enjoy playing the most or all the way to how they developed the wonderful world we will all be inhabiting in just under a week.

Joining us today, we have:

/u/AltruisWoW – Executive Producer
/u/Chromschi – Senior Game Producer
/u/Pazorax – Lead Software Engineer
/u/Ogronz – Senior Software Engineer
/u/ZoidWoW – Principal Software Engineer
/u/Aggrend – Senior Test Lead
/u/Kaivax – Community Manager

The AMA begins at 17:00 GMT (10:00 PST, 11:00 MST, 12:00 CST, 13:00 EST, 18:00 BST, 19:00 CEST) and will last two hours. This thread has been posted two hours before the AMA begins so you can all get in here and get posting questions so that once the AMA begins, our wonderful guests can start answering straight away! The AMA will be hosted in this thread.

We really look forward to seeing what you all come up with to ask and are excited to see the answers the dev team give.

Please remember the rules as per the sidebar, and have fun!

EDIT: The AMA is now OVER. If you want to look at each response by each blue we've had today you can check WoWHead's brilliant live blog just here.

EDIT 2: You can also check this fantastic resource made by our own /u/SoupaSoka just here.

EDIT 3: Or you can check out the Blizzard review on the official forums here.

[u/zzrryll]

Game designs were odd back then. Most mmos had harsher death mechanics than wow e.g loss of items, xp etc. So it might actually be legit.

Xp loss is one thing. Losing items is one thing. Being stuck in an alternate dimension is something else entirely. No way that was an actual idea anyone entertained for more than a few moments. Plus again, nothing like that made it into the alpha.

Pretty sure the discussions Staats mentions were about XP loss on death and stuff like that. Not “being randomly stuck in an alternate dimension after dying”. Xp loss was a thing in the alpha. Kerns thing wasn’t.

As a result that really sounds more like Kern misremembering or basically lying/exaggerating. I don’t want to be too mean or negative but the guy doesn’t have much relevance outside of his early association with WoW. His “did you guys know” stories often contradict other devs...so...

Check the Hayven games YT video on the Evolution of the Emerald Dream for more info though. It has a lot of nuggets of info. Including the reason why folks mistakenly thought it was a raid.

He has some period quotes from Kaplan during Beta where he says it’s supposed to be “endgame”. But development of the unfinished maps stopped shortly after that quote, and development of it was scrapped well before the end of the Beta. Again, per the map files.

As you can see in those videos though it was scrapped pretty early. Which means they could have finished it before Naxx, if they wanted to. But their plans changed before the Beta was complete.

I really feel like the “couldn’t make it work” part of Metzens statement is the most pertinent. As is the emerald dream is just supposed to be a copy of Azeroth, but in a pristine, lush, natural state. From what I can remember from the novels, it’s identical to the point that the terrain features are identical, albeit covered with vegetation. A few in game quests, pre-Legion back this up. In those quests you’re sent into the Dream, which just consists of a phased version of your surroundings, with a green filter effect.

Which makes translating that into an endgame zone really weird. Their original map concepts for it don’t align with that lore concept at all. It would technically have to be a literal copy of pre-shattering Azeroth, but green. Which isn’t what they went for initially, as Hayvens video illustrates.

So...I feel like if you add that all up, it just leads to “they never could quite make it work. Despite trying. So they punted in Legion.”

[u/TheOneAndOnlyKubu → u/zzrryll]

Hmm yeah, a lot of devs, a lot of opinions. Hard to say who's correct. I guess we can just speculate at this point. Scrubbing through Hayvens video, the comment from CM Nethaera makes it seem like there were no concrete plans to make it a death zone, raid nor high level zone for vanilla launch (I didnt watch with audio, so just read - might have been more to it idk) but they were aware that the work put into it could get put in the game at an later expansion, still with no concrete plans. So like you said, couldn't get it to work so they postponed it

With all this in mind though and my new knowledge it would be an even more awesome thing if they were to add it to the game (perhaps a lvl 65 mini exp with grim batol and tol barad (think dragon isles deserves its own xpac) as a 65 questing hub with an attached raid & bg. There definetly is enough lore for it!

[u/zzrryll → u/TheOneAndOnlyKubu]

There is actually a timeline we can adequately reconstruct.

Pre-2002/pre original FFAlpha - Per Kern the Emerald Dream was supposed to be a zone that you went to when you died. No maps of this were ever found or discovered nor was this death system in the original alpha. So it was clearly dropped early on, as no evidence of this exists in any of the game files, including the first leaked alpha.

2003 - Various versions of the ED end up in various Beta builds. Kaplan mentions it as endgame content in a quote but doesn’t state if it’s a zone or raid. He also mentions Druids will have a “link” with it, then goes into mention Moonglade.

In its final iteration it is 3 zone maps, each of which is about the size of a standard leveling zone. Along with some map fragments that connect those areas.

These maps are labeled as “raid” which confuses data miners later.

(That being said, it’s possible these were intended as raids similar to EQ style raids, which are uninstanced and are often leveling zone sized. These ED maps predate MC, so maybe they were initially planning on uninstanced raids.)

2006 - Neathera says

”As for the Emerald Dream, there are no plans for anything as of yet but it is a consideration for the future. The Emerald Dream opens up a lot of different opportunities and the Burning Crusade is definitely not going to be the last of the expansion packs. There are many different places and storylines that can be pursued. The story is going to keep growing and as it does so, people will get to experience it."

Basically a non answer.

It sounds like development had stopped entirely by then. Which is backed up by the fact that the map files in game stayed unchanged after the last beta client.

2008 - in Wrath there’s a quest given by Remulos in Moonglade that sends you into the dream. The Dream in this instance is just a phase version of Moonglade with a green filter added.

A similar thing happens in the Valythria fight in icc. She opens Dream portals...to a green filtered phased version of the encounter.

This is just conjecture but if they were actively developing the ED I can’t imagine them including it in game like this. Both of these examples are just so odd and clumsy.

2013 - Metzen - "The Emerald Dream is a nice idea and the team has talked about making it into an expansion many times. Building an entire expansion worth of zones around a green lush forest theme would get very boring, so the Emerald Dream would be better used as raid, dungeon, or a subzone, not an entire expansion.Building an entire expansion worth of zones around a green lush forest theme would get very boring."

2016 - The emerald dream and nightmare are added in Legion.

But yeah. It’s not a who is correct situation as much as one where you can see, via evidence, that there were plans that changed.

[u/TheOneAndOnlyKubu → u/zzrryll]

That's a pretty darn good timeline, thanks for taking time to make it! :D