"We're constantly looking for ways to modernize so we don't have to have it be so painful to support legacy content."Ī few major components of that modernization came as a part of the preparation for Battle for Azeroth's launch.
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"You can't expect any group of a few hundred people to hit every piece of content that's ever been developed over the past 15 years" We've modernized our game to make use of that, so we have a lot more resources we can share between different realms and a lot more connectivity we can provide to our players in their gameplay experience. Now we're on a much more cloud-based infrastructure, which didn't exist in 2004 and is now the industry standard.
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When World of Warcraft shipped it was on single realms that were completely independent from all other realms. One of the most important things from a tech end is we always look at modernizing wherever we can. "However, there are a ton of features we do have to support. And what we've done is been able to take that and learn from it, figure out what's worked and what hasn't, so we can apply that to future expansions and not have to support other features like that going forward. We don't need to support that going forward. The Artifact system for Legion is a good example of that. For example, there are features that are relegated to just one expansion now. "We've gotten a little smarter about things over the years. So the challenge is, how do you support legacy content while developing new content? World of Warcraft's older world can often seem vast and empty.unless a major story event draws players back
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Every time you release a patch or expansion you still have to make sure Ragnaros works, and Onyxia works, because there are people that still go back and do that. "It is difficult to support legacy content. "World of Warcraft doesn't shy away from doing difficult things by any means," Dawson said. But changes at the top ripple into the game's legacy content every time, and the more that is added, the more factors the team must consider the next time they want to make changes. With those expansions, the majority of the changes took place at the very top, stacking content onto what was already there to create a new endgame experience for existing players.
![world of warcraft world world of warcraft world](https://editors.dexerto.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/world-of-warcraft-shadowlands-release-date.jpg)
Over 14 years, it has seen seven massive overhauls to its world, characters, story, gameplay mechanics, endgame and structure, all affecting millions of players interacting with any number of different systems across the content of all those expansions. Seven expansions going on eight is an awful lot for any video game, and as one of the biggest MMOs currently in operation, World of Warcraft remains a pioneer in many respects. "World of Warcraft doesn't shy away from doing difficult things by any means" From an operations standpoint and an engineering standpoint, we do everything in our power to support that moment." You have designers and artists who have been putting all this content in for two years, and they get one day where it goes on display for the entire world to see. We do that because it's a lot of work to support the live operation of a game like World of Warcraft. "So right now we'd be starting to work on whatever the next thing is as we usher this one out the gate. "From the technical end, we usually start preparing for an expansion over two years in advance," Dawson said. But while Blizzard will devote plenty of resources to bug fixes and community support as players flood into Azeroth for the game's seventh expansion, many members of the Blizzard development team are already looking to the eighth. Years of work went into making the content millions of players saw for the first time yesterday.
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As technical director on World of Warcraft, Dawson played an integral role in launching the long-running MMO's Battle for Azeroth expansion, which sends players to the forgotten islands of Kul Tiras and the lost troll empire of Zandalar on another adventure to save the world and bring glory to their respective factions. Yesterday was a big day for Patrick Dawson and his co-workers.