World of Warcraft

Sanded every sharp edge off the MMO and reduced gear to one ascending number.

Released 2004 Developer Blizzard Entertainment Platform PC Genre MMORPG Era Broadband & the console shooter Website worldofwarcraft.com ↗

Mechanics this game introduced

These are recorded as first appearing here. Each links to a full history of where the idea went next.

Progression & Persistence · 2004

Numeric Gear Power Treadmill

A numeric gear power treadmill reduces equipment to one ascending number, letting a game gate content by that figure a…

Origin: World of Warcraft

Mechanics it built on

Ideas World of Warcraft inherited rather than invented — each traceable back through the ontology to a root.

Colour-Coded Loot Rarity ~~1996~~Persistent Shared World ~~1997~~Player Guilds and Clans ~~1997~~Quest Journal ~~1998~~Coordinated Raid Encounters ~~1999~~Ability Cooldown Economy ~~1999~~

Descends from

EverQuest ~~1999~~

The Warcraft series in this dataset

1995

Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness ~~1995~~

2002

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos ~~2002~~

2004

World of Warcraft ~~this page~~

2014

Hearthstone ~~2014~~

Look this game up elsewhere

Official site ↗Wikipedia ↗MobyGames ↗IGDB ↗Giant Bomb ↗

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