Forty-day mount money, no flight between continents, and a talent tree with 51 points in it. Most of what players now call the game was not in the box.
Photo: World-of-Warcraft retired servers 20210313 · Wikimedia Commons
Expansions · Vanilla to Wrath
The first four years, and the shape they set
What actually shipped in November 2004, how Outland narrowed the open continent into a corridor, and the expansion the game peaked on before it started losing people.
3 pieces · all eleven expansions
BlizzCon is where the announcements land, and where several of the decisions documented on this site were first stated out loud.
Photo: Tahir Xəlfəquliyev / Pexels
ExpansionsOutland Was a Corridor, and That Was the PointOutland replaced the open continent with a sequence of gated zones. Every expansion since has argued about how linear to be.
ExpansionsTwelve Million Subscribers and Then the CliffTwelve million subscribers in October 2010 is the high-water mark, and it has never been approached again.