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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsWoW Moviewatch: Stormwind and Ironforge Alpha
by Adam Holisky 
Nov 23rd 2009 at 12:00PM
In celebration of today ushering in five years of WoW, let's take a step away from traditional Moviewatch material and look at some early alpha and beta footage from Stormwind and Ironforge.
The footage is quite astounding when you watch it. You'll notice that there are entire sections of both cities which have changed dramatically, and indeed Ironforge itself was nearly entirely revamped to remove the "second level" from it. You can see remnants of the second level of Ironforge today in that there are some oddly placed balconies and doors -- it all looks normal to us now, but when you watch the video you can see that it looks much more natural the way it was.
The "internet consensus" is that alpha Ironforge was changed because people were getting themselves lost all the time in it -- something which isn't very good for a starting city. However as far as I can tell that never came out of published comments from a WoW designer, so take it with a grain of salt.
And yes, before some you inevitably ask, Patches of Yesteryear will be returning this week -- although we'll only be running it once every other week due to time constraints.
Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.Filed under: WoW Moviewatch
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 5)
ScorchHellfire Nov 23rd 2009 3:36PM
They could've fixed the buggy elevator and "wasted" space is a good thing IMO... The current old world cities do have some residential looking stuff but still not enough to make it look like a real city where people actually live and this only got worse with Shattrath and now Dalaran has no living quarters at all except maybe the inns... Where the hell do all those shop keepers sleep and eat? I love the random buildings with nothing but beds and tables and food and different objects in them because it give the impression that someone actually takes residence in the city and its not just a glorified strip mall...
Kaz Nov 23rd 2009 1:28PM
IF looked like it was going to be epic.
Why did they change it so much for the release?
Josin Nov 23rd 2009 1:34PM
I'd love to see Ironforge get remade to it's Alpha form in Cataclysm. even the gnome area was so much cooler! The deeprun tram wasn't instanced! That's awesome!
Ydrisselle Nov 23rd 2009 1:48PM
When I first saw Alpha Ironforge, I thought "Wow, that's a real dwarven city, not the current IF..." But I know it would be hard to navigate there. In fact I always get lost in TB and sometimes UC too, so I think in this IF it would be pretty hard to navigate...
Ringo Flinthammer Nov 23rd 2009 2:35PM
It was easier than it appears at first glance. Nowadays, each slice of the pie has a theme. Back then, that metaphor was extended to having each inner ring's pie slice also having a theme. Once you learned it, it wasn't terrible -- it was about as complicated as the modern Undercity -- but there was a learning curve. Of course, this was also before there were city maps available, so it would be faster nowadays, presumably.
Phantom Nov 23rd 2009 2:36PM
Old Ironforge is still there. You guys are just too tall to find the entrance.
lockanon Nov 24th 2009 3:29AM
And you, sir, are far too fail to bother reading the article....
You lose all your internetz and all your comment privileges for 72 hours.
Old Ironforge is still accessible, but would you like what isn't accessible? Ironforge 1.0...
It no longer exists, so if you have found it, please, oh great guru of nonexistent WoW, please, enlighten us so that we too may return to earlier patches of this great game....
L2Read before inserting feet into mouth.
Malfural Nov 23rd 2009 3:07PM
I LOVE the idea of multi-leveled cities, both ingame and irl. BB was the most awesome town I had even seen when I first went there (just really annoying now though).
ScorchHellfire Nov 23rd 2009 3:30PM
Despite all its flaws, I'd still say that old IF looks 10 times better than the current one... they could've at least redone the lay out a bit but left the 2nd level tinker town and the crystal room...
zappo Nov 23rd 2009 3:37PM
Thank god they took that hallway twist out of the Stormwind bank.
C.J.Katz Nov 23rd 2009 7:43PM
Agreed, as soon as I saw that I was amazed that they would make such a high traffic place "hard" to get into.
Kevin Nov 23rd 2009 4:09PM
WoW! It's been so long with the new IF it was cool to see how it looked like before when I first started playing. Awesome video! Thanks for sharing!
Mark Nov 23rd 2009 4:11PM
It is pretty amazing; there is a leaked alpha client floating around out there and a sandbox type server emulator allowing you to run it. There are no mobs or npcs at all but you can explore all of Azeroth from the alpha (at least what parts existed). There were some places like Winterspring that weren't finished and you just fell off the map if you tried to enter them. There were some more islands around Booty Bay too that no longer exist, and the big goblin statue there was human.
Possum Nov 23rd 2009 4:14PM
The revamp of IF definatly shows the different philosophy behind Blizzard's design and other MMOs of the time, in Everquest there was a wood elf city up in the trees (Kelethin I think it was called? It was years ago) that was not only very easy to get lost in but one wrong step pretty much anywhere meant falling to your death.
I don't know if players complained about this but the Everquest design team probably thought a few towns that reguarily killed players was a good thing, thoughen us up!
RJ100 Nov 23rd 2009 4:18PM
Wow... I haven't been to Ironforge since March 04 (alpha) and had no idea they'd removed the 2nd level. Heh.
Omegan01 Nov 23rd 2009 4:22PM
My thoughts as I watched this:
"Heh, no AH in Stormwind."
"Hahaha, there was a twist in the bank?"
"Inn looks like one of the bars."
"Holy crap, the stocks used to be on their own island?"
"Hehe, no Deeprun Tram yet."
"LOL, no Champion's Hall either."
"Hahaha, SI:7's empty."
"Oh cool Ironforge now....heh, doesn't look the same without the big ol' statue."
"What's up with those bridges...HOLY SH!T IF HAD A SECOND LEVEL?!"
"OMG this looks so cool."
"Hey, there the Explorer's Hall, turning left should be the Great F-WTF WHERE'S THE FORGE?!"
"What the hell is that thing?! Is that the forge? Holy crap it looks different."
"What the heck was up with that sudden drop - OMG OLD IF SO COOL."
"The Mystic Ward was on the second level too...damn that would've looked so epic."
"LOL, the gyphons used to be back by the Explorer's League."
"Hey what's this part...wtf, another random drop...oh wait it's an elevator HOLY SH!T THAT'S TINKER TOWN OMFG"
"OMG....OOOOOOOOOOMG that looks so damn cool. Why couldn't they keep this part?"
"Ooooh, where does this other track go? Awwwwww, nowhere."
Ringo Flinthammer Nov 23rd 2009 5:22PM
There weren't even any auction houses at that point. We HOWLED for them in alpha, and the devs were very lukewarm on them for a very long time.
Of course, the alpha community was small enough -- and included enough people new-to-MMOs -- that people actually auctioned stuff off in channels.
Back in the dwarf push, when the level cap was 20 or 25 or so (it's been a while!), I remember watching an auction for the plans for the Jade Serpentblade -- then the best weapon in the entire game.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=3850
Ringo Flinthammer Nov 23rd 2009 5:23PM
Oh, and as I recall, no one had even found all the components necessary to make the weapon, nor could anyone wield it if they could build it, but the theory was it'd be useful in the next push. It turned out that they locked our dwarves (including Ringo, my dwarf paladin) and gave us the undead instead.
Dracula Jones Nov 23rd 2009 5:30PM
That's actually not Tinker Town... maybe it would have been had it gone live, but at the time it was the Deeprun Tram. It was completely nonfunctional, just a dead end.
Ringo Flinthammer Nov 23rd 2009 8:07PM
I'm 99 percent sure it did say "Tinker Town" if you made it down the elevator of doom alive.