History Trivia / WorldOfWarcraft

** The ''Dragonflight'' expansion was [[https://www.wowhead.com/news/dragonflight-expansion-leaks-rumors-and-speculation-326710#comments leaked way before its formal April 19, 2022 announcement]]. New coding was datamined for the Battle.net shop listing normal, heroic and epic edition prepurchases for "[=WoW=] Dragonfight". In fact, the first leak confirming the expansion's existence was [[https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2614875-World-of-Warcraft-Dragonflight 2 months prior]] to the above leak from the Battle.net Shop code.

* FanNickname:
** The gear you acquire is ColorCodedForYourConvenience, based on the color the name of the item appears when you hover your mouse over it; uncommon items are referred to as "greens", rare are "blues", epics are "purples", and Legendary items are "oranges". Good luck on getting an orange, and no one beyond level ten or fifteen would willingly use a common or "white" item (except maybe hats or shoulder pieces, which are hard to find until around level 30 or special cases such as [[WithThisHerring Fishing Pole Duels]]).
** Members of the Alliance and Horde are respectively called "Allys" [[note]]Prounounced All-eees[[/note]] and "Hordies" respectively.
** Various classes have shorthand for them, most often used by Raiders and Pvp players as shorthand for strategies. While many classes have [[OneSteveLimit the same shorthand, or even name for their specializations, they're usually mentioned alongside the class]].
*** Death Knights are shorthanded into "DK" while their specializations are just written out, except unholy, which is sometimes refered to has "UH".
*** Druids are either "Resto" "Cat" "[[BearyFunny Bear, Bare, Bere, or some other mangled half-recognizable form of "This guy is a bear]]" druids for Restoration, Feral, and Guardian, and in the case of balance "Boomkins", or more rarely, "laser chicken", due to the Moonkin form having the head of a bird and using the Moonfire spell, which resembles some kind of orbital energy weapon attack, as one of their primary attacks.
*** Hunters are MM for Marksmanship, BM for Beast Mastery, and SV or Surv for Survival.
*** Mages, having relatively short names for their specs, are just called that outright.
*** Monks are "BM" or "BWM" for Brewmasters, "MW" for Mistweavers, or "WW" for Windwalkers.
*** Paladins are shortened to "Pallys" with specializations being "Ret" for Retribution and "Prot" for Protection. Holy, already being a 4-letter word, is just left as is, although some people shorten it to "Hpal".
*** Priests are generally shortend to "First letter of specialization plus Priest" such as "Spriest" for Shadow, "Hpriest" for Holy, and [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers Disc" for Discipline]].
*** Rogues are either refered to as Rogues or [[RougeAnglesOfSatin Rouges]]. Subtlety ones are shortend to "Sub", Outlaw to "Out", and Assassin usually to "Sin" to avoid the other name of "Ass".
*** Shamans are "shammies". "Resto" is used for Restoration (same as Druids), "Ele" (pronounced as either "el-eh" or "elly") for Elemental, "Enh" for Enhancement. Enhancement is occasionally referred to as "Enchancement", sometimes as a typo (like "rouge" for rogues) and sometimes as a self-deprecating joke about the spec's survivability. The term "blueberry" was a derogatory term used in ''Burning Crusade'' for new draenei shamans, referring to their skin tone (which of course ignored that most Darkspear trolls, a valid race for shamans from vanilla, were also usually some shade of blue).
*** Warlocks are shortened to "Locks", and their specs are "Demo" for Demonology, "Destro" for Destruction, and "Aff" for affliction. Their [[{{Hellhound}} Felhunter]] pets are often referred to as "Felpuppies."
*** Warriors are shortened to "Wars" which is almost never used for Warlocks, despite them also starting with "War". The specs, besides "Prot" for protection, are relatively simply named and just refered to as such. Fury warriors are occasionally called "a rogue in plate", due to dual wielding and often being on par with rogues in the damage meters, rogues being a purely damage-oriented class in constrast to warriors which can either tank or DPS.
** When the Death Knight class was released in ''Wrath of the Lich King'', one of their spells was "Death Grip". What it basically did was yank an enemy player over to you so you could give him a face-full of your sword. In ''Cataclysm'', priests got a new spell known as "Leap of Faith", which did the exact same thing (yanking a player towards you to get them away from a big sword or area damage), only on friendly players. People thought "Leap of Faith" was a stupid name, and so, unofficially renamed it "Life Grip". Even the devs use the nickname on occasion.
** In ''Warlords of Draenor'', the bosses Hans'gar and Franzok (a DualBoss encounter) are popularly known as "Hans and Franz," not only because of the shortening of their names, but also because they are a clear reference to the recurring Series/SaturdayNightLive sketch, starring two Austrian bodybuilders, Hans and Franz (who were themselves pastiches of Arnold Schwarzenegger).
** [[WellIntentionedExtremist Illidan Stormrage]] is sometimes known as 'Illidindo Nuffin'. Or, "I didn't do anything wrong." He's earned this moniker for a few reasons. One, he always thinks he's doing the right thing, even when he's wrong. Two, fans go to extreme lengths to make him into a pure, do-no-wrong good guy. Three, people worry Blizzard may make him one just to appease those fans.
** Xal'atath, the Shadow Priest Artifact Weapon, has received the nickname "Knaifu". A {{Portmanteau}} of "Knife" and "Waifu", or a fictional character you would want to date or marry. Presumably fans who use this nickname are ArousedByTheirVoice.
** A troll shaman named Zekhan from the ''Battle for Azeroth'' cinematic gained notoriety for his distinctive look and impressive lightning spells, earning him EnsembleDarkhorse status and the nickname "Zappyboi."

** Shadowlands was originally leaked on 4Chan under the name "Wrath of Bolvar" and managed to accurately describe the lead-in of Sylvanas breaking the Helm of Domination and shattering reality, and described the Kyrian race. This one was a bit more readily believed due to how ''Battle for Azeroth'''s plot wrapped up, with most of the disbelief being agitation from people who didn't like the idea of a Sylvanas-focused expansion.
** The Dragonflight expansion was [[https://www.wowhead.com/news/dragonflight-expansion-leaks-rumors-and-speculation-326710#comments leaked way before its formal announcement]]. New coding was datamined for the Battle.net shop listing normal, heroic and epic edition prepurchases for "wow dragonfight". In fact, the first leak confirming the expansion's existence was [[https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2614875-World-of-Warcraft-Dragonflight 2 months prior]] to the above leak from the Battle.net Shop code.
** In one example that happened in-game, before ''Cataclysm'' was properly announced, Blizzard added new masks to Hallow's End event of all the playable races... as well as Goblin and Worgen, with much higher details on the Goblin, a complete redesign for Worgen and as a uniquely gender-dimorphic female mask for the previously male-only Worgen, effectively outing next expansion's choice for playable races. Blizzard very quickly realized their mistake and added a bunch more "NPC" races as masks and making female versions of those [[note]] nowhere near as convincingly, as [[TertiarySexualCharacteristic the Ogre mask was just a male Ogre face with lipstick and eyeshadow and the female Murloc was just a pink recolor]][[/note]], but the staggering difference in quality (said masks were very clearly the model's textures ripped directly off their source and slapped onto the masks) made it too little, too late.
** The title and some details of ''Dragonflight'' were leaked ahead of the April 19, 2022 announcement.

** The Dragonflight expansion was [[https://www.wowhead.com/news/dragonflight-expansion-leaks-rumors-and-speculation-326710#comments leaked way before its formal announcement]]. New coding was datamined for the Battle.net shop listing normal, heroic and epic edition prepurchases for "wow dragonfight". In fact, the first leak confirming the expansion's existence was [[https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2614875-World-of-Warcraft-Dragonflight 2 months prior]] to the aboveleak from the Battle.net Shop code.

** The Dragonflight expansion was [[https://www.wowhead.com/news/dragonflight-expansion-leaks-rumors-and-speculation-326710#comments leaked way before its formal announcement]]. The first leak came when new coding was datamined for the Battle.net shop listing normal, heroic and epic edition prepurchases for "wow dragonfight". In fact, the expansion's existence was leaked [[https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2614875-World-of-Warcraft-Dragonflight 2 months prior]] to the aboveleak from the Battle.net Shop code.

** The Dragonflight expansion was [[https://www.wowhead.com/news/dragonflight-expansion-leaks-rumors-and-speculation-326710#comments leaked way before its formal announcement]]. The first leak came when new coding was datamined for the Battle.net shop listing normal, heroic and epic edition prepurchases for "wow dragonfight". In fact, the expansion's existence was leaked [[https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2614875-World-of-Warcraft-Dragonflight 2 months prior]] to the aboveleak from the Battle.net Shop code.

** The Dragonflight expansion was [[https://www.wowhead.com/news/dragonflight-expansion-leaks-rumors-and-speculation-326710#comments leaked way before its formal announcement]]. The first leak came when new coding was datamined for the Battle.net shop listing normal, heroic and epic edition prepurchases for "wow dragonfight". In fact, the expansion's existence was leaked[[https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2614875-World-of-Warcraft-Dragonflight 2 months prior]] to the aboveleak from the Battle.net Shop code.

** The UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic lockdown of 2020 has impacted the making of ''Shadowlands'' with Blizzard's teams having to work from home on it. Game director Ion Hazzikostas has called the thing "challenging". It's probably what caused the release date change (before that, neither the original game nor any of its expansions had ever been delayed), along with being one of the causes of 9.1 taking as long to release as it did.

* ImageSource:
** CoolSword
** NoCelebritiesWereHarmed

** A pretty infamous one in Shadowlands: It was previously confirmed, by both Steve Danuser and Ion, that if Arthas was to be featured in Shadowlands, it would be a {{Wham Episode}}. Comes Sepulcher 9.2 raid, however, [[spoiler: and this turned out to be a very fake statement, as Arthas' soul was used for Kingsmourne's forging to bind Anduin to the Jailer's will, and once the players defeat Anduin proper, whats left of his soul fades into nothingness]]. Needless to say, this one [[{{Understatement}} didn't amuse anyone]].

** A pretty infamous one in Shadowlands: It was previously confirmed, by both Steve Danuser and Ion, that if Arthas was to be featured in Shadowlands, it would be a {{Wham Episode}}. Comes Sepulcher 9.2 raid, however, [[spoiler: and this turned out to be a very fake statement, as Arthas' soul was used for Kingsmourne's forging to bind Anduin to the Jailer's will, and once the players defeat Anduin proper, whats left of his soul fades into nothingness]]. Needless to say, this one [[Understatement didn't amuse anyone]].

** A pretty infamous one in Shadowlands: It was previously confirmed, by both Steve Danuser and Ion, that if Arthas was to be featured in Shadowlands, it would be a {{Wham Episode}}. Comes Sepulcher 9.2 raid, however, [[and this turned out to be a very fake statement, as Arthas' soul was used for Kingsmourne's forging to bind Anduin to the Jailer's will, and once the players defeat Anduin proper, whats left of his soul fades into nothingness]]. Needless to say, this one [[Understatement didn't amuse anyone]].

** In one example that happened in-game, before ''Cataclysm'' was properly announced, Blizzard added new masks to Hallow's End even of all the playable races... as well as Goblin and Worgen, with much higher details on the Goblin and a complete redesign for Worgen as well as a uniquely gender-dimorphic female mask, effectively outing next expansion's choice for playable races. Blizzard very quickly realized their mistake and added a bunch more "NPC" races as masks, but the staggering difference in quality (said masks were very clearly the model's textures slapped onto the masks) made it too little, too late.

* TheWikiRule: [=WoWWiki=] came online one day after the game launched. Since then there was a schism, and now there is the [[http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Main WoWWiki]] on Wikia and [[https://wow.gamepedia.com/Wowpedia Wowpedia]] on Gamepedia. Then Wikia bought Gamepedia, rolling the old WoWWiki into the more polished Wowpedia.

** Updates to customization for playable races were toted as a selling point of ''Shadowlands'' and were claimed to be an ongoing project for that expansion, only for a Q&A following the 9.1 announcement to say that Blizzard had nothing planned beyond the overhaul in 9.0 but players should give their feedback on what they want to see added, '''which they had already been doing for years'''. This came off as both deceptive and willfully ignorant and drew a lot of ire from players whose favorite races got stiffed with the updates in 9.0, especially nightborne, who have the absolute least amount of customization of any race by a wide margin. With 9.1.5 adding more options for nightborne, lightforged draenei and highmountain tauren, it would appear this statement might once again be true.

** Leaks from the writing team indicate this was what drove the abrupt story swerves in ''Battle for Azeroth'' and ''Shadowlands''. Then Senior Creative Director Alex Afrasiabi devised and championed the Burning of Teldrassil whose fallout has driven every plot development since then. The main intent seems to have been driving up player numbers for the new expansion by opening with a massively shocking moment. However he apparently had no plan for how the story would progress past this point and was let go before he could develop one. The writing team was left trying to piece together a narrative to explain this for the next four years.

** Leaks from the writing team indicate this was what drove the abrupt story swerves in ''Battle for Azeroth'' and ''Shadowlands''. Then Senior Creative Director Alex Afrasiabi devised and championed the Burning of Teldrassil whose fallout has driven every plot development since then. The main intent seems to have been driving up player numbers for the new expansion by opening with a massively shocking moment. However he apparently had no plan for how the story would progress past this point, which contributed to the disjointed and unsatisfactory faction war story, the reveal of the Jailer, and the extreme dissatisfaction with Sylvanas's character arc.

** Leaks from the writing team indicate this was what drove the abrupt story swerves in ''Battle for Azeroth'' and ''Shadowlands''. Then Senior Creative Director Alex Afrasiabi devised and championed the Burning of Teldrassil whose fallout has driven every plot development since then. The main intent seems to have been driving up player numbers for the new expansion by opening with a massively shocking moment. However he apparently had no plan for how the story would progress past this point, which contributed to the disjointed and unsatisfactory faction war story, the reveal of the Jailer, and Sylvanas's CharacterDerailment.

** Leaks from the writing team indicate this was what drove the abrupt story swerves in ''Battle for Azeroth'' and ''Shadowlands''. Then Senior Creative Director Alex Afrasiabi devised and championed the Burning of Teldrassil whose fallout has driven every plot development since then. However he apparently had no plan for how the story would progress past this point, which contributed to the disjointed and unsatisfactory faction war story and reveal of the Jailer.

** Leaks from the writing team indicate this was what drove the abrupt story swerves in ''Battle for Azeroth'' and ''Shadowlands''. Then Senior Creative Director devised and championed the Burning of Teldrassil whose fallout has driven every plot development since then. However he apparently had no plan for how the story would progress past this point, which contributed to the disjointed and unsatisfactory faction war story and reveal of the Jailer.

* WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants: In regards to writing for Garrosh, Blizzard's writers were essentially not given a clear idea of what seemed to be his end goal. While he was pitched as the Horde's Varian Wrynn, or a war-focused version of Thrall, it seems the only idea that somewhat seemed planned was that Garrosh would become the BigBad of one of the expansions. The writers for the Stonetalon Mountain questline in ''Cataclysm'' for example wrote an entire questline about him disciplining an orc general who kills a bunch of innocent druids by throwing him to his death before speaking about honor, only to later find out later that Garrosh was apparently supposed to develop into the BigBad of the next expansion.

** 10-year-old boy Ezra "Ephoenix" Chatterton got quite a few references thanks to a Make-a-Wish foundation visit to Blizzard headquarters. He got [[http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=31986 an item named after him]], and got to create [[http://www.wowhead.com/quest=11129/kyles-gone-missing a quest in the Tauren starting area.]] The quest even has you find a dog with the same name as his. The NPC has the rare honor of having unique voice acting, all clips done by Ezra, and surprisingly deep for a 10-year-old boy. The unexpected questioning of "Can you help me find my dog?" is known to frighten many a player. Thankfully, Blizzard had the foresight to make the NPC unkillable by Alliance players. Ezra passed away in October 2008.
*** The Lunar Festival NPC in Thunder Bluff has been renamed Elder Ezra Wheathoof, Wheathoof being the name of the above questgiver. He is accompanied by a Phoenix Hatchling.

** Updates to customization for playable races were toted as a selling point of ''Shadowlands'' and were claimed to be an ongoing project for that expansion, only for a Q&A following the 9.1 announcement to say that Blizzard had nothing planned beyond the overhaul in 9.0 but players should give their feedback on what they want to see added, '''which they had already been doing for years'''. This came off as both deceptive and willfully ignorant and drew a lot of ire from players whose favorite races got stiffed with the updates in 9.0, especially nightborne, who have the absolute least amount of customization of any race by a wide margin.

** The game's fifteenth anniversary allowed the players to play Alterac Valley [[PlayerVersusPlayer battleground]] as it was when it was originally released (complete with downscaling characters to level 60 if they were higher).

** The December 2019-January 2020 event for the tenth anniversary of ''Cataclysm'' allowed players to get Deathwing as flying mount.

** The UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic lockdown of 2020 has impacted the making of ''Shadowlands'' with Blizzard's teams having to work from home on it. Game director Ion Hazzikostas has called the thing "challenging". It's probably what caused the release date change (before that, neither the original game nor any of its expansions had ever been delayed).