TheRetroArcade
Veteran
Posts: 1,997
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
"He liked the fact you were instantly on a team."
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Every Friday
GamesRadar+
Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.
Every Thursday
GTA 6 O'clock
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
Every Friday
Knowledge
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Every Thursday
The Setup
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
Every Wednesday
Switch 2 Spotlight
Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.
Every Saturday
The Watchlist
Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we've got you covered.
Once a month
SFX
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
The factions of World of Warcraft don't mean as much nowadays—which isn't necessarily a bad thing. MMOs are having a tough enough time without splitting their playerbase and, furthermore, Azeroth has faced so many cosmic threats that continuing the faction war nonsense while the world's about to end would be comically stupid.
But there was a time where it meant a whole lot, forming a part of the original game's identity—and given the importance of faction warfare in the original RTS, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a huge part of WoW's development from the early days, too.
As revealed in a recent episode of the Lex Fridman podcast by Jeff Kaplan, former vice president of Blizzard, you'd be wrong—it was something the development team had been bickering about for ages:
"The Horde/Alliance decision was really controversial," explains Kaplan, "Because in Everquest it was mixed … [Rob Pardo] and I came from Everquest, where we felt like this was a horrible decision [Allen Adham] was making. And we argued."
At the time, Kaplan was a quest designer, but he was very tight-knit with the head honchos at Blizzard, working closely with Chris Metzen, too, describing himself as a "medium between Chris Metzen and our level designers and our environmental artists" back in 2009.
Kaplan tells Fridman that "Allen, Bob Fitch and I would have lunch every single day, and we would just talk about WoW and the core design of WoW … We would fight over the Horde/Alliance split and if it was a good idea or not."
See, Allen—who was one of the progenitors of WoW, but retired before its release—played a bunch of Dark Age of Camelot: "The magic of that game was that you had three factions, and he liked the fact you were instantly on a team, you weren't a loner in the world, and whether you liked it or not you had people on your side."
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
In DAoC, you had three realms you could join, Albion, Midgard, and Hibernia. Basically a choice between Arthurian knights, druidic elves, and Vikings. What's even more staggering about the fact that inspiration was allegedly controversial is the assertion Kaplan makes that it wasn't even locked in until around one year before release.
"Some time before beta, Allen retired … I think it ...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Every Friday
GamesRadar+
Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.
Every Thursday
GTA 6 O'clock
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
Every Friday
Knowledge
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Every Thursday
The Setup
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
Every Wednesday
Switch 2 Spotlight
Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.
Every Saturday
The Watchlist
Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we've got you covered.
Once a month
SFX
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
The factions of World of Warcraft don't mean as much nowadays—which isn't necessarily a bad thing. MMOs are having a tough enough time without splitting their playerbase and, furthermore, Azeroth has faced so many cosmic threats that continuing the faction war nonsense while the world's about to end would be comically stupid.
But there was a time where it meant a whole lot, forming a part of the original game's identity—and given the importance of faction warfare in the original RTS, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a huge part of WoW's development from the early days, too.
As revealed in a recent episode of the Lex Fridman podcast by Jeff Kaplan, former vice president of Blizzard, you'd be wrong—it was something the development team had been bickering about for ages:
"The Horde/Alliance decision was really controversial," explains Kaplan, "Because in Everquest it was mixed … [Rob Pardo] and I came from Everquest, where we felt like this was a horrible decision [Allen Adham] was making. And we argued."
At the time, Kaplan was a quest designer, but he was very tight-knit with the head honchos at Blizzard, working closely with Chris Metzen, too, describing himself as a "medium between Chris Metzen and our level designers and our environmental artists" back in 2009.
Kaplan tells Fridman that "Allen, Bob Fitch and I would have lunch every single day, and we would just talk about WoW and the core design of WoW … We would fight over the Horde/Alliance split and if it was a good idea or not."
See, Allen—who was one of the progenitors of WoW, but retired before its release—played a bunch of Dark Age of Camelot: "The magic of that game was that you had three factions, and he liked the fact you were instantly on a team, you weren't a loner in the world, and whether you liked it or not you had people on your side."
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
In DAoC, you had three realms you could join, Albion, Midgard, and Hibernia. Basically a choice between Arthurian knights, druidic elves, and Vikings. What's even more staggering about the fact that inspiration was allegedly controversial is the assertion Kaplan makes that it wasn't even locked in until around one year before release.
"Some time before beta, Allen retired … I think it ...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?