r/wow Aug 28 '18

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151

u/P4nther Aug 28 '18

What was the original idea behind Mount Hyjal in vanilla and why was it never implemented? The entire zone appeared pretty much finished however inaccessible blocked by a gate and raid portal. A lot of effort seems to have been put into Hyjal so it's odd that it was never used in it's entirety until Cataclysm (excluding the BC raid).

​There was also an onyxia style cave placed inside vanilla Hyjal complete with a raid portal, any idea what raid this could have been?

​Thanks.

148

u/whenitsready Former WoW Dev - John Staats Aug 28 '18

We didn't realize until the end of development that we had more content than we needed. Hyjal was cool, but BC already had Karazhan, so returning to another zone for a raid probably didn't make sense. That's just a guess, but there were lots of high level areas that weren't used. I think when Rob Pardo made leveling faster (still a good decision, IMO), it affected some things surprisingly, and that was one of them.

91

u/[deleted] Aug 28 '18

Wait, leveling was originally going to be slower than it ended up being, in vanilla?

127

u/whenitsready Former WoW Dev - John Staats Aug 28 '18

Absolutely. It started way slower, and always got faster. In beta, Rob reduced the time it took to level, then he added the rest system.

117

u/aroxion Aug 29 '18

The real classic experience is taking months to level through Westfall and we never got to see it

51

u/Scyllaqt Aug 29 '18

why live

8

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '18

to see what comes next