Much of the current videogame landscape can be traced back to systems and design decisions either first conceived or formalized in World of Warcraft. From the universal RPGification of game mechanics to live service gameplay loops to incremental gearscore advancement, videogames as we know them look like they do in large part because of WoW.
If former Blizzard vice president and game designer Jeff Kaplan had his way during WoW's development, however, the games industry might have followed altogether different paths. In a 10-hour stream of his new studio's upcoming frontier survival game, The Legend of California, Kaplan said that in its early days, he envisioned it as a first-person game and tried to get others at Blizzard to do the same.
