Before it was a gritty looter-shooter, The Division actually played a little closer to World of Warcraft, according to some devs who worked on it. They spoke about this iteration of the game and provided a brief snippet of footage during a recent let's play session.
In an episode of Massive Entertainment's Devs Playing series (spotted by Kotaku), Drew Rechner and Fredrik Thylander – now creative director and game director at the company, respectively, but both served as game designers on the 2016 game – dove into this early vision of The Division. "We designed [The Division's] combat around this loop, which we called OPE, internally – observe, plan, execute," Rechner explains, as he jumps into cover.
