wow Some of the Oldest WoW Screenshots

[Starym 3,779]

A pre-nostalgia trip down pre-Alpha screenshots.

You may have seen some of these already, but there's always time for a little pre-nostalgia trip down pre-memory lane, and there are probably some images you hadn't seen before as well.

 

Now, you've probably seen a lot of these already since they've been around for a long time, but it's always nice to go down memory lane and see what the game looked like years before it was even released. Soulstripper14 over at r/gaming started the little nostalgia trip and then others on the WoW reddit also chimed in with additional images, yielding some that at least I had not seen before. Actually, we can't really call it nostalgia since none of us actually played it that early, so let's just say it's a pre-nostalgia trip.

So let's start with some of the "classics" first shared by Alex Afrasiabi, current Creative Director for the game, via his twitter, some of them as early as 1999:

 

  

  

Check out the full album here.

Now some of the following ones, later shared by WoW redditor Dimsml, I hadn't actually seen before and are a little older, from the Alpha, circa 2003, with old Karazhan being the headliner:

   

   

   

   

Apparently the dark portal was also at Caer Darrow and underwater in Azshara for some reason, and Karazhan was very, very large, even by our flying mount 310% speed standards. The pink Statue of liberty probably wasn't mean to be in the final game though.
You can check out the full (and very large) album here.

And finally, a few of the assorted images found in the WoW reddit thread, also from a very early stage, pre-Alpha:

   

 

Looking at these and, say, Suramar now it's clear the game has changed significantly, both in terms of visuals and mechanics, but it still managed to keep it's soul, that thing that truly makes it Warcraft - and that's a pretty impressive feat if you ask me.

[greatCraft 29]

PICTURES OF CREATION  ITSELF.

[Paracel 165]

No offense, but a thumbnail pic of C'Thun freaked me out, and I hope I'm not the only one here. Scary, slimy, eye-y, tentacly, unkillable thing gives me nightmares since 2007.

And I've never ever been to AQ. Even just spelling the full name gives me goosebumps. In a bad way.

 

Now to the good news. I've seen pretty much all these pics before, but TIL they wanted to cut Molten Core. 

Wait, what???

So they made the best raid ever in a week???

Wow! Or, should I say, WoW!

[Starym 3,779]

13 minutes ago, Paracel said:

No offense, but a thumbnail pic of C'Thun freaked me out, and I hope I'm not the only one here. Scary, slimy, eye-y, tentacly, unkillable thing gives me nightmares since 2007.

And I've never ever been to AQ. Even just spelling the full name gives me goosebumps. In a bad way.

 

Now to the good news. I've seen pretty much all these pics before, but TIL they wanted to cut Molten Core. 

Wait, what???

So they made the best raid ever in a week???

Wow! Or, should I say, WoW!

Yea that thing with MC was crazy, makes me sad that those guys never released Titan, even though I enjoy Overwatch quite a bit.

And here's my C'thun story: After weeks of almost full day clears and then wipe raids on a clearly un-killable C'thun, (basically we were just doing tries to learn the fight as best we could for when Blizzard decided to make it killable) one, ONE random day I decided to go out for coffee with a friend instead of attending the wipe raid.

That was the day they nerfed it and I missed the World First on it. So you see, I also have bad feelings about C'thun, but for very different reasons!

[MrEdren 114]

I'm still scarred from the first charge into the room ending .5 seconds later with a 40-man chain lightning.  I was near the end of the chain.  Ouch.

[Valhalen 1,484]

Who is that bearded badass fighting a giant gnoll?

[Maruken 31]

8 hours ago, Starym said:

Yea that thing with MC was crazy, makes me sad that those guys never released Titan, even though I enjoy Overwatch quite a bit.

If the Overwatch devs get enough feedback from players wanting PvE, we might very well get what Titan might have looked like. :)

I'm personally excited for PvE in Overwatch.

[Cotics 0]

That is awsm thanks for the share

 

[Stan 5,020]

It's really awesome to see the immense progress the game has made over the years!

[Kirr 15]

Started playing at end of bc so... got a question...

We can see ''bindstone'' in major cities, what was the use of that? Same thing as Summoning Stone but for major cities?!

[Valks 2,373]

On 10/14/2016 at 2:13 PM, Kirr said:

Started playing at end of bc so... got a question...

We can see ''bindstone'' in major cities, what was the use of that? Same thing as Summoning Stone but for major cities?!

You could bind yourself to a major city to teleport yourself there. You could only be bound to 1 city at a time.

[Kirr 15]

17 hours ago, Blainie said:

You could bind yourself to a major city to teleport yourself there. You could only be bound to 1 city at a time.

So there was the bindstone and the hearthstone or it was before the hearthstone came in the game?

[Igorowitz 0]

On 10/14/2016 at 2:27 AM, Cotics said:

That is awsm thanks for the share

 

I agree! It's fun/cool to see what the game originally looked like!

[Zagor81 0]

Ahh the memories of Vanilla WoW. That was the golden age of WoW. The beginning of a new era! I wish I can go back in time..

[Valks 2,373]

On 10/17/2016 at 3:14 PM, Kirr said:

So there was the bindstone and the hearthstone or it was before the hearthstone came in the game?

I believe you had bindstone, then both, then hearthstone.

[Valks 2,373]

On 10/17/2016 at 11:33 PM, Zagor81 said:

Ahh the memories of Vanilla WoW. That was the golden age of WoW. The beginning of a new era! I wish I can go back in time..

As much as I enjoyed Vanilla, I'd never want it now. If I could go back and experience it as a kid again, I would, but I wouldn't want to play vanilla now.