The RetroBeat: Blizzard takes seriously the preservation of its history

Warcraft is 25 years old this year. World of Warcraft will celebrate its 15th anniversary. Many of Blizzard Entertainment's franchises are aging, hence the importance that society places on preserving its history.

Blizzard realized how important it was to protect his past by deciding to make World of Warcraft Classic. This version of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game will offer players an experience based on how it played in its infancy.

But doing World of Warcraft Classic was not easy. Omar Gonzalez, a chief engineer of World of Warcraft, spoke to me about the process at a Blizzard event last week in Irvine, California.

One problem we expected was, do we even have the original? How many of the original version have we even accessed? We did not know if we had everything we needed at our fingertips. We were pretty sure we had not done it. The first known challenge was to take stock and make an inventory of what we had. I briefly reviewed this during the presentation I made during the last BlizzCon. The source code, for example, we have a repository and we were quite confident.

We had a lot less confidence in what we call file data. That's a lot of the resources you see, whether it's 3D models, 2D textures, or fill maps that we use on the server to tell the units how they're allowed to move around. the world. Not only did we not have that finger, but we did not really know where he was. We finally had to contact our data archiving team to ask them: Hey, can you explore, can you try to find something, a backup copy of those early days of WoW development? We sent this request and said a prayer.

To our delight, when they came back and restored an old drive, we found that not only was it a backup of a network drive dating from 2008. This backup literally contained a folder called Final 1.12 Data . This was a lucky snapshot of this type of asset data for this hotfix. Once we had that, we started to be able to strengthen our confidence, which we could actually deliver.

Preserving an online game can prove difficult because it is not a single software program. World of Warcraft has had seven extensions and even more updates. Everyone changes the game, sometimes modestly, sometimes dramatically.

To keep WoW's history intact, Blizzard needs to keep the files and code for all the different incarnations of the game. And that extends to its other live service games, like Overwatch, which has already changed a lot in only three years thanks to the additions of alignments and reeditions of heroes.

"We really need to make sure we look back at all of our franchises and have everything stored," said John Hight, executive producer of World of Warcraft.

In the past, old code and other assets were hiding in random places.

"Dave Lawrence, of our team, told me that there was a machine at Blizzard, the only machine capable of creating versions of StarCraft 1," Gonzalez told GamesBeat. "He had the exact libraries and the exact compiler. He was sitting under [former Blizzard president] Mike Morhaime's office for a while. Nobody really knows what happened to this machine. The only machine capable of making the official versions of StarCraft. We are much better than before. "

The future must protect the past

The president of Morhaime's estate, President J. Allen Brack, also thinks of preservation. I also told him about Blizzard's efforts to keep his past intact.

Blizzard has a long history of maintaining its titles and their implementation – keeping them relevant. For some games like Warcraft II and Warcraft 1, it's the best games ever. It is important that people can play the previous games. If you think of the wave of nostalgia that many games have had and that many still have – we are witnessing the reissue of the Atari 2600, the reissue of the NES, the Genesis, all these different classics coming out to replay old games. Some people played in their youth. Some people discover them for the first time.

The goal of Classic, and one of the reasons we ended up doing it, was that we felt like it was a game that deserved to exist. There really was no way to play as before. This preservation is one of the reasons why we decided to choose Classic.

Parallel to Classic, Blizzard has begun offering original versions of some of its most important retro games, including Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and Diablo, on GOG. This digital store specializes in providing classic PC games in a DRM format that can run on modern machines.

But the story of Blizzard is not limited to software. Artistic Director Samwise Didier, one of the company's most senior employees, has been with Blizzard since 1991 (when it was known as Silicon & Synapse, Inc.). For Didier, archiving 2D images from Blizzard is just as important for code preservation.

In terms of 3D, with most older games, we do not have those files, these models, and everything else. In terms of concepts and all the great things we do for the art, like the BlizzCon stuff and the things we do for different books and magazines, we have a group that we call the Vault. They record all the concepts we use for games, even the worst ones.

We have a way to click to say, save this, but do not show it. We will mark that in red. This is cataloged in the chronology of everything, but they will not give it to public relations to publish in magazines. But it's great, because we have seen so many times where someone says, hey, who made this piece? They'll show me the coin, and I'll say, credit it to so-and-so, and they can add it.

This industry is still young. A 25 year old game seems old. But one day, our favorite games will be 50 years old. Later, Warcraft will celebrate its 100th anniversary.

I hope that in the future, people will still be able to experience these original games. I hope friends can still hold parties in World of Warcraft's Ironforge City to shoot down dragons.

For this future to materialize, it will be important for companies like Blizzard to take care of their history and protect it. Making World of Warcraft Classic is both a step forward in preservation and a lesson. These elements must be carefully protected before hoping to accidentally find old files and code.

RetroBeat is a weekly column that examines the past of the game, delves into classics, new retro titles or examines how old favorites – and their design techniques – inspire the market and current experiences. If you have retro-themed projects or projects that you would like to send, please contact me.