Edit Mode & New UI Options Coming to Classic
In a recently resurfaced interview about the Quest System in World of Warcraft from 2004, Jeff Kaplan spoke about how the initial quests in WoW were fairly basic, such as Bounty or Collection quests. Eventually, quest design became more complex, and Blizzard added Defense quests, such as Pyrewood Ambush, Escort quests, like Willix the Importer, and NPC Follow quests, including Tooga's Quest.
Tooga's Quest was originally designed to end in the Shimmering Flats
While this interview primarily focuses on the design philosophy of quest types that eventually became available in World of Warcraft, Kaplan also mentions several World Events that never actually made it into the game. In one recurring World Event, Alliance NPCs were planned to storm the coast of the Barrens and attack certain Horde outposts, as well as the Crossroads.
Jeff Kaplan
There is one that will actually occur in the Barrens. The Alliance armies roll up onto the beach on Northwatch Keep, and they will attack the Tauren outpost, the Orc outpost, and the Crossroads. These are all small cities in the Barrens, which is a zone in-between the Orc and Tauren lands. If you decide to band together with the Horde and defend those towns, you will have certain quests and quest items available to you that otherwise would not be. You might have to get the head of the Alliance raiding party leader, and take that to the lieutenant in the Crossroads. This would yield a quest reward that you would only get if you took part in the world event.
This sounds like it was meant to be a PvP quest that pitted Horde against Alliance, with Horde players receiving additional quests to defend their territory and defeat the Alliance raid leader. It's important to note that these quests would only become available periodically, and the World Event was not set to start on a regular timer, so players wouldn't be able to camp the spawn location.
The Alliance of Northwatch Hold & Horde Outpost in The Barrens
Another example of a World Event that was planned for Vanilla was the Goblin and Gnome rocket car race in the Shimmering Flats area of Thousand Needles. In this scenario, players could decide which side to support while sabotaging the other side and enhancing their own vehicles. There was even a planned gambling system, where players could bet on the outcome of races.
Shimmering Flats Rocket Car Race
Jeff Kaplan
I'd like to talk about an example of a quest that I think is a lot of fun in the game. In this scene, there is a race about to occur between the goblins and the gnomes. In Warcraft, the goblins and gnomes are the two races that are known for their skills in technology and engineering. So both the goblins and gnomes are trying to make rocket cars to race each other. There is a whole host of quest givers, both on the gnome side and the goblin side. You can accept quests from the gnomes that require you to sabotage the goblins or quests for the goblins to sabotage the gnomes. You can engage in quests for the gnomes to buff up their cars to make them better, or quests for the goblins to make their car superior. At the same time, you can also bet on the races through the quest system. The way this whole scenario is designed, you can bet on the race, then try to fix it. If the race starts without any interference whatsoever, there is a 50-50 chance every time that one or the other will win. With this setup, there are quite a few ways that things could pan out differently. All the players in the area could jump on a bandwagon, fix the race significantly for one side or the other, and then bet on that side to win. If a competitive situation results, though, and players are taking different sides, it could become a complex affair where every quest might swing the race in one group's favor or the other's. Finally, watching these little rascals race one another is just hilarious all by itself.
This race was planned to occur every 30 minutes, so players could determine whether they wanted to band together to fix the race for one side and win their bets. Since these quests were intended to be repeatable, players would not gain much experience from completing them, but watching a high-stakes rocket car race live would have been a fun World Event.
