{"id":588483,"date":"2026-04-16T21:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T21:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/588483\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T21:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T21:34:08","slug":"the-division-was-originally-a-world-of-warcraft-clone-says-ubisoft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/588483\/","title":{"rendered":"The Division Was Originally A World Of Warcraft Clone, Says Ubisoft"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Division didn\u2019t start life as a third-person cover-based looter shooter<\/a>. Instead, as explained in a new video from Ubisoft, developer Massive Entertainment\u2019s online tactical shooter was originally planned to be a World of Warcraft-like MMORPG with hotbars and everything. Ubisoft even showed off a bit of this early version, providing an interesting look at what could have been.<\/p>\n

In a recent \u201cDevs Playing\u201d video posted on Massive\u2019s official YouTube channel<\/a>, two developers who worked on the original Division played through one of the game\u2019s missions while talking about the development of the snowy, NYC-based looter shooter. The video is meant to mark the 10-year anniversary of The Division<\/a>, and during a discussion about the shooter\u2019s gameplay loop, the two devs briefly talked about a very different, earlier version of the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe designed [The Division\u2018s] combat around\u2026this loop right here,\u201d explained creative director Drew Rechner as he took cover behind some unaware enemies. \u201cWhich we called OPE, internally\u2026Observe, plan, execute. So that was kind of the main combat loop, and it actually took us a while to actually reach that, because when we had started working on The Division, it was still an MMO with, like, World of Warcraft-style gameplay. And that skill component wasn\u2019t there. There weren\u2019t those traditional shooter aspects.\u201d At this, the other dev on the couch, Fredrik Thylander, even pointed out that the game included hotbars.<\/p>\n

At this point in the video, Ubisoft shows a few seconds of what looks like a never-before-seen, very early version of The Division, featuring more cartoonish visuals and some classic MMORPG-looking gameplay, complete with, yes, a hotbar. Also, a dog companion, which is a feature that I think should be brought back into a future Division game.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I\u2019d love to see more footage of The Division<\/a> back when it was a WoW-like MMO. Sure, I love the game we got. The Division and its sequel are some of the best third-person shooters ever made. But still, I\u2019d get a kick out of looking at that weird MMO version of the game from over a decade ago. In an alternate universe, this is what The Division ended up being, and that\u2019s so strange to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Division didn\u2019t start life as a third-person cover-based looter shooter. Instead, as explained in a new video…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588484,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[257214,51154,74,257215,15751,97878],"class_list":["post-588483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-mmorgp","tag-prototype","tag-technology","tag-the-division-2","tag-ubisoft","tag-world-of-warcraft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}