Blizzard secretly made a battle royale game inside World of Warcraft to 'break the rules' its had for 20 years

Today's announcement of Warcraft's next patch event, 10.2.6's pirate-themed «Plunderstorm,» marks a number of firsts for the venerable massively multiplayer RPG. It will launch today with no player testing, and includes a wild 60-player battle royale mode.

Not only is this the first time this mode will appear in Warcraft, it's not on standard servers or using existing characters—players will choose between their normal servers and the Plunderstorm event when they log into the modern Warcraft client. Its rewards will include a parrot mount and crab pet available to both modern and Classic players, dual-mode rewards that are also a first for the games. (Classic players will need to download the modern client to play, but do not need to own Dragonflight.)

The Spellbreak influence is clear on this new game mode–in the screenshots we've seen, some of the spell-pickup mechanics look remarkably similar to the now-dead battle royale developed by Proletariat. Blizzard acquired the studio in 2022, and most of the team's members were absorbed into the Warcraft team. 

I spoke with Blizzard's lead software engineer Orlando Salvatore, whose LinkedIn page notes that he works for the «Experimental Gameplay team», and lead producer Ray Bartos about the new mode, which is a huge gameplay addition for a typically-tiny late-expansion patch.

Blizzard was inspired by the most recent Season of Discovery spin-off of WoW Classic, Salvatore said, in making the new battle royale mode a secret. Developers compensated for the lack of public testing by conducting wild in-house trials.

«All of Blizzard have banded together to participate in play tests and give feedback,» he said.

«We are really focused on trying to break the rules. We really want to give players something that's super exciting, especially experimental, before The War Within launches,» Salvatore said, referring to WoW's next expansion due later this year. «Once that launches, the big focus is going to be on that expansion.»

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