World of Warcraft/Trivia

""Even among enemies as bitter as the Horde and Alliance, there is honor. If you flaunt this honor and engage in objectionable PvP play, such as killing new players vastly inferior to you in level, or killing essential non-combat NPC's such as flight masters or quest givers, you will earn dishonor. If you accumulate enough dishonor through your criminal actions, you will be branded an outlaw. As a consequence, you'll suffer experience penalties, lose access to your own faction cities, and become so hated even by your own kind that every faction NPC will attack you on sight.""
 * Ascended Fanon:
 * Before the new alliance race was announced for The Burning Crusade, a supposed "leak" said it would be the people of Gilneas, transformed by the crazed wizard Arugal into bestial worgen. The new race was actually the draenei, but two expansions later we did get worgen... with the same origin story as the faked leak.
 * Boss Mida, found in the Goblin Slums of Orgrimmar, is a Shout-Out to the "Trade Princess Movement", a thread from the old community site requesting a female faction leader for the goblin race. Official faction leader Trade Prince Gallywix doesn't appear ingame after the starting zone, and Mida explains that she's been running the whole show while he's off picking wallpaper for his pleasure palace in Azshara.
 * Every current faction leader (or faction leader trio) is getting a short story written about them. With the exception of Velen and Lor'themar Theron, most of the stories have been officially released, and the 2009 Writing Contest winner "In the Shadow of the Sun" looks like it will be serving as Lor'themar Theron's.
 * Expy: Almost certainly the Draenai for the Minbari, with their crystalline architecture, accents like Mira Furlan's, and even having a leader named Velen (Valen).
 * Hey, It's That Sound: Many enemies, especially humanoids, make a low dying moan that will be familiar to players of Doom; it's the death sound of a Pink Demon.
 * Hey, It's That Voice!: A few instances.
 * Cam Clarke as Medivh, the Blood Elf male, Nexus Prince Shaffar and Malygos.
 * The Heavy voices Steelbreaker in the Iron Council encounter in Ulduar, and is credit to council.
 * Michael McConnohie (AKA Warriv and The Necromancer in Diablo 2) as Uther, The Lich King, Aeonus, Commander Kolurg, and King Ymiron.
 * Blizzard's VP of Creative Development Chris Metzen voices like half the game, including Ragnaros, Thrall, Nefarian and Varian Wrynn. He's done many voices for Blizzard's other games as well.
 * Laura Shigihara as the Singing Sunflower companion.
 * Starting from Wrath of The Lich King, Jaina has been voiced by Laura Bailey.
 * Illidan Stormrage is War, Horseman of the Apocalypse.
 * Wayne the Ancestral, a Quest Giver in Stormsong Valley, is voiced by Wayne June, who also voices the Narrator (aka the Ancestor) in Darkest Dungeon; the quests given out by Wayne are in fact, a Shout Out to that game.
 * Fan Nickname:
 * The gear you acquire is Color Coded for Your Convenience, based on the color the name of the item appears when you hover your mouse over it; uncommon items are referred to as "greens", rare are "blues", epics are "purples", and Legendary items are "oranges". Good luck on getting an orange, and no one beyond level ten or fifteen would willingly use a common or "white" item.
 * When the Death Knight class was released in Wrath Of The Lich King, one of their spells was "Death Grip". What it basically did was yank an enemy player over to you so you could give him a face-full of your sword. In Cataclysm, priests got a new spell known as "Leap Of Faith", which did the exact same thing (yanking a player towards you), only on friendly players. People thought "Leap Of Faith" was a stupid name, and so, unofficially renamed it "Life Grip". Even the devs use the nickname on occasion.
 * I Knew It!: In the End Time instance, it is revealed that.
 * Promoted Fanboy: Several fans have been immortalized by Blizzard by making references to them, sometimes in the TCG as Alamo and Leeroy Jenkins, whose antics are legendary amongst the fans; and sometimes in the game itself like Maghia and Volde, who were two of the best cosplayers at Blizzcon 09, with items named after them. Notable Fansite creators as well -- Breanni, the Pet Shop NPC in Dalaran, is based on the character of the go to site for Minipet info.
 * Toskk, a player known for creating a calculator for min-maxing feral druid DPS, had a pair of melee leather wristguards named after him.
 * Beside Toskk, 3 other players got the same treatment. Rogue theorycrafter Aldriana, Warrior theorycrafter Landsoul, and creator of a program called "Rawr" that allows all classes to explore item options, Astrylian, all got drops named after them in the Icecrown Citadel 25 raid instance. Better yet, all of these except Landsoul's helm were the best items for their item slot for many classes up until the Cataclysm expansion.
 * 10 year old boy Ezra "Ephoenix" Chatterton got quite a few references thanks to a Make-a-Wish foundation visit to Blizzard headquarters. He got an item named after him, and got to create a quest in the Tauren starting area. The quest even has you find a dog with the same name as his. The NPC has the rare honor of having voice acting, all clips done by Ezra, and surprisingly deep for a 10 year old boy. The unexpected questioning of "Can you help me find my dog?" is known to frightened many a player. Thankfully, Blizzard had the foresight to make the NPC unkillable by alliance players. Ezra passed away in October 2008.
 * The Lunar Festival NPC in Thunder Bluff has been renamed Elder Ezra Wheathoof, Wheathoof being the name of the above questgiver. He is accompanied by a Phoenix Hatchling.
 * Phaelia, who wrote a resto druid blog for a while before retiring to focus on the baby she was expecting, was also referenced with a leather healing chestpiece.
 * The BRK-1000, in honor of the once (and again!) king of hunter-guide movies.
 * We can also add in Skosiris, ex-site director of Wowhead now in-game as Loremaster Skosiris
 * And now, joining the Pantheon, is The Red Shirt Guy, who has now been immortalized in-game as the Wildhammer Fact Checker.
 * The Fact Checker even gets a cameo in the Dwarven Faction Leader short story, Fire and Iron. The story is about Kudran Wildhammer stepping down from his position on the Council of Three Hammers and giving it to Falstad. Some people have theorized the story was written in lieu of Red Shirt Guy's pointing out of the mistake, and has thus made Kudran's accidental promotion during the beta, as well as his replacement with Falstad, canon.
 * Sleeper Hit: The Molten Core raid was this. It was a "rush job" that was needed ASAP before the game's initial release, and was designed within a week. The developers didn't really care about specific detail, they just sort of said, "just give us a big cave with lava". The result? Players absolutely loved it.
 * What Could Have Been:
 * From the vanilla World of Warcraft manual, there was supposed to be dishonor points. The stuff certain players do on a common basis today in the game would have given them severe punishment (including being attacked on sight by their own faction's NPCs and even being exiled from their own cities) with this system if it were implemented past the open beta. By refraining from doing these actions for a long enough time, the stigma will eventually go away.


 * Though the reason for this being taken out is ironically, prevent another form of griefing. When there were raids upon opposing cities low level players would be able to purposely get themselves killed from AoE attacks causing AoE users to rack up dishonor points.
 * Instead of removing it, dishonor should have only be given outside opposing cities. Players would get dishonor ganking in places like Stranglethorn Vale, but in city limits or within a radius of a major opposing city, anything goes.
 * Ogres had been considered for a playable race, but were scrapped for a number of reasons; nobody could settle on a design for a female ogre, and the Horde already had a "big strong tough race" with the Tauren. Naga had been considered too, but too many problems arose due to their lack of legs, like how to handle armor for the lower body and feet, how they could ride mounts, etc. Goblins had been considered for Vanilla, but the plans for their starting zone were far too complex for something that would be so limited, so they were pushed back until Cataclysm.
 * Speaking of Tauren being big tough guys, they were originally going to be too big to sue mounts. Instead they would have enhanced running speed. This was scrapped, and in hindsight, that was the right call, as the benefits of aquatic and flying mounts would have been much harder to replace.
 * Many areas of the game, like Duskwood, are Always Night; these dark places were originally going to be much darker, so you could barely see where you were going. A skill called Survival was planned to be added for such areas, with campfires and torches usable by players with this skill. The idea was scrapped, but some merchants still sell the torches.
 * The ability for player characters to learn additional languages was planned early in World of Warcraft but was not developed, likely due to the tendency of cross-faction communication to be insulting and profane. It seems unlikely that this functionality will ever be added. The Forsaken were originally able to speak Common and thus communicate with Alliance players, but this was removed with the introduction of Gutterspeak due to, once again, the tendency of cross-faction communication to be insulting and profane.
 * Azjol-Nerub was originally intended to be an entire underground zone, stretching across Northrend between the Dragonblight in the south and Icecrown Glacier in the north. Unfortunately, constraints that could not be overcome in the given product schedule forced this idea to be shelved, with some of the already created geometry folded into a pair of instance dungeons.
 * Wrath of the Lich King was pretty bad in this regard. There are items in the game files that hinted that a third Utgarde Keep wing and the Gundrak temple were supposed to have had raids at one point in development; quest text in these areas seem to support this, especially in Zul'Drak. Other things include Crystalsong Forest, which was the originally planned site of the Argent Tournament but is now pretty much useless except to house Dalaran, and the village of Unu'pe in Borean Tundra, which is a fully functioning quest hub lacking one important detail: the quests.
 * The Burning Crusade expansion was originally supposed to include so called "portal worlds"; portals that would lead to zones that would be on completely different planets.
 * The biggest one done so far: Path of the Titans. This was heavily advertised showcased at Blizzcon before the open beta for Cataclysm to be a progression path past the level cap, but it was scrapped due to being too complicated. Instead, they chose to expand upon the glyph system introduced in Wrath.
 * Actually, it was scrapped because it would've just become another "If your this class, pick this path for the best dps/heals/tanking". Glyphs and talents had already become cookie-cutter, so this would have just been another set of bonuses that you had no choice in. In expanding the glyph system, they added more room for choice (sort of).
 * Dance Studio
 * Pandaren were originally planned to be the Alliance race during The Burning Crusade. Midway through development, presumably due to legal issues with China, the Pandaren were hastily replaced with the Draenei.
 * Surprisingly, they have now been announced as the new race in the Mists of Pandaria expansion, coming 'Soon(tm)'. They're going to be both factions; you start off in their area and when you reach level 10, you choose alliance or Horde.