World of Warcraft
"World of Warcraft" was first announced by Blizzard at the ECTS trade show in September 2001. Released in 2004, development of the game took roughly 4–5 years, including extensive testing. The 3D graphics in "World of Warcraft" use elements of the proprietary graphics engine originally used in "Warcraft III". The game was designed to be an open environment where players are allowed to do what they please. Quests are optional and were designed to help guide players, allow character development, and to spread characters across different zones to try to avoid what developers called "player collision". The game interface allows players to customize appearance and controls, and to install add-ons and other modifications.
World of Warcraft
Blizzard routinely applies older expansions to all accounts as new expansions are released. On June 28, 2011, "The Burning Crusade" expansion was automatically applied to all previous "Warcraft" accounts at no cost. On September 19, 2012, the same thing was done with the "Wrath of the Lich King" expansion, and on October 15, 2013 the "Cataclysm" expansion was also applied. On October 15, 2014, "Mists of Pandaria" was applied to all accounts following the release of Warlords. On May 17, 2016, "Warlords of Draenor" was applied to all accounts to coincide with the release of the Warcraft movie that gives a 30-day trial of the game.
All "The Burning Crusade", "Wrath of the Lich King", "Cataclysm", "Mists of Pandaria" and "Warlords of Draenor" content is now effectively part of the original game, with all new "World of Warcraft" accounts automatically including these expansions upon creation. As of the pre-patch release of "Battle for Azeroth" in July 2018, all expansions up to "Legion" are included in the base game.