What if World of WarCraft was a reboot of WarCraft I forward

World of WarCraft was a MMORPG that started in 2004. The game started from the beginning of the WarCraft universe that was setup in WarCraft I, but instead of opting to recreate the story of the first game. World of WarCraft opting to act more of a soul successor to the plot of the first game forward, taking the approach that storytelling would be different for a RPG as opposed to a RTS.

As WarCraft: Adventurers League
The World of WarCraft project, then dubbed WarCraft: Adventurers League, was originally planned to pick up from where the then in pre-production WarCraft III left off. WarCraft: Adventurers League would have been a redevelopment of WarCraft Adventures: Lord of Clans after its cancellation in Late 1997. It was quickly put into development right after the former games cancellation.

Planned to release alongside WarCraft III in 2002 and to be announced at Blizzcon 2001, this then single player project was suppose to combine the heavy story telling of adventure games with the exploration and leveling systems of RPGs. It would have unitized the semi-open worlds of the then planned Diablo II, but unlike Diablo II would have the player able to explore these at will. The game was originally going to use a party system where players would spend the first 1/5th of the game gathering all 6 of the party members. Each of these party members would have 3 separate skill trees, and there own armor slots. Unlike the follower system that was used in Diablo previously the player would be unable to remove this followers nor pick up any additional followers. Each of the party members were planned to be treated with a major character arc, and story arc.

Unitizing a brand new 3D engine designed for both this project and the then planned WarCraft III. Blizzard thought that both games could share assets and code during development to benefit both games. Meaning a lot of ideas for WarCraft: Adventurers League were used to develop WarCraft III. By spring of 1998 the games vision was greatly expanded and was barely like the original plan. Instead of boosting itself as a Semi-Open World/RPG/Squad Based/Adventure Game hybrid, it instead choose to focus on being a Open World RPG. The game developers decided that it would be more fun for the player to be able to explore a giant open map, instead of a select few locals connected by loading screens. Opting to fill the gaps between the semi-open worlds the game drew inspiration from WCI, II, and the RPG to fill in these locations. Also the game ditched the forced party system for a more personal experience with a single voiced protagonist, named Jaina Proudmoore. Though at one point it was believed that the game would be released ahead of schedule in Q2 of 1999, This version of the game was short lived. This was not due to any development problems, but simply Blizzard proper interfered and changed the course of the game.

Branding as World of WarCraft
After a Blizzard Proper saw the Everquest trailer, noticed how Adventurer's League went from a side project to a giant RPG with a main game's worth of content, WarCraft III greatly expanding the lore and storytelling capabilities of a RTS, and the then planned tabletop RPG books adding tons of new concepts; The entire plan for the project was changed, and renamed too World of WarCraft.

Instead of picking up from WarCraft III the game would act as a reboot of the WarCraft franchise, and dictated that it would have to be released at least 3 months to 2 years after WarCraft III. It would retell the WarCraft story from when the orc first enter the dark portal, through the plots of WCII and III, and beyond. Blizzard thought this would be a great way to incorporate the expanded lore in the first war, and allow new players to gain a understanding of the WarCraft universe better.

World of WarCraft would be a Open World MMORPG incorporating many of the elements, assets, and code from Adventurers League. Even though the game would be built upon the base of Adventurers League, a lot of time in late 1998 and early 1999 would be spent on shifting it to its own engine and altering the quests to fit in the new time frame.

Pre-Alpha World of WarCraft (1999 to 2001)
After transferring and modifying the existing assets from Adventurers League to fit the new engine and plan, the team quickly went to building the rest of the game.

The game was planned to feature 4 factions with 4 races each: Twilight's Hammer (Void Elves, Undead, Gurubashi Trolls, and an undetermined 4th race), The Alliance (Drawves, Humans, High Elves, and Lordaeron Humans), The Horde (Orcs, Amani Trolls, Half-Ogre, Ogre), and the Burning Legion (Demons?). This was eventually reduced from 4 factions to 2 Alliance and Horde.

The game never had any preset vision for classes beside we need to include Warlocks, Sorcerers, and Paladins. For much of the Pre-Alpha the classes didn't have Skill-Trees, and tons of redundant classes were created before the were incorporated into other classes. Some of the cut classes included the Beastmaster, Pyromacer, Sorcerer, Assassin, Knight and Nercomacer.

During the games development it was planned for players to be able to visit Lordaeron, Quel'Thalas, and Kul'Tiras. During the Pre-Alpha each of these were cut one by one starting with Lordaeron.

Alpha World of WarCraft (2002 to 2003)
During this stage of development the devs started doing a lot of in house game testing, debugging, development as a result of finding things that were missing, and adding textures.

The most notable thing created during Alpha Stage World of WarCraft was the Vanilla class setup. During the pre-Alpha stages classes were created without skilltrees, but there were tons of classes. Now the classes were reduced to: Shaman, Paladin, Priest, Warrior, Mage, Warlock, Rogue, and Hunter. Each class had three different skilltrees, and these skilltrees would allow players to add skills from any of the trees.

The other things added/changed during Alpha was the Gnome and Goblin playable races. Gnomes being an alliance race with an entire capital built during Alpha, and Goblin being a neutral race that could be either horde or alliance. The others were Eastern Burning Stepps was removed from the game and maps, Dun Morogh was increased in size, some modifications were made to the surrounding zones of Dun Morogh as a result to the size increase, Stormwind Harbor and the Privateers room was removed, and most notoriously the few class halls and race halls that were completed in the capital cities were removed.