World of Warcraft was meant to have viable levelling gear from professions way back in 2004, but the designers on raids and dungeons 'cheated a little bit'

The design politics of studios in the early 2000s will always fascinate me—not the unsavory stuff, I am glad that is well and truly binned—but rather, the little elbows and feet put on other designers in studios where there wasn't a clear, clean pipeline or a mandate.

Such was the case with Blizzard where, as revealed by principal game designer Kris Zierhut in a recent Polygon interview, there was a little cheeky in-fighting over the power of crafted gear. Zierhut, who joined the company in 2005, was reflecting on the corrections the team wasn't allowed to make during the "no changes" era of Classic in 2019. Corrections that are now possible with World of Warcraft: Forever:

"The only design direction that really existed was: Don't change anything … I was there when we made some of these decisions. I had those discussions with Tom and Jeff and Scott. And I knew some places where we made mistakes."

One such mistake, …