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Before it was a gritty looter-shooter, The Division actually played a little closer to World of Warcraft, according to some devs who worked on it. They spoke about this iteration of the game and provided a brief snippet of footage during a recent let's play session.
In an episode of Massive Entertainment's Devs Playing series (spotted by Kotaku), Drew Rechner and Fredrik Thylander – now creative director and game director at the company, respectively, but both served as game designers on the 2016 game – dove into this early vision of The Division. "We designed [The Division's] combat around this loop, which we called OPE, internally – observe, plan, execute," Rechner explains, as he jumps into cover.
"So that was kind of the main combat loop, and it actually took us a while to actually reach that," he adds. "Because when we had started working on The Division, it was still an MMO with World of Warcraft-style gameplay."
At this point, at the 2:00 mark, a build is shown demonstrating this, and it's a wild contrast to the game we got. There are hotbars, as Thylander points out, and the playfield is a large, grassy area as opposed to the crumbling New York City that became the actual setting. Oh, and there's a dog with the player character.
"That skill component wasn't there," Rechner remembers. "There wasn't those traditional shooter aspects. We were constantly trying to balance how much shooter is there, how much skill is there."
They landed on the balance that forms the through-line of The Division now, and it's implied the rest of the game was molded around that. I'm not sure going down a WoW-like route would've served the project much, but the dog should definitely make a comeback for The Division 3.
