Ubisoft Considered The Division as MMO-Style World of Warcraft

This year, the Tom Clancy's The Division franchise celebrated its tenth anniversary. Following a stunning reveal at E3 2013, it took Ubisoft three years to release its ambitious live-service project, which differed significantly from what had been shown earlier—unfortunately, for the worse.

The situation was partially remedied with the release of the game’s sequel in 2019, but when it comes to The Division as a franchise, it seems that Ubisoft has never quite managed to realize its full potential. It turns out that in the early stages of development, Ubisoft had a different vision for the game. In a new video released on the developers’ channel, Massive Entertainment, the studio’s creative director, Drew Rechner, and game director, Fredrik Thylander, revealed that Tom Clancy’s The Division was originally conceived as a World of Warcraft-style MMO. Furthermore, the video offers a first look at an early version of the game, where we see a character and his canine companion, as well as a very different visual style. More information from the developers about the early version of The Division you can check out below:

“We designed combat around…this loop right here. Which we called OPE, internally…Observe, plan, execute. So that was kind of the main combat loop, and it actually took us a while to actually reach that, because when we had started working on The Division, it was still an MMO with, like, World of Warcraft-style gameplay. And that skill component wasn’t there. There weren’t those traditional shooter aspects.”

Earlier this year, Julian Gerighty, the executive producer of The Division 3, which is confirmed to be in development at Ubisoft, teased that this installment will be the most ambitious in the game series. But then, after this statement, he announced his departure from Massive Entertainment to join Electronic Arts, specifically, Battlefield Studios. Since then, we haven’t heard much about the game.

As we know, Ubisoft is currently focused on Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, set for release this July, and their next project is rumored to be the new Ghost Recon title. The Division 3 currently doesn’t have a release date.

Would you like to see Ubisoft’s The Division as an MMO in World of Warcraft style? Share your thoughts in the comments below!