World of Warcraft used familiar ideas. Of all things, the most famous symbol comes from a Schleich game.
In big MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, there are tons of symbols that have clear meanings for fans. A purple lettering stands for an epic item, a shield symbol for a character with a tank specialization and a green ground effect for healing, which is best avoided by a very narrow margin in order to annoy the healer.
But some of these symbols were not “invented” by World of Warcraft or even have their origins in completely different games. One of these is the quest marker that NPCs are equipped with.
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What symbol is it? We are talking about the well-known “exclamation marks” that mark on various NPCs and objects in World of Warcraft that you can accept a quest here. The symbol has been in use since the vanilla version of the game and, aside from a small graphical spruce-up, is still used in exactly the same way as back then.
Where does the symbol actually come from? One of Blizzard’s former lead animators, Kevin Beardslee, explained where he actually knew the symbol from – namely from Metal Gear Solid. He said to GamesRadar magazine:
I think I was playing Metal Gear Solid back in the day and when that “Brrrrrnk!” exclamation point alert appeared over someone’s head, I knew A) I was scared and B) I knew for a fact that the guy hated me. I thought to myself: What if we put this over the head of our quest giver? Then you immediately know that you should talk to the guy […].
If you don’t know Metal Gear Solid anymore: In the early offshoots of the game series, the exclamation mark was a symbol that you had been discovered – usually that meant that panic would break out in the next moment and Snake would be exposed. The meaning was completely different than later in World of Warcraft. Still, it was apparently enough to get people’s attention.
The exclamation mark symbol is now more than just an integral part of World of Warcraft. When you come to a new area, WoW fans almost automatically scan the area for the yellow symbol that promises a quest. It would definitely take a long time to get used to a new symbol.
Other things have also remained the same in World of Warcraft in 20 years – for example the price for a service that you have probably been using since the start of World of Warcraft.