As time passed, development on "Assassin's Creed" progressed at a much slower pace than "Warcraft." The reason was simple: the heart of "Assassin's Creed" lay in its massive open-world sandbox. Constructing a living, believable world demanded far more assets, environmental details, and handcrafted content than "Warcraft" ever required.
By comparison, the development of "Warcraft" benefited from a variety of clever optimization techniques. Many environmental assets were reused in creative ways, while camera angles, especially those looking down from around forty-five degrees, helped disguise the fact that the enormous battlefield was essentially an elaborate tabletop diorama presented to the player.
With a few adjustments to textures, terrain, and environmental decorations, the same map could convincingly transform into an entirely different location. Dataminers could eventually uncover these tricks by unpacking the game files, but from a player's perspective, the illusion was seamless. Virtually no one could spot the reused assets during normal gameplay.
Most importantly, these optimizations never compromised the game's quality. They simply allowed the development team to work far more efficiently. As a result, even though the "Warcraft" project had started later than Martel's "Assassin's Creed" team, its overall progress quickly surpassed that of its counterpart.
Naturally, another major reason was John himself. With his firsthand control over the game's overall design, balance, and numerical systems, countless hours of balancing and testing were eliminated before they ever became necessary, dramatically accelerating development.
"Haha! I won again! That's another victory!" Inside the studio, Luna looked at John with a bright, triumphant smile.
At the moment, only two of the four playable races, Humans and the Undead, had reached a playable state. The Orcs and Night Elves were still under heavy development, and many planned mechanics had yet to be implemented. Even so, the game's core combat system was already stable enough for internal testing.
Watching Luna's Frost Dragon army effortlessly flatten his forces, John could only stare at the screen in speechless disbelief. This wasn't scientific! How could his girlfriend have such ridiculous talent for strategy games?
He considered himself fairly competent, but this was becoming downright humiliating. At first, relying on the experience buried within his memories, John had managed to win several matches in a row. However, once Luna fully understood the game's mechanics and economy, everything changed. He immediately began suffering one crushing defeat after another.
"I was going easy on you," John protested stubbornly. "If I started using proper Human strategies, the Sorceress build, air superiority tactics, or even focused entirely on assassinating your heroes, you wouldn't even get to enjoy the game."
A person might lose the game, but they could never lose face. Even though the computer screen was practically mocking him with flashy defeat effects and the enormous blood-red word 'Defeat', his confidence remained... at least verbally.
"I only hear you being a sore loser," Luna replied with a playful pout, completely unconvinced.
Sore loser? I'm telling the truth! John snorted to himself. The problem wasn't that he lacked strategy. He knew every build order, every timing attack, and countless competitive tactics. Unfortunately... His hands simply couldn't keep up. If his execution matched his knowledge, would he really have lost five games in a row? Of course, there was absolutely no way he was admitting that out loud.
Creating another custom lobby, John clicked a small gray button in the lower-right corner before turning toward Luna with renewed confidence. "Come on. One more game. This time I'll show you what real economic expansion looks like."
Hearing his bold declaration, Luna simply rolled her eyes. After making sure nobody else was in the office, she stuck out her tongue and made a mischievous face. "Bleh..."
John's expression remained perfectly calm. Once both players selected their races and entered the match, Luna immediately sent her workers to gather resources while constructing her Altar and Farms.
John, however, quietly pressed the ENTER key. He switched the chat window into team mode before secretly typing two familiar commands.
GreedIsGood [amount]: Added gold and lumber.
WarpTen: Speeds up the construction of buildings and training of units.
A few minutes later, Luna stared blankly at John's fully developed army.
Rows of Knights.
Dragonhawks.
Gryphon Riders.
A fully upgraded Human force.
"...Wait... what?" She blinked several times before looking back and forth between John's monitor and her own. "How did you unlock Knights and Gryphons this fast? Three keeps already? Where did all those resources even come from?"
Watching Luna reluctantly type GG and surrender for the first time after defeating him in five consecutive matches, John finally saw the glorious golden Victory screen appear, and his smile instantly stretched from ear to ear.
Crossing his arms confidently, he declared with an unfathomable expression, "This... is my true strength. Before, I was afraid of damaging your confidence, so I wasn't playing seriously. Once I used my advanced economic development techniques, defeating you became effortless."
Luna looked at him as though he had completely lost his mind. "Yeah, right."
She rolled her eyes dramatically. "With your terrible micro? Your entire army keeps getting stuck together every single fight, and then you just attack-move everything."
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "I'm watching the replay. I want to see exactly what kind of cheating you used."
John's proud smile froze instantly, only then did he remember something.
He slowly turned his head toward the development log sitting beside the monitor. One line immediately caught his eye. Replay System — Completed. Currently undergoing internal testing.
"..." John silently pursed his lips before casually standing up. "You know... I'm suddenly feeling a little hungry. I think I'll grab some afternoon snacks from the cafeteria."
Without even closing the game, he hurriedly pushed his chair back and made a beeline toward the office door.
"Stop right there!" Luna shot to her feet, pointing accusingly at him. "So the game actually has cheat codes!"
John coughed awkwardly. "I... was just testing them a little. I honestly forgot they were still enabled."
Luna folded her arms and snorted. "You're washing the dishes tonight."
"No problem!" John answered without hesitation. Wash the dishes? He wasn't worried at all. After all... They owned a dishwasher.
Still, one thing genuinely surprised him. Luna's improvement in "Warcraft" had been astonishing. She had adapted to competitive gameplay at an incredible speed.
During development, John had intentionally simplified many campaign mechanics for casual players. On the easiest difficulty, simply leveling up heroes and building a decent army was usually enough to clear every mission. Only on the harder difficulties did players truly need to master unit compositions, positioning, and tactical abilities to overcome each battle.
Of course, there would always be a handful of players who still found the campaign too difficult. That number might be tiny, but it certainly wasn't zero. For those players, the developers had intentionally included official built-in cheat commands.
With a few simple inputs, players could reveal the entire map, instantly obtain resources, grant their units invincibility, or even win the mission immediately. Every classic cheat command remained available.
However, those cheats were strictly limited to single-player content. In multiplayer matches, unless someone deliberately hosted a private lobby with cheats enabled, they were completely disabled. Furthermore, once cheat commands were used in the campaign, certain achievements would no longer be recorded or uploaded.
Meanwhile, beside him, Luna was already challenging two Insane AI opponents by herself while John silently exited the game. Even though he possessed memories filled with professional-level strategies, understood legendary players inside and out, and knew countless high-level tactics, theory alone wasn't enough. Knowledge and execution were two entirely different things. He had all the ideas... But none of the hands to match them.
Thinking about it, John couldn't help but let out a long, helpless sigh. Why... Were his hands so hopeless?