Project Lore

I'm constantly amazed at the sorts of things that can be found by digging through patches. The disparate elements that come together to form what we all know as Azeroth are split into thousands of files and even more lines of code. It's not entirely surprising that bits of the game not yet (or ever to be) implemented are contained deep within them, like unmarked graves never meant to be dug up. Of course, it's also a standard industry practice to leave things just laying around. In the process of coding or testing certain aspects of a program, it can become inconvenient to completely remove them upon release, even if they haven't been green-lit for player consumption. One of the most notorious incidents involving left-over code you might know as "Hot Coffee." Scenes depicting hot polygon-on-polygon action could be hacked into the PC version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas because they were still on the disc, even if in the normal course of play, you'd only hear the action off-screen.

If you've spent any significant amount of time in the this community, then you've no doubt heard of Boubouille and his site, MMO-Champion, which often features the results of his adventures deep into the data files of World of Warcraft. Apparently, one of the most frequent questions people ask him is: "What the heck is up with that Dance Studio Blizzard promised us?" Back before Wrath of the Lich King was released, the developers told us that we'd soon be able to visit the fabled disco, where they could create and share their own dances apart from those normally assigned to their given race/gender combination. After all, nothing says "stay at home and play WoW on a Friday night" like knowing how to bust a groove!

An exclusive preview of the dance studio in Lord of the Rings Online.

With another dungeon, an upcoming expansion, and various other content to attend to first, I can't imagine that the Dance Studio is at the top of anybody's list, but nonetheless, Boubouille did find several hints that Blizzard might still be working on it. According to him, several dance moves were added to the game (though you can't activate them, so don't try) and they demonstrate the level of customization that might be found in the eventual release of this feature.

In addition to basic component parts (slices cut out of existing dances and the like), there are also modifiers which can extend, shorten, or hold given moves. To add a little bit of extra flair, you can even include special effects normally reserved for spells (like the cold blast of Frost Nova, here called "Icy Finale"). Though we may have no idea what the front-end will look like, it's assumed that all of these things can be stringed together and then saved into separate dances, like different gear profiles in the Equipment Manager. Better yet, you can then send your creations to your friends to use (that's one way to start a new dance craze!).

Sadly, there's still no indication when (or if) the Dance Studio may come to fruition. If I were to make an educated guess, I'd say that it will be released somewhere down the line, but streamlined to be part of the UI instead of there being a real, physical "discotheque" somewhere in Azeroth. At this point it seems like prime "minor content patch" material. Nonetheless, I hope it shows up as soon as it's convenient. I could really use a new victory dance for they day I can use it on top of Arthas' corpse!

Are you still anticipating the Dance Studio, readers, or has it fallen to the bottom list of your most desired features?