World of Warcraft Diary

The World of Warcraft Diary is a book about the development of World of Warcraft. Though not licensed by Blizzard, the book was written by World of Warcraft's first Level Designer, Johnathan Staats. After his time at Blizzard, Staats compiled a great number of notes that he took all throughout the development of the game into a book, with the approval of the company. This project was funded through a Kickstarter, which was fully backed up within 10 minutes of its launch, August 28, 2018.

The book provides a unique, detailed look into the development of World of Warcraft, from conceptualizing to implementing. It reveals never-seen-before information on the game and includes 130 pictures. It also provides insight into the life of Blizzard developers and tackles the great themes of game development in general including lore and gameplay.

It was made available on Amazon and other stores on June 29, 2019.

Notes and trivia

 * John Staats did an AMA on the WoW subreddit, /r/wow, the day of the Kickstarter's launch to promote the book. He also did interviews with Planet Dolan, with Wowhead, with Countdown to Classic, some of which have exclusive excerpts not included in the book, like the Scholomance, Warsong Gulch, or general ones.