Dance studio

The dance studio was a scrapped feature from World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King that would've allowed players to customize their character's dance animation. The feature gained infamy as it was advertised in the expansion's marketing but was never actually implemented due to the amount of animation work required, and it is often jokingly referenced in fan discussions about canceled features from other expansions.
==History==
===Announcement===
The feature was originally announced at BlizzCon 2007 in the Wrath of the Lich King reveal trailer, which lists "New dances" as one of the expansion's features, alongside "Changeable hairstyles". Both of these were also included in the features list on the official Wrath of the Lich King flash site.
 The earliest known reference to a "dance studio" where these new dances would be obtained comes from a forum post by Community Manager Bornakk on August 24, 2007, in which he wrote that "We are also providing players the opportunity to learn new/different dances with the dance studio."
At a press event at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in July 2008, Lead Level Designer Cory Stockton stated that the dance studio was "a gigantic amount of work", as Blizzard would have to implement custom animations for each playable race so that they "look right". He continued that the developers hadn't decided how many animations they would do per race or how exactly players would acquire them, but that they had discussed the idea of a dance studio where players would go to learn new dances. He finished that they didn't know how much time it was going to take to implement, as this would be dictated by the amount of new animations required.
===Post-Wrath of the Lich King release===
Although new character hairstyles and the option of changing hairstyles were implemented with the addition of the barbershop as had been advertised, the dance studio never appeared in the Wrath of the Lich King beta and wasn't mentioned by Blizzard again until a community summit on October 9, 2008—two weeks prior to the expansion's release—during which Lead Designer Jeffrey Kaplan told Curse that the dance studio would be added "After Lich King releases for sure". He elaborated that adding even a single dance animation for a race takes "as much time as creating a new creature for the game", so the developers had to consider which of the two would see more use. The ultimate goal, according to Kaplan, was still to implement the studio and that one of the desired features was to allow players to not just choose a new dance, but string together multiple moves to create a unique dance.
On January 30, 2009, Community Manager Zarhym wrote on the official forum that the studio had been a work in progress for the artists for "some time now" and that "It's something they hack away at here and there when things like Ulduar aren't imminent." On April 22, Community Manager Nethaera wrote in another thread that: "It has not been dropped. Creating additional dances takes a significant amount of animation work and we want to make sure that when we do put them out, that they meet our standards. We still intend to put them in, but we have no current eta on their addition." She added that the specifics of the feature (such as if the possible dances would be restricted by character faction and gender) were still unknown.
In a developer chat on Twitter on February 26, 2010, Cory Stockton and Greg Street stated that the dance studio was "still on the list", adding that "We always start an expansion with more than we can realistically do and then shuffle things up and down". In an interview with DirecTV at BlizzCon 2010, Tom Chilton mentioned that Blizzard had been working on new dances and that they'd release the dance studio when it was ready.
===Later expansions===
On August 25, 2013, Greg Street replied to a Twitter post about the then-in-progress player character revamp with: "The good news is this [new character models] is something actively being worked on, not a shelved project like dance studio or abyssal maw." In a follow-up tweet, he added: "Also, shelved does not mean cancelled. :)" In an interview at BlizzCon 2013, J. Allen Brack stated regarding the dance studio that: "We talked about and developed a whole bunch of different animations and different technology that we could use. We didn't really come up with a really great game system behind it. It is something that we talked about. It is something that we wanna do at some point. But it's not something we're currently working on." At the BlizzCon 2015 Q&A, Tom Chilton stated that Blizzard would still like to add the studio someday and that it was a matter of finding the animation time for it.
==Legacy==
Over time, as Wrath of the Lich King was developed, released, and came to a close without any sign of the dance studio and players kept asking what happened to it, it took on the status of meme and running gag, often included as a punchline at the end of lists of advertised features that were still missing from the game. In 2011, Mathew McCurley of WoW Insider wrote that the dance studio "has become a legend in its own right, being called everything from the second coming of the WoW messiah to a dumb waste of time for designers and developers who could be working on more 'important' projects". He concluded that the primary reason for its reputation was its inclusion in the original Wrath of the Lich King trailer, along with the fact that new dances—along with new hairstyles—would've served as a long-awaited addition of more character customization, an aspect at which World of Warcraft was considered to be subpar compared to other MMOs at the time. The dance studio is sometimes called an example of or (dubiously) .
Due to its infamy, Blizzard have made several joking references to the dance studio over the years.
*One of the 2009 April Fools jokes shortly after the release of Wrath of the Lich King was the introduction of a Dance Battle System, in which teams of players would compete in dance-offs.
*References to the dance studio have been a running gag in some of the fake patch notes posted by Blizzard on April Fools:
**2011 April Fools - Patch 4.1.11: "Dance Studio has been removed from the game due to lack of use."
**2014 April Fools - Patch 6.0.0: "Once again, due to lack of use, the Dance Studio has been removed from the game."
**2015 April Fools - Patch 6.1.4: "We accidentally put the Dance Studio back in the game for a little while, but it's been removed again. That was a close one."
**2016 April Fools - Legion Alpha - Patch Note Preview: "Signs have been placed over many mailboxes with the words “Dance Studio,” to promote awareness of this feature which has existed in the game for over a decade." and ":Dancing Rune Weapon is now only usable in Dance Studios."
***The first note is a reference to mailbox dancing.
*The BlizzCon 2013 What's Next panel included a slide that showed "Dance Studio" as one of the buildings that could be added to garrisons. J. Allen Brack and Jeremy Feasel confirmed that this was nothing more than a joke put in by the UI team.
*The garrison mission The Dance Studio is a reference to the meme. The mission supposedly takes place at the "Northrend Academy of Dance" (in reference to Wrath of the Lich King being set in Northrend), a place which according to the mission description is "rumored not to exist", and rewards a Supreme Manual of Dance.
*Patch 7.2.5 introduced the micro-holiday Auction House Dance Party, while patch 9.2.0 added the Darkmoon Faire minigame Darkmoon Dance Competition, both of which are likely at least partially inspired by the meme. Although hailed by some fans as being the long-awaited arrival of the dance studio, the two have only a superficial resemblance to the way the original feature was described.
In a 2014 article examining the meme and the reason for its longevity, Nathan Grayson of Kotaku wrote that: "The legacy of [the dance studio] is something that can only happen in a game like World of Warcraft, one that's been around for ages, one whose players have grown and changed over time with it. It seems like such an inconsequential feature, but it's another facet of players feeling a personal connection to their characters. It's a desire for greater freedom of self-expression. More than that, though, the dance studio has been kept in the public conscious by its own lack of existence longer than many real, frequently updated features can boast. It's practically immortal at this point. The heart of the dance studio is not a dance studio at all. It's the conversation it's inspired, the back-and-forth between Blizzard and slavering, dance-hungry fans. Maybe Blizzard is being a gigantic jerk, or maybe they're just trying to connect with their longtime fans like an old pal bringing up a years-dead injoke. Either way, fans keep talking, and the legend grows."
==See also==
*Path of the Titans and Abyssal Maw, two other infamous scrapped features.
==References==
==External links==
*
*
Category:Wrath of the Lich King