World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Q&A Feature

TVG: What do you think it is about World of Warcraft that keeps players coming back – the user base has continued to grow several years after launch, which isn’t necessarily the case with other MMOs?

Sams: I think a big part is that players have created relationships in the game.  You might go to the pub every night to see your mates because they’re a big part of your life.  So I think a big part of it is a social aspect because you’ve got so many mates online, and guild mates, but I also think there’s a lot of compelling content.  People who enjoy this universe find ways to explore it all sorts of different ways.  It’s a huge world and the game is huge; there are always ways to find new experiences and also create new friendships.

Sparks: I think we’re developing the best content we’ve ever developed, and the gameplay experience we’re giving to gamers is at the pinnacle of MMO development - we’re really proud of that.  I think players know what to expect from WoW and the new content at this point.  The more we work on this game, the better we get at it, and the better the content is going to be, so they come back to see what we’re doing next.

TVG: There’s obviously a large wedge of content for advanced players in Lich King, but what sort of provisions have you made for newcomers to World of Warcraft?

Sparks: Well one thing we’ve done is increase the speed of levelling from one to seventy, so new players to the experience get to the new content quicker.  We’ve a new programme called ‘Refer a Friend’, which means that if I’m an existing player and you as my friend want to play, we can link our accounts together.  So if I create a new character alongside you, our experience triples and we level up together a lot quicker.  It also grants you the ability to summon each other, so if you play it for a while without me and you end up in a different zone, you can summon me to you when I log in again.

Also for every two levels that you gain while our accounts are linked together, you gain the ability to give me one level for me for free.  So let’s say we got to level 10 together, but then I stop playing for a while and you carry on to level 16, you can grant me three levels to get me closer to the level you’re at.

We have a lot of features for this expansion that are available to everyone, not just people who buy the expansion.  We have the new achievements system, we have Inscription – the new trade skill – which is available to everyone, and we have the barber shop that lets you customise your characters features.

TVG: Obviously there’s another expansion pack currently in development, but aside from that, what direction do you see World of Warcraft taking in the future?

Sams: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head; our intention is to continue to deliver great content into this product and into this universe, and we intend to do so in the form of ongoing content updates in between expansion sets, and also deliver incredible enhancements to the game with new content and features in the expansion sets.  They’re the primary pieces in the puzzle of the ongoing plan.  Then obviously, we’re doing a lot of other things to our other franchises as well.

TVG: That leads me onto the next one; World of Warcraft has obviously gone beyond where you’re original expectations were a few years ago…

Sams: Absolutely, no one planned this.

TVG: …The subscription levels continue to grow monthly; with that success in mind, Blizzard has to be tempted to turn its other franchises into MMOs – the rumours about a ‘Universe of Starcraft’ have been going on for years.  That’s something that you can’t deny Blizzard are looking at…

Sams: What I would say is this.  Contrary to what some people say and believe, Blizzard isn’t solely focused on money.  We’re not.  We’re focused on making great games, and I think that we’ve proved that by saying our next two games aren’t MMOs.  StarCraft II is going to be an ultra-competitive real-time strategy game and I think one of the best sequels we’ve ever delivered, to what I think is the best game we’ve ever delivers, which is StarCraft.  I think we’re going to be focused with that product on the new version of Battle.net, an incredible experience for StarCraft, as well as further establishing ourselves as the world leader in eSports, and we’ll also introduce a lot of social networking aspects to Battle.net.  So I think it’s going to be an incredible experience and it’s not an MMO.  The same thing goes for Diablo III, it is not being built or positioned as an MMO either.

We do have one unannounced next-generation MMO that we aren’t really talking about yet, and that’s the one farthest away too as evidenced by the fact that we haven’t announced what it is.  So we’re not focused on just doing what will make us the most money; what we do is ask the developers what is it you want to make next.  People like myself, part of the executive team, don’t tell people like Lee [Sparks] ‘Hey, here’s the next game you’re making’, and the reason for that is because if we tell them ‘The next game you’re going to be making is a sailing MMO’, they’ll probably not be super passionate about it.  First of all, it wasn’t their idea, and secondly it’s not necessarily what they’re going to be geeked up on.  But if you say to them, ‘Hey, what is it you want to make next, what is it you want to play next?’, and then when they say, you nod your head and say ‘Alright, get at it’, the level of commitment, passion, and enthusiasm that you’re going to have, and as a result the innovativeness and the incredible gameplay experience you’re going to have, I and the leadership believe it’s going to be far better than if they were told what they were going to do next.

So if we said, ‘Let’s do another MMO and milk it as much as we can’, we wouldn’t necessarily get the type of game players would be interested in getting from us.  We have to stay with what has gotten us here, which is, making decisions for the right reasons: what is it we want to play next? What is it we want to make next?  If we do it right, then hopefully fans will enjoy that and reward us for making the right decisions and ones that are monetary driven.