For the celebrations of 30 years of Warcraft, Blizzard invited MeinMMO to talk with the heads of World of Warcraft – about nostalgia, the evolution of WoW, and their impact on the game. One of them is responsible for certain bugs no longer being in the game.
Blizzard has been celebrating the 30th anniversary of Warcraft with major festivities and a worldwide tour since the end of February, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of World of Warcraft. In advance, we had the opportunity to talk for a while with the heads of WoW, Game Director Ion Hazzikostas and Executive Producer and Vice President Holly Longdale.
The interview was about WoW, but also a bit about the background and insights into the development. Both have been working on the game for many years and know WoW as players and developers.
Ion Hazzikostas revealed to me during the conversation that the team intentionally added bugs in WoW Classic. However, shortly after he started at Blizzard, he independently fixed some other bugs.
Currently, the story of WoW takes place in Lorenhall, the capital of the Goblins:
“I know they annoyed me as a player”
When asked what the two changed first when they came to Blizzard, both Hazzikostas and Longdale are a bit embarrassed and need to think for a moment. Hazzikostas finally responds:
“I had too much to learn to change anything. I remember starting right before Wrath of the Lich King came out. I worked on that two months before release. As someone who was a pretty hardcore raider before, one of the first things I wanted to learn, but couldn’t change, was how certain boss mechanics choose targets. I could never understand that as a player. I looked at all that in the scripts to understand how a boss chooses its targets for certain abilities. […]
There were a few bugs that I fixed. I don’t remember exactly which ones they were, but I know they annoyed me as a player. So I searched for them in the database and taught myself how to fix them.”
Ion Hazzikostas
It has been an incredible journey from someone who put thousands of hours into the game to now being someone who truly understands how it all works from the inside, “learning and being taught how to create new experiences for players.”
Hazzikostas explains that he started as an encounter designer back then and was able to work directly on bosses from Ulduar: “I fell in love with the job immediately and never looked back.”
“I always wanted WoW to have a live event team”
Holly Longdale is a bit more pragmatic about that. The Vice President explains that she always wanted WoW to have a team that handles live events. Things that she loves as a player:
I mean [laughs] This comes from the naive perspective of an outsider who found herself in the strange position of doing something with great partners like Ion. As a player who comes from another team and another game. I am wholeheartedly a casual player; I love every WoW holiday, every event, and I’ve always enjoyed them. Those times bring me the most joy.
And I always wanted WoW to have a live event team. It took a while, but when I finally got to collaborate with Ion, we were able to create a live team to make more stuff. It became much larger and better than I could have ever imagined. And they really know what they are doing.”
Holly Longdale
Azeroth itself lives through this team, she explains. Longdale thinks that it’s exactly what players like, this vibrant world, and it is “part of the journey that leads us into the future.” She guarantees: There will always be something to do in Azeroth.
Today, we know that Azeroth is more than just a planet where dozens of races and species live. But the game world is already ancient and dates back to the times of Warcraft. Azeroth had already existed when World of Warcraft was still a long way from being planned: The world of WoW existed 10 years before the MMORPG, but the map looked very different back then
