World of Warcraft has now been around for ten years, some of the players have aged with the game and now live very different lives than before. Blizzard intends to take this into account.
World of Warcraft wants to be a game for the whole family
For the older …
In an interview with English PCGamer, Ion “Watcher” Hazzikostas, the Lead Game Designer, answers questions about World of Warcraft. The change, the “casualization,” that some accuse the game of, is also due to adapting to the needs of WoW veterans: “Many players who started with WoW in 2004 were students or schoolchildren back then, but now they have careers and families. They may have raided deep into the night before, but now they try to spend 60 or 90 minutes in WoW between family and job to keep the old passion for cooking alive.”
… and for the younger
This must be taken into account when designing the game, but not exclusively. Because new players still come into the game to be the best, to be the first on the ladder, or the most successful raiders in the world. At Blizzard, they want to cover everything.
They want to make it barrier-free for newcomers. That Mists of Pandaria is now free in the base game is one of the methods to eliminate a hurdle. The other is to allow characters to start at level 90.
No plans for redesigning old content – should serve as “This is how it looked back then”
Blizzard has no plans for redesigning content from The Burning Crusade or Lich King. According to the Lead Designer, resources are better spent on new areas. And there’s something to it when you look through Burning Crusade and then say, “So this is what WoW looked like back then.” It serves as a kind of “timeline”: those who play the old areas can also witness the development of World of Warcraft.
Quivers are coming, but Free2Play is not
The next improvements will rather flow into character models, such as quivers for hunters or the various animal forms of druids. The armors could also use a bit more depth.
When asked about the lonely panda who struggled to level up to 90 by just picking flowers in the starting area, he said that they would probably have eliminated that possibility if a designer had noticed it at the beginning. Once it was clear that players were trying, they refrained from changing this mechanic. They didn’t want to be game-breakers.
Watcher dismissed all discussions about Free2Play. The current business model stands and has proven successful.
On a statement along the lines of “We will now release annual expansions,” the Lead Designer cannot commit. They have been promising this since 2008, and their own urge for perfection often stands in the way. However, they are definitely going to try.
Time to practice expansions will probably still be ample. The Lead Game Designer is sure: World of Warcraft will celebrate its twentieth birthday in ten years. Also with special content, just like now on the tenth.
