The Executive Producer of World of Warcraft, J. Allen Brack, comments on the concerns about player decline and content drought.
The state of the game has little to do with player numbers
In an interview with Polygon, the Executive Producer of World of Warcraft addressed various points. J. Allen Brack discusses the player count reports, the content drought, and design philosophies.
First, he addresses the reaction of many people that WoW (once again) is supposedly dying, with its lowest player count in 10 years. “Only” 5.5 million players have an active subscription.
“One of the problems we face as a team, but also in the community, is the perception that there is a direct connection between player numbers and the state of the community or the business. (…) That is really not true. I wouldn’t say that World of Warcraft is only half as successful as it used to be.”
New content only delays Legion
One of the core problems that many critics and fans see is the content drought, which will open up once again. The last major patch was in June. Therefore, a minimum of 12 months will pass until the release of Legion in the summer, during which there have been no new raids or game zones. A small consolation is, however, Patch 6.2.3, which has now been deployed to the live servers. It brings new “old” dungeons into the Timewalking, some new mounts, and the possibility to upgrade equipment.
“We believe that this will help. They are not exactly new raids, but we face a difficult challenge. If we were to do another Patch 6.2.5 or 6.3 right now, it would delay Legion for exactly that amount of development time.”
Even the “wise advice” from the community on how to attract more players to the game is taken to heart, but the developers do not calculate in terms of “Content X brings Y players”.
“The team cannot focus on things like, a quest that brings in 100,000 subscribers. How can this raid keep people engaged for 5 months longer? If you approach it that way, you will drive yourself crazy. All we can do is focus on creating great player experiences, learning as much as possible, and making World of Warcraft the best it can be.”
Only a small part of the team is already working on the next expansion
One criticism is that Blizzard has been trying for years to shorten the release time between expansions. They have failed every time so far. With Legion, they would be a little faster, but “we want to continue to work on shortening the time.” At the moment, the majority, yes almost the entire team is working on Legion. A few others, mainly heads of art and design, are preparing the content patches for Legion and the upcoming seventh expansion.
Will Blizzard ever give up on this point? After all, they are still trying even after the 5th failure.
For more information about the game and the upcoming expansion Legion, visit our World of Warcraft theme page.
