Ten years ago I was enjoying my wild youth as a university student while Geoff continued to troll IRC chats. World of Warcraft launched and became the defining MMO for a generation. Despite waning numbers over the past few years, it is making a comeback. WoW isn’t going to disappear anytime soon.
Speaking to CNET, lead game designer Ion Hazzikostas explained that the game has changed a lot over the past ten years:
We’ve recognised our player base has changed over the years. The person who picked up the game in 2004 who was a student with tons of free time is now a career person with a family, and they’re trying to fit in 60-90 minutes of game time after the kids go to bed at night. The game that they want is not the same game that they played 10 years ago.
At the same time there’s a new generation coming in. So we’ve had to increasingly expand the ways in which you can interact with the game. We still offer content that is still very much aimed at the hardcore organised player who wants to sit down with guild mates and spend four hours a night banging their heads against an encounter. But then we also give you a way to see some of the same content at a lower difficulty level like through something like our raid finder system for raids where you can jump right in.
All these changes and updates have been incremental. Rather than release a WoW 2, Blizzard has embraced that the MMO is a monolith and can carry on as is, simply with new texture packs, new designs and new gameplay. One new such gameplay element promising to revamp the game with the latest expansion, although we heard that last time with Mists of Pandaria. Hazzikostas claims the new garrison system will keep people busy and offer a ton of new gameplay:
If you build the stables you unlock this whole section of the game where you can go to the different zones and capture and track legendary beasts of Draenor to tame and break them and get them as mounts. If you build the Gladiator Sanctum, you unlock this PvP quest line where you declare a racial nemesis in the opposite faction, you could say you’re going to be the Gnome slayer and you’re going to hunt gnomes and you can collect trophies from all the gnomes you kill and if you get enough you can burn a gnome effigy and you get a title so you can walk around as “Gnome slayer” or “Gnome bane”, which in turn gets you invited to this fight club where you can queue up for a 25 player free for all among people who passed this trial to win some cool loot and another title. And that’s just one building! And there [are] a dozen buildings. I don’t think most people have a clue about how deep the rabbit hole goes there and I look forward to people finding out.
With all these incremental updates and continuing expansions, Hazzikostas is sure that there will be a 20th anniversary for WoW. He doesn’t know what it will be like, but he’s confident that the game will last another ten years.
I’m not so sure – the trajectory for subscriptions hasn’t been looking too great, but Draenor did bring a lot of people back into the game. I think WoW will be top dog among MMOs for a while still, but I also think that with all the new competition, they might struggle to maintain that kind of dominance for another decade. That said, Blizzard has done extraordinarily well with the IP – they might surprise all of us and keep it going for another ten or even twenty years. Imagine if it came to new generation consoles? Now that might change things up.
Last Updated: November 3, 2014
Admiral Chief 0
November 3, 2014 at 11:34
LOL I can only imagine Geoff trolling IRC
Alien Emperor Trevor
November 3, 2014 at 11:35
World of Wwhat? :/
Matthew Holliday
November 3, 2014 at 11:46
world of w-w-w-water b-boy
Her Highness the Hipster
November 3, 2014 at 12:24
that’s my r-r-r-rap name!
Hammersteyn
November 3, 2014 at 11:40
Sword of a Thousand Truths?
Splooshypooh
November 3, 2014 at 11:58
To be wielded by the player: LovestoSPOOGE
vicky john
November 3, 2014 at 11:49
Its been 10 years.. but failed to spell world of warcraft. =D
ToshZA
November 3, 2014 at 11:50
She spelled it, albeit incorrectly. 😀
Her Highness the Hipster
November 3, 2014 at 12:22
Geoff just decided to give me a stutter to see how i’d react. 😛
UltimateNinjaPandaDudeGuy
November 3, 2014 at 11:52
I got a 7 day free pass a week ago.
I activated it and logged in etc.
WOW! That interface is SUPER dated and the graphics looks like shit. Nope. Upgrade please. Kthx -> uninstall
Jedi Consular Kromas
November 3, 2014 at 17:19
Ouch a graphics reference in this day and age. Also interface is easy to fix via mods.
UltimateNinjaPandaDudeGuy
November 3, 2014 at 17:21
I don’t really want to run many mods. They should just pay the guy for his mod and then put it in the game or something.
Jedi Consular Kromas
November 3, 2014 at 17:25
That is the problem. Very few people have the same interface. Hell mine changes every expansion. I don’t know a single person who plays with the same ui mods. At least everyone uses Skada dmg meters (well the mages and rogues)
UltimateNinjaPandaDudeGuy
November 3, 2014 at 17:32
I think it is more the login screen and the loading screens. Some of those are insanely pixelated :/ I just need a proper graphical upgrade to the game. Just getting too dated to look at.
Jedi Consular Kromas
November 3, 2014 at 17:42
Well yeah but if they work to hard on that the game would look as detailed as Destiny and play as horrible as Destiny with a bad story like Destiny. Okay so Destiny is really bad with great GFX is what I am saying.
UltimateNinjaPandaDudeGuy
November 3, 2014 at 17:59
The game is already awesome in all the mechanics etc… Now just add some good looks. Definitely don’t let the gameplay suffer for the looks, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
Gareth L (That eXCheez Guy)
November 3, 2014 at 11:54
Any Blizzard title is designed to last for as long as they support it for. We’d still be playing Diablo 2 if it had a new expansion each two years, as well as a graphics overhaul.
This comes as no surprise. 🙂
MakeItLegal
November 3, 2014 at 12:25
meh…boring…
Sageville
November 3, 2014 at 12:37
Once bitten…
Gerhard Davids
November 3, 2014 at 13:10
ZevraLover2537 has entered the cahtroom;
ZevraLover2537: Looking for cyber << msg me
SmurFyZA
November 3, 2014 at 13:12
Warlords has pulled me back to the game. I have tried GW2, Elder Scrolls Online, Rift and even Wildstar. WoW is just better
MrChinwag
November 3, 2014 at 13:25
Mere fact that WoW can be played on any Laptop with any type of Connection makes it the power house what is is today.