The Magic behind World of Warcraft

Blizzard Vice President Talks about Game Development

by Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 09/12/2006 | 11:48 PM ]

Since the 2004 launch of title – which is now approaching 7 million paying subscribers and $1 billion in annual sales – Blizzard has been hard to find at the plethora of video game industry events, a rarity among major publishers.

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According to Cnet News.com report, unusual as it may seem, Rob Pardo, vice president of game design at Blizzard Entertainment, held a speech at Austin Game Conference, last week. While Rob Pardo didn’t reveal any news in his morning speech, he did pull back the curtain on what Blizzard sees as the keys to the company’s runaway success with “WoW.”

“The first mantra of Blizzard is definitely ‘easy to learn, difficult to master.’ Depth comes first and accessibility later,” said Pardo.

According to Pardo, one key to the company’s approach is that developers first figure out how to make the game play fun and then they work on completing the many levels of play.

“Blizzard focuses on making the user interface easy to work with and giving players a way to find what they need immediately. But they have to dig a little deeper for more complex features and items,” explained Pardo.

“What we thought would be cooler for most people is to give them a reason for killing other than that experience bar,” added Pardo.

• Cnet News.com: The
  Winning Ways
  of ‘Warcraft’.