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With World of Warcraft: Midnight just around the corner, one of the central developers behind the ever-popular MMORPG has taken a second to reflect on what the next decade may look like. Hopefully still king of the MMO space, he says, though Blizzard's projections aren't quite as long-term.
"Still around, still kicking, I think hopefully, still at the forefront of the genre, and really, you know, defining what it means to be a persistent online community in a world," game director Ion Hazzikostas tells tells ScreenRant, asked where he sees the game in 10 years. "But I think right now, I would say our focus is on the next five years."
He mentions the team has "ideas" for "the very long run," but they always leave space for players to show them what should get attention. "We're going to be guided by our community and the response we see to the choices we make every step of the way," he states. "So it's almost impossible to predict where that's going to lead us, because, you know, humans are uncertain, if nothing else."
The introduction of housing – an addition long in the offing – will provide key insight here, as Blizzard sees what people enjoy about the implementation, and what can and should be replicated in the future. "We're going to be looking very closely, starting, just in a few weeks, all the way through the net launch and beyond, to understand how we can best empower our players," Hazzikostas continues.
"How they're looking to use housing, looking to connect with each other through this feature, and that's really going to guide what our roadmap looks like, you know, in the years to come. And the same is true for other facets of WoW," he finishes.
Besides the power to buy your own home in Azeroth, Midnight is sending shockwaves through WoW by deactivating a variety of combat mods, as Blizzard aims to replace them with official mechanics. The times, they are a-changin', and it seems like the devs are just waiting to see what direction the wind blows them next.
