Blizzard VP of game design, Rob Pardo, has given an interview that does more to tease fans of World of Warcraft than offer any new hard information.
Speaking generally to Next-Gen about what's next on the developer's white board of big, new game ideas Pardo said, "We have other PC projects in development and we're already working on new stuff for World of Warcraft, like another expansion. We've mentioned in the past that we'd love to get a boxed expansion out every year but it's more important to deliver really high quality content to our fans. If we can do that every year that'd be great but we're not going to do that at the expense of the experience."
The popularity of the MMORPG genre is on the up though, as is its population. Codemasters is about the jump on the bandwagon with the full release of Lord of the Rings title, while Eidos is prepping the hotly-anticipated Age of Conan - Hyborian Adventures for release later this year.
Does Pardo feel any pressure then to keep the WoW players on Blizzard servers? "Of course we want our gamers to stay in the world for as long as we can. But I look at this from the positive angle of us trying to entertain them. We're trying to give them new experiences. One of my favorite analogies is how much an MMO is like a TV series.
"We're developing episodes just like Lost or Seinfeld. We're always trying to come up with something that's true to the theory; that's true to the content that people love; but that is new. From the moment that the series starts re-treading the same ground over and over again... well, that's what we're trying to avoid."
And what about the much-talked about prospect of WoW (or any other Blizzard titles) ever going multi-platform? "It's always possible. Whenever we come up with game concepts we really try to come up with a game and a universe at the same time and it's really whatever makes sense to the game. It's something we always talk about and always think about exploring," says Pardo.
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April 19, 2007
