With review scores like that, there's no question Blizzard
Entertainment has a track record of releasing some of the best-reviewed
games the industry has to offer. Easily the biggest franchise in
Blizzard's stable, though, is its real-time strategy-cum-massively
multiplayer online role-playing series Warcraft, which celebrates its
15-year anniversary this month.
The franchise reached global-phenomenon status on the back of
World of Warcraft. The fantasy-themed game has defined--not to mention
dominated--the MMORPG landscape since its launch five years ago this
week. Now on its second expansion, WOW's global subscriber base stands
at 11.5 million users as of Blizzard's last accounting, although it's run into trouble in one of its largest markets, being at the center of a cross-agency dispute inside the Chinese government.
The industry-tracking NPD Group pegs the MMORPG series' lifetime US retail sales at 8.59 million through July 2009.
Indeed, all three games consistently rank in the top 10 of the NPD
Group's monthly PC charts, with the tracking firm putting Wrath of the
Lich King as the second best-selling desktop game for the first half of 2009. (Blizzard declined to offer total combined unit sales for WOW, Burning Crusade, and Wrath of the Lich King.)
Further, Wrath of the Lich King currently holds the record for
fastest-selling PC game in history. Following its November 2008 launch,
the game sold 2.8 million units worldwide within its first 24 hours on the market.
Of course, Blizzard bested its own record with Lich King's opening
performance, as the prior title holder was The Burning Crusade, which sold 2.4 million units on day-one in January 2007.
Beyond initial sales, WOW requires a membership fee of at most $15 a
month. Blizzard also pulls in supplemental income from a host of
game-related services, ranging from character name changes to the
recently introduced in-game pets. All said, WOW drives the Irvine
studio's contribution to parent company Activision Blizzard's top line beyond $100 million a month, according to the publisher's recent financial reports.
Inauspicious beginnings
Rob Pardo, Blizzard's vice president of game design, didn't necessarily
see the franchise blowing up the way it has upon the release of that
first installment.
"I was working at Interplay Productions when it came out," Pardo told
GameSpot. "Interplay was publishing the first Warcraft: Orcs and Humans
for international back then. So I had the opportunity to play it, and
it was pretty exciting, because I had already played Dune II so I think
it was really cool to see a fantasy version of that…I definitely didn't
imagine back then that Warcraft as a franchise would get as big as it
would get."
Released in November 1994, the original Warcraft: Orcs and
Humans was criticized for being uneven, with the end game dominated by
the Orc Warlock unit and its ability to summon the disproportionately
powerful Daemon. And while obliterating pathetic little human towns
always has its advantages, the franchise didn't hit its stride until
the following year, with the release of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness.
"It was really Warcraft II that I thought really blew things open,
because of [online multiplayer networking service Kali]," Pardo
continued. "Ironically enough, too, it came out within the same month
as Command & Conquer, so we had this huge new genre explode at the
same time between C&C and Warcraft II…I definitely saw a lot of
potential in the future of the RTS genre, and certainly Warcraft was a
part of that."
Named one of GameSpot's Greatest Games of All Time,
Warcraft II brought with it a finely tuned single-player campaign,
replete with memorable cinematics and a host of quotable characters
("Zug zug," "Ready to serve," "I can see my house from here!" and so
on). Defined primarily by the third-party application Kali, Warcraft II
also featured a strong multiplayer component, where gamers could
compete on their own maps as well as refine their strategies in myriad
ways.
World of Warcraft's merry band of adventures numbers in excess of 11.5 million.
The World goes to WarcraftWarcraft II spawned an expansion,
Beyond the Dark Portal, in 1996, but it wasn't until 2002 that Blizzard
issued its much-anticipated follow-up, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.
Named GameSpot's PC Game of the Year in 2002,
Warcraft III was the first installment in the franchise helmed by
Pardo, having cut his teeth at Blizzard on the developer's acclaimed
sci-fi RTS franchise Starcraft. Pardo noted that the franchise's
pivotal step into the MMORPG realm came during Warcraft III
development.
"After we finished Starcraft, we split into two development
teams. One of the teams went off to make what would became Warcraft
III, and the other team went to go make a game that survived a year, a
year and a half before we decided it just wasn't going to turn into
something that we thought would be Blizzard quality. And it was then
that we started about what we wanted to do instead, and that's when the
idea of World of Warcraft emerged."
"During Starcraft development, there was a whole host of us
playing that were playing Ultima Online. There was a bunch of us that
saw that being a fun genre…It was definitely during Warcraft III
development that a lot of us started playing EverQuest…It was during
that EverQuest era that we realized Ultima Online wasn't a fluke, and
it was going to turn into a full-fledged genre. And we really saw what
was amazing about that genre, and felt like we had an opportunity to do
our own spin on it."
Pardo said that one moment that stood out to him was realizing
each of the 30-odd avatars standing around at a crafting forge in
Ultima Online were controlled by an actual person. These sentiments
were affirmed when EverQuest came along and added a deeper connection
between players, Pardo said. The game designer should know, considering
he led one of the preeminent guilds in EverQuest--Legacy of
Steel--during the early 2000s.
"The unfortunate thing about some of the games of that era is
that you had to be a pretty hardcore player to get to that level of
fun," Pardo continued. "But that fun was so deep and so satisfying that
we really felt like, hey, if we can just broaden this out to a wider
group of players, there really might be something magic here."
Blizzard lead designer Jeff Kaplan assumed control of Pardo's guild
after the Blizzard executive retired from EverQuest to focus his
efforts wrapping up development on Warcraft III. In 2002, he was
brought on to aid in development of the original WOW, and he said that
it was no easy task adapting the franchise from its RTS roots to a more
RPG setting.
"It required a huge shift," Kaplan said. "You do a lot of
things in an RTS for very different reasons than you would do things in
an MMO. As it relates to story, if you look at the ending of the
original Warcraft III, you've got the Humans, Orcs, and Night Elves all
united to overcome Archimonde at the World Tree. That didn't work for
the structure of the MMO at all, we knew that we wanted to have Horde
and Alliance pitted against each other. We had to re-create the rift
that went all the way to the original Orcs and Humans."
"It's also hard to deal with the psychology of the dev team,"
he continued. "We would often feel obliged to do things exactly how
they were done in the RTS, which isn't always right for the gameplay of
an MMO. An example is, we wanted to give an ability called Death Coil
to warlocks, because we thought it was really fitting. In Warcraft III,
Death Coil was a Death Knight-only ability, and not only did it do
damage, but it healed. People had a rough time coming to terms with the
fact that it was OK to make changes and do what was right for the
gameplay of WOW, even if that somehow contradicted what people saw in
Warcraft III."
However, having the RTS as a backdrop did more than create
challenges, as explained by Pardo. "We were really aided by the fact
that we had so much history in the Warcraft franchise," he said. "So we
had all these storylines and worlds, and in a lot of ways, at least
early on when we started developing the maps and the zones, there was
so much to already start from."
"[Vice president of creative development] Chris Metzen had
already done a lot of the lore for Warcraft III and before, so we had
this big head start on talking about all the different areas, Stormwind
or Lordaeron," Pardo continued. "And you can see it some extent in the
game. If you look at the Eastern Kingdoms, in a lot of ways it is much
more developed from just a lore and backstory standpoint than Kalimdor,
and that's because Eastern Kingdoms really had three games plus
expansion sets to really build it out, and Kalimdor was something new
and fresh."
Cataclysm wasn't initially part of Blizzard's expansion slate.
Of course, the scope of a MMORPG is substantially than that of an RTS.
That difference of scale was reflected in Blizzard's initial plans for
what it wanted to include with the original WOW when it shipped in
November 2004. In fact, according to Kaplan, Blizzard initially
intended to include the areas from The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the
Lich King, and much of Cataclysm with the original launch.
"We planned it out extremely far in advance," he said. "To put
it into perspective, Outland and Northrend and a lot of the ideas in
Cataclysm were all part of the original shipping plan of the game…Every
so often we'll have those moments from a project management and
planning standpoint where we'll really go, well, what are we actually
get in and where should we actually be at. But part of what gets us
there is scoping the project out for years and years to come and always
having an idea of where we want to go, and that's what lets us steer
the ship and eventually get there."
Outland and Northrend eventually arrived as part of The Burning
Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm is expected to arrive
sometime next year. Oddly enough, Cataclysm itself wasn't on Blizzard's
list when it first began thinking about expansions.
"When we finished the original game, we began work on
expansions," Kaplan said. "We didn't just think of one expansion that
we were going to work on. We said, 'What are a lot of expansions we
want to make for this game,' because we want to have this big list that
we can then narrow down and prioritize. Outland and Northrend were
givens on that list…Cataclysm was an interesting departure from that,
because it wasn't part of the original expansion plan that we had. It
was something that evolved out of a lot of cool ideas forging together
at once."
According to Pardo, Blizzard's initial expansion list also
reflected a different release order than what gamers actually got. "As
a matter of fact, when we launched WOW, we initially thought we were
going to Lich King first," he said, noting that Outland and Northrend
were givens on the expansion list.
This unpredictability, coupled with Blizzard's ability to be
flexible with its direction, is also what led to the development of
Cataclysm as a full expansion, he said. "When we shipped WOW, the whole
idea of Cataclysm wasn't there at all. We certainly had the idea to do
Deathwing, but the whole idea of Cataclysm came out of trying to
determine what we thought was the right thing for the game next. We
didn't foresee five years ago breaking the world up was it."
WOW will continue "for as long as the Internet is up."
According to Kaplan, Warcraft's reaching timeline and Blizzard's
boundless creativity equate to no foreseeable end to WOW. "I honestly
believe that there are enough compelling ideas to keep WOW going for as
long as the Internet is up," he said. "I mean, the Warcraft universe
spans well over 10,000 years. You can literally sit [Chris Metzen] down
at any point, and say, 'Hey Chris, what should we do next,' and then an
hour later you can get your next question in. The future of WOW is only
limited by time and resources."
Of course, keeping WOW around forever means that Blizzard will soon have two separate MMORPGs in its portfolio. In May, Blizzard confirmed that the new MMORPG would be part of a "brand-new franchise,"
one different enough from WOW that the two wouldn't compete. Both Pardo
and Kaplan believe that the company has learned plenty of lessons from
WOW, ones that bode well for the new MMORPG.
"Probably the biggest [lesson] I'd say is all the different
systems in WOW that do not very easily let you play with the people you
want to play with," said Pardo. "They are all things that have very
good gameplay reasons why they exist, but they really prevent people
from playing with who they want, when they want. And that's something
we're thinking very deeply about all the time with new MMO. And not to
say we're going to solve them all across the board, but we're
definitely thinking about them a lot."
"There's a lot of people working on the new game who have also
worked on World of Warcraft," Kaplan added. "So there's a lot of
talented individuals from a technology standpoint, from a process
standpoint, how to build a game like this, how to position ourselves
for a stable launch after going through the experience of the original
WOW launch. And then there's also a lot of thing that are hard to
narrow in on, more in this cloud of general design philosophy, of
understanding what players want and the different player types."
Warcraft for the next 10 millenniaWith the Warcraft
franchise now firmly grounded in the MMORPG scene, some longtime fans
of the series are wondering whether it will ever return to its RTS
roots. According to Pardo, Blizzard does not consider itself locked
into the MMORPG genre with Warcraft.
"We have a very different view with our franchises," Pardo said. "With
Warcraft, we started trying to deviate out of that, back in the
Warcraft Adventures days. I think it was around that time period that
we started seeing these as intellectual properties. They are worlds,
they are franchises, they are not specific to a game or even a game
genre for that matter. If we had unlimited Blizzard teams to draw upon,
I think [Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo] could support all kinds of
different game genres within them."
Pardo also believes that, just as the company will soon have
multiple MMORPGs, it wouldn't present a problem to have real-time
strategy efforts like Starcraft II and Warcraft IV--were it to be
made--in the company's portfolio. The secret lies in differentiating
the games enough from one another to create different play experiences.
"When we started developing Warcraft III, we were very
strategically deviating from what we had done before," he said. "We
wanted to try to come up with an RTS game that had a little bit more of
an RPG feel to it, a game that relied more on micromanagement than
macromanagement, really had more of a focus on smaller numbers of
units. These were all very specific decisions that we made, and even
when we were making them, we knew that when we came back to the
Starcraft franchise, we were going to go back more to the old style of
faster paced games."
"And that's not because we thought Warcraft III was wrong," he
continued. "It was because we were deviating the RTS genre into almost
subgenres, at least within Blizzard. If we ever did go back and decide
to do, let's say, a Warcraft IV, I would guess we'd probably go back
toward the Warcraft III model, or more toward the hero model, rather
than continue to follow down the Starcraft II way."
Pardo also noted that the things preventing Warcraft IV to be
made is the time, resources, and passion to execute. "Let's say when
the Starcraft II team finishes up, they decide that they wanted to make
[canceled action spin-off] Starcraft: Ghost. We'd probably be
supportive of that," he said. "If they decide they want to make
Warcraft IV, we'd be supportive of that. Something new? That'd be fine,
too."
The Lich King has been named as one possible star of the forthcoming Warcraft film.
Beyond that, Pardo noted that Warcraft isn't even bound by the RTS
and MMORPG genres, saying that they consider new ways to experience the
franchise "all the time." He also said that Blizzard would be open to
giving players the opportunity to go more hands-on with any of the
various events along Warcraft's reaching 10,000 year timeline.
"If we ever made a World of Warcraft II, Warcraft IV, or, I don't know,
Warcraft Legends, I can see us doing all kinds of interesting things,"
he said. "Again, if the right idea was out there, I could totally see
us jumping around the timeline if we thought that was right. Let's just
say we decided to make an, I don't know, Dragon Age/Mass Effect-style
RPG, but we wanted to tell the story back around the time of Medivh. We
certainly could do that if there was passion around that and was
exciting. Whether or not I foresee that, it kind of falls back in that
bucket of "really cool idea." We'd need a team that was really
passionate about doing it."
For Pardo personally, the events surrounding the opening of the
Dark Portal are a particularly compelling event in the Warcraft
continuum. "If you think of that seminal moment around the Warcraft
franchise, it's really that opening of the Dark Portal, right?" he
said. "That's the event that probably defines our universe more than
other fantasy universe, that moment where the two worlds collided,
because that's really what started making Warcraft, Warcraft. So I
think that's a really interesting time period. A lot of the exploration
of the prehistory of the Night Elves and the time period of Illidan and
Tyrande and Malfurion, I think that's a really interesting time period,
but there are a lot of interesting ones."
Regardless of where the Warcraft franchise goes, the future
remains promising. In July, Blizzard announced that it would be
extending the Warcraft franchise to the silver screen, signing on
Spider-Man helmer Sam Raimi to direct and
Saving Private Ryan scribe Robert Rodat to write the screenplay. While details on the film have yet to emerge, rumors indicate that the plot may adhere closely to WOW's Wrath of the Lich King expansion, chronicling the life and times of Arthas Menethil, better known as one half of the demonic Lich King.
And, of course, the lights will remain on for some time to come in World of Warcraft.
"It would be kind of the worst thing ever if we weren't working on it
five years from now, because it would mean that we had done something
horribly wrong or we didn't achieve our goals," Kaplan said. "I'm
hopeful that we'll be having this conversation another five years or 10
years from now."
