WoW hits 10 million

How do you think World of Warcraft has managed to attract so many gamers?

One of our goals with World of Warcraft was to make the game as accessible as possible, and many design decisions – such as the interface, the quest system, and the visual style – were made with this in mind.

We strive to make all of our games easy to learn but hard to master, because we feel this makes for an especially rewarding and entertaining experience. And World of Warcraft is no exception.

In addition, it helped that we had ten years of Warcraft history to draw on in creating the game. Millions of players around the world were already familiar with the Warcraft universe from our previously released Warcraft games and novels, so this lent a depth to the game’s setting that would have been a greater challenge to achieve otherwise.

Despite all of this, though, World of Warcraft still attracted far more players than we had ever anticipated, and much of that is a credit to the game’s strong community.

Do you think that WoW will remain in the charts for some time to come, giving it a longer lifespan than is usual for a single title?

We’ve always believed in supporting our games after launch for as long as players want to play them, and that has led to great longevity for each one.

Similarly, we’ve seen previous MMORPG titles enjoy long life spans, so we’re prepared to support World of Warcraft with compelling new content for many years to come.

Have you got any any plans for further titles in the franchise?

Our focus is on providing ongoing content updates and expansions for World of Warcraft, including the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion, for the foreseeable future.

We have a very lengthy list of ideas and features we’d like to get to, not to mention a sizeable community requesting even more, so it’s going to be a good while before we can even begin to think about the possibility of future titles in the franchise.