Blizzard Entertainment VP of game design Rob Pardo opened the Austin Game Conference this morning with a keynote exploring the decisions and management style that has led World of Warcraft, Blizzard?s flagship massively multiplayer online game, to precedent-setting success in the genre.
With over 6 million subscribers around the world, World of Warcraft has become the most successful MMO ever to come out of the Western hemisphere. Pardo covered a few of the core group of philosophies and approaches that the Blizzard team took in developing their game.
Blizzard, according to Pardo, envisions their market as a donut, with the core players at the center and a more casual audience around that. "It?s increasingly important to appeal to both," Pardo said. Blizzard leans heavily on the "easy to learn, difficult to master" mantra, Pardo said, but also does things like lowering system requirements to build a broader audience.
To maximize both depth and accessibility, the company concentrates on depth first and accessibility later, Pardo said. "First we try to come up with what are really cool things, things that will get people to play for two ro three years. Then we actually start talking about accessibility, how to make the content approachable and easy to learn. But it starts with depth first."
Accessibility decisions always start with the user interface, Pardo said. "One of the first pitfalls that happens in user interface development is trying to make everything visible on the interface itself. We streamline our interface. We present information that?s really important in the heads-up display, but there are a lot of other things we put in that actually are a little more difficult to get at." Accessing the auction house was an example Pardo gave: rather than making it a button on the user interface, WoW?s auction houses are of course accessed by speaking with an NPC, thus making the user interface itself simpler and more accessible, without sacrificing depth of gameplay.
Pardo gave a number of examples of design decisions that had been made to support more depth in the game. Rather than create a plethora of character classes, for instance, Blizzard wanted to make each class distinct and recognizable, so that players would get deeply involved with each one. Instanced dungeons were also designed to provide additional depth. "The dungeons are there to serve the core markets, not the casual players," Pardo said. "But they do become the bridge for casual players to become more hardcore."
One of the other mantras Blizzard works by, according to Pardo is that of "concentraed coolness," which helped lead to the smaller number of character classes. A lot of initial class ideas came from Warcraft 3, Pardo said, but rather than have a Mountain King, a Blademaster and a Tauren Chieftain class, for instance, WoW combines abilities of all three into a single, deeper class so that players are more engaged with each class on its own basis.
The company also tried to remain conscious of trade-offs in game design, and the fact that "every decisions costs" in one way or another. "All game designers are very greedy by nature," Pardo said. "We want to have every cool feature, and we want to serve every market. The reality is that almost every design decision comes with a trade-off. Nothing in game design is black and white, it?s all shades of grey."
"Whenever we can, we try not to compromise, but that usually results in both sides being unhappy with the result," Pardo continued. Pardo raised the example of instanced dungeons, which in World of Warcraft are not normally soloable. "We chose to make dungeons hardcore. We chose not to have solo instances and dungeons. It would just have compromised the gamplay."
Pardo listed a number of specific trade-offs that World of Warcraft had been forced to make. One was in terms of system requirements, and an artistic style that was not in line with the hyper-realistic trend of games like Crysis, for instnace. "We would rather have lower system requirements to reach a broader market. This means having a stylized art style that is resistant to looking dated" even as hardware becomes more powerful.
"That generates lots of negative press," Pardo admitted. "Our screenshots are never going to compare to something like Crysis. Crysis-level graphics are easier to market, and developers like to make that kind of art. Plus the press likes it. But ultimately, I think we?re proven that the gameplay is really what matters, and if you have cool stylized art, that?s enough."
Another trade-off was in the area of transportation-related game mechanics, specifically, the need to use "taxis" to get around the world of World of Warcraft, rather than being able to teleport at will. "The use of flight taxis to maintain integrity limits random teleportation and instant access, but it makes the world feel more epic," Pardo said. "That way, you can have remote areas, like N?Goro Crater, where we very consciously did not put a flight path. We really wanted it to have this Land of the Lost feeling. But of course players get very frustrated with it. They call it World of Walkcraft, or World of Travelcraft. But on the other side, it creates a lot more social connectivity, which is what MMOs are all about."
High-level gear was another area where compromises were necessary. "It was really cool in Ultima Online to make your own character or guild with your own colors and your own look," Pardo said. "But there?s only so much art time that you have, and only so many artists. We chose instead to concentrate that coolnees on making really cool prestige armor sets that came from specific places. We allowed raiders and more hardcore players to get that prestige and reward, so that you can recognize where someone has been. With customizable gear, everyone can look different. But you can?t have both."
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