Q: That's the basis of the plan to unite communities from all of
Blizzard's titles more?
Frank Pearce: We'd definitely like to be able to bring the
entire Blizzard community together online. Battlenet would certinaly be a good
tool to make that happen. The WoW community is massive, the StarCraft community
is large as well.
We'll have to see - we probably won't be able to implement all the plans that
we have in mind when StarCraft II launches, but with Battlenet being an online
destination, we can add features as we go.
Q: Do you see lots of crossover between the different players of your
games?
Frank Pearce: We did some research, and I can't remember
which direction we did it in - whether it was StarCraft players that played WoW
or vice versa - and there's a fair amount of overlap.
Q: But part of the appeal must be the ability to drive players from
one game to another?
Frank Pearce: Yeah, definitely. With a game like StarCraft a
match only takes 15 or 20 minutes, and you could fit one of those in while
you're waiting for your raid to form.
Q: How interesting has it been for you to watch the success of World
of Warcraft?
Frank Pearce: I don't know if I'd describe it as
"interesting" as much as exhausting. We've got almost 3000 employees worldwide
now, and the majority of that growth is due to the success of World of Warcraft.
As a company we've found ourselves spread very, very thin - because the World
of Warcraft community has a voracious appetite for content. That development
team is 130 people, they're working on content patches, they're working on an
expansion set, they've got their hands full - and then we've got the other
development teams that we need to continue to support as well.
So it's great, it's a great problem to have, but it is a lot of work. We've
learned a lot, made a lot of mistakes along the way. It's been good experience
for us, I wouldn't say that we've regretted it... but "interesting" isn't how
we'd describe it necessarily.
German Questioned Over Gamer's Murder
