No one at Blizzard ever expected World of Warcraft to become the phenomenon it has, according to Bill Roper.
"I remember a meeting at Blizzard where we were hoping we'd be able to sell a million copies of the game", Roper, former Blizzard North employee and now Flagship Studios CEO, has told CVG in an interview.
"You have to remember," Roper continued, "that the most successful American MMORPG at that time was EverQuest with about 500,000 players. It would have been impossible to predict that World of Warcraft would take off as a cultural phenomenon as it did, but those are the kind of surprises that you like to get in life."
World of Warcraft launched in late 2004/early 2005 (depending in which part of the world you lived), and has since gone on to charm over a ludicrously massive nine million players.
But Roper, who quit Blizzard in 2003, says he has no regrets that he wasn't around at the company when the game took off.
"As for regrets, I could never regret starting Flagship and Ping0 and building what we have here. The string of games I worked on at Blizzard makes me proud", he told us.
"And while World of Warcraft was perhaps the one that eclipsed them all, its success was also built upon the work we all did over the years on the reputation of Blizzard and Warcraft as a universe. I am glad that the game has done what it has because it is good for the industry as a whole."
While I praise Blizzard on their success (I read somewhere that more people play WoW than live in Switzerland ), and giving the player base what they want, IMO World of Warcraft was the single worst thing to happen to the MMO industry.
As a result of it's success, EVERY damn game tries to emulate what it does in an attempt to entice some of it's user base away. Leave WoW to be WoW and make your own damn games (I'm looking at you, SOE).
I have to say well done to Blizzard. Before World Of Warcraft came along, MMO were a niche product and Blizzard has really made that genre more mainstream. Personally I can't play more than a couple of months before needing a long break due to the repetitive nature of the game but I always enjoy my time when I return. The game has a great community and its only going to get bigger when the next expansion is released. My only negative is that the monthly subscription could be cheaper. I know alot of my friends are interested in playing this game but Ł9 a month is too much for them. If it was something like Ł5 it would be much more appealing for new-comers.
While I praise Blizzard on their success (I read somewhere that more people play WoW than live in Switzerland ), and giving the player base what they want, IMO World of Warcraft was the single worst thing to happen to the MMO industry.
As a result of it's success, EVERY damn game tries to emulate what it does in an attempt to entice some of it's user base away. Leave WoW to be WoW and make your own damn games (I'm looking at you, SOE).
Just like CounterStrike in the old days, WoW is perfect for keeping all the annoying spoiler-players away from whatever I'm playing at the time. Predictable cashcow games keep the underground alive, by keeping away most of the lamers
No, really, who can argue with success and tons of dollar bills!? Much respect to Blizzard for reading the table and earning the big bucks - anyone can call WoW a bad game, but then again, if 9 million people gave me a few quid every month, they could call *me* whatever they wanted as well.
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), and giving the player base what they want, IMO World of Warcraft was the single worst thing to happen to the MMO industry.
