We’re at the point now where every World of Warcraft expansion seems like it’s going to be the last one, but Blizzard’s lead designer Tom Chilton thinks there’s life in the old dog yet.
According to Chilton the development team for WoW has actually grown significantly over the last few years, and that means future expansions are not just on the way, but are on the way faster than ever before.
“By growing by 50 per cent, you don’t get people in off the street who can make content exactly in the way that we would want. There’s an acclimatization process,” Chilton explained to MCV. ”That has resulted in slowing us down. But in the long-term we are now positioned to release expansions more frequently.”
Reports might indicate that the WoW player base is shrinking, but at around 6.8 million subs it’s still by some way the most popular MMO around. New expansion Warlords of Draenor is clearly aimed at that core fan base and not beginners, but the next step for the team is to work out how to add new content without making the game so complex that newcomers feel too intimidated to jump in.
“The game can only get so complicated before it starts to collapse under its own weight, and becomes very cumbersome to do anything new with,” said Chilton. “So we are always trying to simplify the game, while at the same time add new things so that the total complexity does not get completely out of control. And you could already argue that the complexity of WoW is already huge. That can be overwhelming to new people coming in.”
World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor is out this November 13.
