Blizzard Says Warcraft Is “Underutilized” and Plans to Change That

Game Director Ion Hazzikostas and Executive Producer Holly Longdale sat down with The Game Business’ Christopher Dring to talk about Midnight, Microsoft, expanding its IP, and more!

Warcraft’s IP Is “Underutilized”

Holly Longdale believes that the Warcraft IP is going to grow more. Her goal is to bring it to as many people as possible in different ways.

“We want everybody to be able to play WoW,” she said.

“I will say this for myself. I think Warcraft itself is poised for growth. It’s a fantastic IP. I think, in my humble opinion, it’s been underutilized and I just want to bring it to as many people as possible.”

She goes onto add that the goal is to make it more approachable. Longdale says they want to take advantage of 20 years worth of stories both told and not told, and bring them out in broader ways.

“We want people to come in and hang out and have birthdays, have weddings, have raids, grand adventures, play with their friends, meet new friends, like all the things that traditionally for over 20 years World of Warcraft has been good at.

“And at the same time, we want to take advantage of 20 years of stories that have been told and not told and start bringing it out to the world in a broader way. Like, that’s my goal and vision.

WoW’s Ageing Playerbase

Gamers across the industry don’t have as much time anymore, so adding more stuff to make the game approachable while creating evergreen content that you can do whenever you have time is one of Blizzard’s goals.

They want World of Warcraft to be a “third space”, and want the content to reflect it. Guild raid nights were a way for players to find times to make WoW a part of their lives and play with friends and family, but Blizzard didn’t do much for the more casual players. They’re happy with the work housing and delves have done to add more approachable content to the game.

You can see her full comments below:

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Holly Longdale on whether World of Warcraft’s core players have less time to play

“A thousand percent. And I think it’s interesting, too, that there’s so many aspects of this game that do largely address that. For example, when we look at guilds and weekly raiding, having a schedule you know you can kind of build some of your life around enables that kind of gameplay, which I think is fantastic.

We didn’t necessarily do that at the casual end of the scale. And that’s why we’re really excited about housing. Given that housing reaches through every gaming segment we have in our game between casual and people who, you know, we lovingly call them mid-core. And it is about time.

We’ve got a lot of players that say to us, I want to play with my kids now. Like, give me something I can do and play with my kids or play with my partner. We have so many players and now the ability to really dig into how they play.

It’s given us a lot of really interesting opportunities to be able to, you know, broaden to Ian’s point. We are aiming at a game that’s approachable for anyone. This idea of a third space that you can come and hang out and it’s not necessarily just standing there staring at each other.

You can go do housing, you can go collect things for housing, you can go raid, you can dungeon. We’re looking at different ways with the time you have available to have options that feel meaningful. Delves are another part of that. I’m really proud of how the team has crafted a response to how players are changing and what they’re asking for.”