Interview: Blizzard's J Allen Brack on WoW's 10-million player population

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It wasn't too long ago that World of Warcraft's servers reached a literally epic total population of 10 million players. Blizzard is certainly happy about their title's success (as was Vivendi), along with company producer J Allen Brack. The man was recently called in for an interview to see how he's taking to WoW's success, and as to what plans Blizzard has in the near future.

To start things off, Brack offered his two cents on how he thinks Blizzard managed to gather such a large population. WoW, he explained, was designed to be as accommodating a game as possible even for players who were new to the MMORPG experience. But while WoW was easy to pick up, Brack further explained, it was very difficult to master.

Brack further explained that another reason WoW was such a hot seller was its foundations. The Warcraft universe is already familiar to gamers around the world thanks to its other game, novel and toy franchises - this certainly lent to the immersive experience that WoW boasts even compared to other MMOs. Not that Blizzard expected the game's success to be as big as it is now, as Brack explained:

Despite all of this, though, World of Warcraft still attracted far more players than we had ever anticipated, and much of that is a credit to the game's strong community.


Moving on to the matter of future content, Brack says that Blizzard is prepared to support the game for years to come. The focus for the moment will be on content updates, and expansions such as the much-awaited Wrath of the Lich King story arc.

On a slightly sad note, Brack did say that WoW may be the only title within the Warcraft universe that will be out for a while. As he explained:

We have a very lengthy list of ideas and features we d like to get to, not to mention a sizable community requesting even more, so it s going to be a good while before we can even begin to think about the possibility of future titles in the franchise.


That said, we certainly hope that WotLK is worth the wait - Blizz appears to be pulling out all the stops for this new expansion.