Venturebeat sat down with J. Allen Brack to discuss Blizzard, WoW over the past 15 years, and the future. Here is a summary, and be sure to read the full interview here
- J. Allen Brack has played all Blizzard franchises and is a true fan of everything the company does, and Warcraft is close to his heart because it is the franchise he has worked the longest on and played the most.
- When World of Warcraft launched, the company had 300 employees. Today they have 4,300.
- World of Warcraft's success allowed the company to do many different and amazing things and it's hard to imagine the size and scope and scale of some of their games without World of Warcraft.
- The team started discussing what to do for the 15th anniversary about 2 yeard ago and wanted to do something broader than the 10th anniversary statue.
- Brack sees classic as part of the World of Warcraft pillar and not its own new pillar.
- J. Allen Brack's transition into president of Blizzard has been challenging, but the most important piece is what the teams are working on and the future of the franchises. The company currently has more games being worked on now than at any other time in Blizzard's history, and they believe in the future of their franchises.
- There isn't a requirement that every game created by Blizzard work and speak to every single player. Their goal is to get you to try new things and give them a chance while still providing a good, authentic Blizzard experience.
- Blizzard loved working on Diablo III for the switch and think both Nintendo and the console are great.
- It's not ridiculous to assume that Blizzard could work with Nintendo on other projects.
- Some of Brack's best WoW experiences are beating Ragnaros and Kael'thas as a guild for the first time, or completing the Undying achievement from Naxxramas 10-man.
- Creating the Legion expansion was one of his favorite highlights working on WoW. Bringing back Illidan and having diffrent artifact weapons and the world quest system and playing it after it was done is an awesome memory.
- Brack agrees that Mists of Pandaria was one of the most misunderstood expansions that now is looked back on fondly.
- The team for a long time wanted to have a class or a race where you chose whether you went Horde or Alliance, and it was cool to be able to do that in Mists of Pandaria.
- Brack believes people will have their favorite expansion depending on when they joined, who their friends were at the time, and what different content they experienced.
- The team believes the two-year expansion cycle with three major content patches is the right thing right now.
- The big inflection this year is going to be Classic. It's a huge piece that's going to be midway through the cycle.
- The team is always open to thinking about different things that they could have done or could do, and what is the right thing from a development standpoint.
- The team did think about making Argus its own expansion, but think the way that they ended up doing it turned out pretty good.
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