20 years after its release, it's easy to forget that MMO titan World of Warcraft also had to start somewhere, and part of that was creating more than ten times more missions than they expected to keep their testers happy.
In an interview in Edge #405, former Blizzard EVP of Game Design Rob Pardo discussed the huge demand for quests during WoW's playtest phase. During early playtesting, things had initially gone well “until testers ran out of quests, at which point they reported that the game felt 'broken'.” For Pardo and the team, “the answer, of course, was to simply add more.”
This was easier said than done, as the number of missions they needed was astronomical compared to their initial estimates. Pardo and his team ended up creating “ten times the number of quests” they had originally planned, resulting in the current World of Warcraft offering a monumental 38,000 quests.
Part of this need for more quests came from Blizzard's desire for WoW to compete with EverQuest, the reigning MMO of the day, and a game Pardo had played before joining Blizzard. WoW was supposed to be “more accessible and easier for people to get into,” and relied on word of mouth from super guilds on EverQuest to generate interest. “If we could make a game deep enough for those types of players, we would have something really good that could last a long time,” Pardo recalled.
And it certainly lasted a long time. 20 years later, World of Warcraft is the undisputed king of the MMORPG space and has undoubtedly become one of the most iconic games of all time – not bad for a game that was initially intended to make just $1 million a month. .
Take a look at WoW features on our list of best MMORPG around right now.