14 DAY TRIAL // In just two weeks, Blizzard Entertainment's massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft celebrates its tenth anniversary, and those who think that this is truly a feat will no doubt be surprised by the company's plans to still have the game around in ten years' time.
Speaking to CNET, Lead Designer Ion Hazzikostas said that he was absolutely certain that World of Warcraft would go on to live another ten years at least, looking forward to the title's 20th anniversary.
"I definitely can't tell you what our 20th anniversary is going to be. I can tell you there is definitely going to be one. I have no doubt saying that," the designer stated.
"We're definitely planning into the future, talking about what the next expansion is going to be, and what the one after that is going to be, just in terms of big picture storylines, how can we start setting things up now, where do we want the game to go. Ultimately it's all one step at a time," he added.
One of the steps was increasing the size of the development team to a record high, and work is already underway for the title's next expansion, even ahead of Warlords of Draenor's release.
Blizzard has big plans for World of Warcraft
Although the subscriber base of the legendary MMO is nowhere near the 12 million mark reached during its peak, the figures managed to rebound from under 7 million at the beginning of the year, to 7.4 million at the end of September, showing a renewed interest in the plight of the denizens of Azeroth.
The game completely dominated the massively multiplayer online role-playing game genre since its release back in 2004, and many of its fans confess that no other title can rise up to the level of polish and content quality that World of Warcraft offers.
Hazzikostas opines that one of the key factors of the game's popularity is the fact that the development team has continually increased the game's accessibility and breadth of content over the years, enhancing the experience as the user base changed over the years.
Many of the players who picked up the game at release are now much busier, trying to fit in an hour of game time after their responsibilities have been taken care of, and as such the game had to adapt and shift the experience from what it was 10 years ago, and will continue to do so.
