In an interview with Edge magazine, World of Warcraft co-designer Rob Pardo talked about how Blizzard views metric and content creation in their juggernaut MMO. When asked about WoW’s impressive player retention numbers, Pardo downplayed the effect of such metrics on the company internally.
“I don't ever pay attention to numbers like that. Sure, that sounds great, but I'm not very metrics driven,” said Pardo. “I guess a better way of looking at it is to ask why people quit the game. I guess the way we look at it is this: we're the opposite of Zynga, in that they would always take the perspective of looking at that number and how they can inch it up a few percent by implementing changes; then they'd look back at the number.”
“We don't really measure ourselves like that. We do look at numbers occasionally but it doesn't drive us all the time. Our design is driven by what we think is going to be fun. Then we put it to the company and out to the public, and whether we feel that we've been successful. We look at larger numbers like how many players are playing,” he explained.
Pardo says that sometimes developers can lose the forest for the trees by only looking at metrics.
“I think metrics are an awesome tool and in some ways I do wish we used them more, but I don't think it should be the thing that drives your creative decisions,” he said. “Games that are driven entirely by metrics might have some success, but all you're really doing with that is giving players what they want now. Metrics never predict what players want tomorrow.”
When asked about World of Warcraft’s six-year reign and continual development, Pardo likens the development cycle to creating a long-running television show.
“I certainly think you always have the opportunity to keep an MMOG going for a very long time, and I always compare it to how most games are like making a feature film, whereas an MMOG is more like running a TV series,” Pardo said. “Some series last a few seasons and some go on for 26 seasons. Now can WOW become more like that? I hope so.”
“We do have the ability to continually add to the game and evolve it, but the trickier challenge is that eventually people are going to want to move onto new types of entertainment. And simply from a graphical point of view, as time goes on WOW will come to look increasingly dated. I think it's very resistant to that due to the style we chose, but five to ten years from now there's going to be some amazing looking games.”
