Blizzard Entertainment Interview
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A WoW dungeon isn't just a cave with monsters, it's always a temple for someone who's been kicked out, or the bottom layers are occupied... is that a carefully considered template?
Rob: It's not, actually. We have an organic model for game development. The lore informs the game mechanics, and the game mechanics inform the lore... we get a lot of back and forth. We come up with many ideas that we don't present to the players, but it makes our job easier, and ultimately delivers a better product, because it feels cohesive.
Even if you don't know the lore behind a dungeon, at least it feels like there is lore. That there's a story behind it. It feels like someone really considered why these different factions are inside the dungeon and why these bad guys live in this room... We don't expect every player to read up on every quest, and read up on all the lore of, say, Auchindoun. I still really believe, though, that it comes across if you don't read a single word of text.
You have around 140 people working on WoW now...
Rob: It is big... Every time we go to a new tier of team size it does cause us ripples for a time. We have to come up with a new way to build a creative and organisational structure for the team. Certainly, the creative process for a 140 person team is vastly different from a 20 person team.
