2009 Is The Year... Of Blizzard

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Brace yourself. Because 2009 is Blizzard's year.

In 2002, Blizzard dedicated their entire development staff to producing World of Warcraft. Other projects were put on the back burner as the sheer scale of MMO development was realised. But in 2009, they have a triple threat to unleash. Diablo III: the sequel to the clickiest RPGs in history. Starcraft II: the sequel to the game that became Korea's national freaking sport. And more WoW - no expansion packs, but more cool updates and ideas.

How do they do it? We caught up with the team fresh from the launch of Lich King, to find out.

They're experienced
No one seems to leave Blizzard any more. The result is a shared knowledge of game design that's being imbued into a new generation of recruits. Consider Rob Pardo, one-time designer on Starcraft, now heading all of their games. He's sharing his experience with staff from the top-down. "I spend more time on Starcraft II than on, say, the World of Warcraft team now. On Diablo III, I'm the executive producer. Jay (Wilson - lead designer) always wants me in more design meetings." Or look at the staff leading their next projects: Jay Wilson, leading Diablo III production, headed up production of Company of Heroes and Dawn of War games. Dustin Browder, leading Starcraft II, was a lynchpin of the Command & Conquer teams. These guys have got form.

They want us to play together
Truism of PC gaming number one: singleplayer games get the headlines. But multiplayer games: they're the ones with sticking power. Half-Life was great, but we played Counter-Strike each and every night for a year. Blizzard get it.

"All of our games have longevity to them because they're multiplayer focused," says Rob. "That spawns very large communities. Communities about any form of entertainment will grow and feed off of each other." That has an interesting side-effect: it tends to stave off piracy. "The reason we've been successful on PC is because we offer a compelling multiplayer component. If you want to play on Battle.net (Blizzard's online matchmaking service), then you have to have a legitimate CD key. It just cuts out all the piracy right there."

They cross cultural boundaries
Truism number two of PC Gaming: Blizzard games sell well in America, Europe and Asia. But have you ever considered why?

It's because Blizzard take care to adapt the game, and their business, to the target country. "You can't just call it the Asian market," explains Rob. "China is different from Korea which is different from Japan... One of the reasons we're successful globally is that we build the business model around the game for the region. We're not trying to ship boxes over to Korea, because it just doesn't succeed in that market. At the same time, the business models that work in Korea aren't a magic bullet for the American market. For example: subscription games were a risk for us at the time. Six years later, you know there will be another blockbuster that establishes in the customer's mind that it's OK to pay for games in this way."

They're not afraid of nicking the best ideas
Blizzard is at its best when it takes an established genre of gaming and applies its own spin, spit and polish. Warcraft was born from looking at the successes of Dune 2 and Command & Conquer. World of Warcraft came from staff members becoming hooked on EverQuest. Paul Sams is the CEO of Blizzard, and he's not ashamed of their magpie approach to game design. "We want to evolve ideas to a higher level than they were originally intended," he says. "We'll always see things other developers have done and say 'that system was pretty bitching, but it could have been better, and here's how. And now we're going to show you.'"

They're not afraid of competition
Ask Paul about the success of new MMO launches like Warhammer Online and Age of Conan, and he'll quote some remarkable statistics. Like, the fact that 60% of Conan players that quit World of Warcraft to play Conan came back to Blizzard's home. 50% of Warhammer players came back to WoW. "We think that having additional competition is positive for this industry and this genre," he explains. "You know what, you may not be into dwarves and orcs and elves. You might be interested in Star Wars, or Warhammer, or Conan. But our feeling is that once you try this type of game, it's so compelling that you're going to dig it, and you're going to continue to play it. Once you like it, we think you'll want to try other games. Our belief is that when you do... let's say we have a high confidence in the quality of our product."

Rob takes it further. "Back when we were developing WoW, I always thought that Star Wars: Galaxies was going to beat us to the punch. Everyone was really excited about it. But somehow, it didn't bite. We were able to come in and be the top MMO... But we'll get knocked off. I just hope that we knock ourselves off."

PC Gamer