Rob Pardo talks about free WoW, Starcraft, Activision
by Natalie Mootz 
Jun 24th 2008 at 7:00PM
Rob Pardo, SVP of game design at Blizzard, gave the keynote speech at the Game Developer's Conference held in Paris this week. Here are some WoW-related tidbits from his talk and the Q&A session held afterward.About WoW
- WoW was first conceived as free to play, being supported by advertising. However, the non-subscription business model couldn't support Blizzard's goals for the game.
- Pardo suggested that Blizzard approached the MMO genre "very naively, or else we might not have done it."
- He once hired a WoW player who sent him a 16-page diatribe about the game because, even though the guy was wrong, "he was passionate" about improving the game.
- Blizzard has no problem putting intellectual properties on hold for a while, hence the wait for a Starcraft game. Pardo says that they wanted to make a real-time strategy game but were "tired of green-skinned orcs" so they moved away from Warcraft to Starcraft.
- Starcraft 2 is at a playable stage in its development and he's having a lot of fun with it.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items, Interviews
