Blizzard bezorgd om hardcore WOW-fanbase

World of Warcraft's lead system designer Greg Street heeft laten weten dat Blizzard zich zorgen maakt over de impact van de veranderingen van de nieuwe World of Warcraft-uitbreiding Pandaria op long-term players. De uitbreiding bevat onder andere 'pets' en 'farming'.

"I worry about the perception. I think after BlizzCon we faced this misperception that we were somehow forsaking our hardcore players. Which is not at all what we were doing. There’s plenty of violence and sadness and death still going on in World of Warcraft. We’re not trying to dumb it down or shoot for a lower age demographic or anything like that. We’re just trying to offer more varied ways for players to play the games," aldus Street in een interview met Gamespy.

Street zei dat de gemaakte keuzes noodzakelijk waren voor het bieden van alternatieve gameplay:

"If someone logs in and says, ‘I’m tired of PvPing, I’m locked out of my raids for this week, but I still want to play,’ you can go work on your factions. We have seven factions that all have these little mini-games you can do rather than just ‘I’m gonna kill Furbolgs until I’m exalted.’ That’s not the kind of gameplay we can keep asking players to do year after year."

Lead quest designer Dave Kosak laat weten dat World of Warcraft ten alle tijden zijn core gameplay zal behouden:

"We’re not going to significantly change up WoW at any point in the future. I think there’s an expectation when you play WoW. Honestly, I think our combat game is really fun. When you get a quest to kill ten things, that lets you be your class, and you know exactly what to do, which means that you can concentrate on the story, concentrate on the atmosphere, concentrate on chatting with your friends. You can really be in the world."

World of Warcraft's laatste expansion, Mists of Pandaria, is nu in bèta.