Exclusive: Joystiq interviews WoW's Jeff Kaplan
Earlier this week, I sat down with Jeff Kaplan, lead designer for World of Warcraft, to chat about the state of the highly successful MMO and what was in store with the coming expansion, The Burning Crusade.
Context & Ripple Effects
Blizzard announced The Burning Crusade expansion back in October 2005, and this Joystiq sit-down with lead designer Jeff Kaplan is the first extended designer-level look at what that expansion actually contains for a game whose customer base was still growing across North America, Europe, and Asia as of late 2005.
The interview lands in a competitive moment: Sony Online Entertainment's John Smedley had given his own Q&A on Star Wars Galaxies' troubles eight months earlier, making Kaplan's confident read on WoW's state a pointed contrast between the market leader and its struggling rival.
First-order effects
- Players get direct, designer-sourced detail on Burning Crusade's content ahead of launch, sharpening expectations for the expansion Blizzard has been promoting since October 2005.
Second-order effects
- SOE and other subscription-MMO operators face the same comparison Kaplan's interview invites: WoW's expanding content pipeline against rivals still managing post-launch fallout, raising the bar for competitor communication about roadmaps.
Third-order effects
- If lead-designer interviews become standard practice around expansion cycles, MMO marketing shifts from publisher press releases toward named designers as public faces of live games — a structure Blizzard itself would carry forward.
The trend: Subscription MMOs are consolidating around expansion-driven retention, with WoW's growth forcing rivals like SOE to compete on content cadence rather than launch novelty.