Current Warcraft director Ion Hazzikostas explained why three expansions (all part of the Worldsoul saga) were announced at BlizzCon last week.

Hazzikostas explained in detail to PCGamer that if they were vocal about their plans, they could happen, even though the board was afraid of it: “There were definitely a few who were like, ‘Wait, are we really going to show all the logos? We’re going to tell them all this? What do you mean, Chris? [Referring to executive creative director Chris Metzen’s debut at the opening ceremony of the expansions, all of which are expected to be fully implemented by 2030]. You want to say where that will be?

In order to sustain and even grow World of Warcraft, which we’ve been able to do, we have to evolve. We have to look at not only how we’ve done things in the past, but how our players are playing today and what they want. This has been our plan for a long time. Saying it out loud makes it real, and it signals to players that we have a big, ambitious plan for the future of this game, and lets them know that, but it also helps set expectations that the story of The War Within will obviously have a satisfying internal conclusion, but not a complete conclusion because it’s part of a larger arc.

And so again, better to have set that expectation from the beginning than to get to the end of War Within and have it feel like a little bit of a bait and switch when all the threads aren’t tied up and everything is resolved – because it’s not going to be. When you went into [Marvel’s Avengers] Infinity War knowing that Endgame would follow, you weren’t upset that it ended on a cliffhanger, which in some ways you might have been. I think that clarity helps the whole development team tremendously from a creative standpoint. Knowing with certainty where we’re going allows us to do deeper storytelling and world building today, knowing with certainty that we’re foreshadowing, we’re planting seeds that will lead somewhere. And it’s exciting across the board. Four zones, eight dungeons, raids, new levels… That’s what an expansion is, and that’s not something we’re trying to redefine here,” Hazzikostas said.

Transparency is respectable. Just stick to quality.

Source: PCGamer