“Epic Quest Expansion: How WoW Developers Nearly Tripled Their Original Vision”

Two decades after its launch, it can be easy to overlook that the MMO giant World of Warcraft had to begin somewhere, too, and part of that involved creating over ten times the number of quests they initially anticipated to keep their playtesters satisfied.

In a discussion featured in Edge issue 405, former executive vice president of game design at Blizzard Rob Pardo shared insights about the significant demand for quests during WoW’s playtesting phase. Throughout the initial playtesting, everything had initially proceeded smoothly “until playtesters depleted the available quests, at which point they exclaimed that the game felt ‘broken’.” For Pardo and the team, “the solution, naturally, was to simply increase the quantity.”

This was easier said than done, as the number of quests required was enormous compared to their early estimates. Pardo and his team ultimately produced “ten times the number of quests” than they had initially intended, leading to the current version of World of Warcraft offering an impressive 38,000 quests.

Part of this need for more quests stemmed from Blizzard’s ambition to rival EverQuest, the dominant MMO at the time, which Pardo had himself played before joining Blizzard. WoW was intended to be “more accessible and simpler for newcomers to enjoy,” and relied on word of mouth from elite guilds in EverQuest to generate buzz. “If we could craft a game that was intricate enough for those kinds of players, we’d have something truly special that could endure for a long time,” Pardo recalled.

And indeed, it has thrived for a long time. Two decades later, World of Warcraft remains the undisputed leader in the MMORPG genre and has undoubtedly…