MTV: The post-launch Q&A with Jeff Kaplan

Everybody is abuzz with World of Warcraft‘s Burning Crusade expansion these days. And for guys like game designer Jeff Kaplan, it means a recently concluded interview with the MTV crew. In the conversation that took place, Jeff began by reiterating on some of the more interesting events that took place at the launch sites, such as the fans in Universal City asking for a “Tigole” autograph – his in-game name – instead of his real name.

Strange events aside, the crew interviewed Kaplan on his current “What’s next?” itinerary, which included a look at what made Burning Crusade a step up from competing MMORPGs. “One of the core tenets of WoW design philosophy is to not design around super-long extended-play sessions,” Kaplan said regarding TBC’s revamped gameplay.

We really focused on the winged-dungeon approach. That means they’ve made areas designed for players to quickly get in and out, knocking through one 45-minute wing at a time. We felt that gave people the option of doing a bite-size chunk of content on their own time, and should they choose to take four or five bites in a night, that’s kind of a personal decision.

Moving on with the interview, they also delved into the upcoming success of another MMO – Second Life. Instead of using a game developer-controlled atmosphere, Second Life literally puts a blank check in the player’s hands with regards to creativity. What was Kaplan’s outlook on this MMORPG, which followed a very different design philosophy from WoW?

Obviously some of the elements of Second Life at this point couldn’t be integrated into a game like World of Warcraft. It’s a very different system, and it would probably be a shock to that system. But should we ever work on a future project that was similar, there’s a lot of lessons we could learn from that.

On a related note to this, Kaplan was also excited about other design concepts he picked from a personal favorite: Animal Crossing. As he reiterated:

I want to make sure that when we introduce player housing to World of Warcraft we do it right and give the feature the credit that it deserves, which is a massive amount of production time on the programming, design and art time. It’s something we actually wanted to do for the original shipping game.

And what about the rumors of WoW hitting the console scene?, “We are not anywhere close to being on console,” Kaplan said regarding the matter. You heard straight, Cartman. For the rest of the interview, which will be covering other hot matters like “The Sword of a Thousand Truths,” view the read link.

Everybody is abuzz with World of Warcraft‘s Burning Crusade expansion these days. And for guys like game designer Jeff Kaplan, it means a recently concluded interview with the MTV crew. In the conversation that took place, Jeff began by reiterating on some of the more interesting events that took place at the launch sites, such as the fans in Universal City asking for a “Tigole” autograph – his in-game name – instead of his real name.

Strange events aside, the crew interviewed Kaplan on his current “What’s next?” itinerary, which included a look at what made Burning Crusade a step up from competing MMORPGs. “One of the core tenets of WoW design philosophy is to not design around super-long extended-play sessions,” Kaplan said regarding TBC’s revamped gameplay.

We really focused on the winged-dungeon approach. That means they’ve made areas designed for players to quickly get in and out, knocking through one 45-minute wing at a time. We felt that gave people the option of doing a bite-size chunk of content on their own time, and should they choose to take four or five bites in a night, that’s kind of a personal decision.

Moving on with the interview, they also delved into the upcoming success of another MMO – Second Life. Instead of using a game developer-controlled atmosphere, Second Life literally puts a blank check in the player’s hands with regards to creativity. What was Kaplan’s outlook on this MMORPG, which followed a very different design philosophy from WoW?

Obviously some of the elements of Second Life at this point couldn’t be integrated into a game like World of Warcraft. It’s a very different system, and it would probably be a shock to that system. But should we ever work on a future project that was similar, there’s a lot of lessons we could learn from that.

On a related note to this, Kaplan was also excited about other design concepts he picked from a personal favorite: Animal Crossing. As he reiterated:

I want to make sure that when we introduce player housing to World of Warcraft we do it right and give the feature the credit that it deserves, which is a massive amount of production time on the programming, design and art time. It’s something we actually wanted to do for the original shipping game.

And what about the rumors of WoW hitting the console scene?, “We are not anywhere close to being on console,” Kaplan said regarding the matter. You heard straight, Cartman. For the rest of the interview, which will be covering other hot matters like “The Sword of a Thousand Truths,” view the read link.