rob-pardo posts

German site OnlineWelten spoke with Blizzard Senior VP Rob Pardo at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational last week. There was a lot of imprecise pondering about what it is that makes Blizzard so successful, but there was one specific tidbit that stood out in the interview.

OnlineWelten referenced some job adverts posted on Blizzard's company website -- adverts for jobs in a team working on a "Next-Gen MMO." Then came the question: is Diablo 3 the Next-Gen MMO? "No, it's obviously not, since it's not an MMO," said Pardo. "We have another development team ... there's still an uknown project."

So, just in case you were wondering, the Next-Gen MMO is still on. But we don't know a damned thing about it. We even once assumed that it was the project codenamed Hydra, but we recently discovered that Hydra was Diablo 3. So ... Galaxy of StarCraft? Sit tight.

[Via Shacknews]

Two Blizzard bigwigs -- SVP Rob Pardo and COO Paul Sams -- criticized Microsoft for not doing enough to support and propagate PC gaming in Windows, according to Gamasutra. At GDC Paris, Pardo said: "With Microsoft, I think they have a bit of lip service with PC gaming. They have their own game system now, so I don't think it's really in their best interest to support [PC]." He also suggested that Apple might step up to the plate that Microsoft has allegedly abandoned.

In a yet-to-be-published interview with Gamasutra, Sams continued where Pardo left off. "I kind of look at it and say to myself, and I think similarly to Rob, is that it would be great if they put more emphasis on the Windows operating system, certainly probably the most prominent operating system in the world. Even more so than console boxes," he said. "I think that there's more that can be done."

So add their voices to the increasingly discordant choir of developers simultaneously singing about the life and death of PC gaming. It should be no surprise that Blizzard is committed to the platform, though. Its recently-announced-megaton-of-a game Diablo III will be exclusive to Windows and Mac computers.

During a keynote address held at the Paris Game Developers Conference, Blizzard Entertainment's Rob Pardo revealed that the dominant World of WarCraft was originally developed to be a free-to-play MMO.

"When were first going to make World of Warcraft, we wanted to make it free and advertising supported," Pardo explained. "We didn't want to charge a subscription, but as we researched market conditions, we realized that wouldn't support us."

In a detailed keynote analysis provided by Gamasutra staff writer Brandon Sheffield, Pardo discusses the company's inspiration for World of WarCraft, the possibility of deriving a triple-A experience from a web interface, and the forthcoming Activision Blizzard merger.