‘Warcraft’ Creative Director Wishes Blizzard Chose Another Name For The Series Because Current One “Sounds Intimidating”
In providing a quintessential example of the Western video game industry’s increasingly puritanical attitude shift, after serving as one of the original Blizzard team members who helped solidify the choice, current Warcraft creative director Chris Metzen now reportedly regrets the decision to give the franchise such an “intimidating” name.
Starting out as a writer on the series’ 1994 debut Warcraft: Orcs & Humans before going on to respectfully serve as the story designer and creative director for Warcraft II and Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, after which he would retire in 2016 only to return to Blizzard for his current role in 2022, Metzen’s newfound naming disagreement was brought to public light courtesy of World of Warcraft vice president Holly Lonsdale.
Nearing the end of a lengthy, franchise-retrospective interview given to The Game Business‘ Christopher Dring, the Blizzard exec was ultimately pressed for her thoughts on what she was hoping to see from Warcraft‘s future, to which she asserted, “It’s a fantastic IP. In my humble opinion, it’s been underutilized and I just want to bring it to as many people as possible.”
“And that means evolving what Warcraft means, what it is, and where it’s going,” she added. “We want it to be approachable.”
On this note, Lonsdale then told her host, “Chris Metzen [executive creative director], is sometimes like, ‘I wish we hadn’t called it Warcraft. It sounds intimidating.’ But I’m like, nobody really thinks that about Warhammer. It’s an understood name.”
Returning to her vision for Warcraft‘s future, Lonsdale further explained, “This idea of ‘third space’ in our online worlds, we can’t even define what that means exactly, but we’re working on figuring that out.”
“We want people to come in, hang out and have birthdays, weddings, raids, grand adventures, play with their friends, meet new friends… all the things that World of Warcraft has been good at for over 20 years.”
Putting a final stamp on her time with Dring, Lonsdale declared, “And at the same time, we want to take advantage of 20 years of stories that have been told and not told, and start bringing it out to the world in a broader way. That’s my goal and vision.”
“We’re never going to stop doing the things people love, but at the same time, we have a bigger vision than simply being an MMORPG.”
Interestingly, that Metzen’s new discomfort with the Warcraft naame is more the result of a general cultural shift than one within the deeper Warcraft community is reinforced earlier in the interview courtesy of Lonsdale.
Speaking to the differences in the World of Warcraft and World of Warcraft Classic player bases, the VP told her host, “Classic players are completely different, for the most part, than modern players. They behave differently. They want different things. We don’t have a whole lot of crossover between both games.”
