Rob Pardo began, "The point of my talk is [to explain] how Blizzard develops all of our games. We have a design philosophy. When you have large studio, and a lot of designers, it's important that everyone understands your values. If not, it's hard for your developers to understand what you want to achieve."
He then applied the company's central design philosophy to a popular breakfast junk food.
"It all starts with a donut," Pardo said. He then explained how Blizzard co-founder Allen Adham used to draw a donut on a whiteboard for employees. "The middle represents the core market. As the donut grows, it's increasingly important that your game is accessible to both [core and casual markets]."
Pardo spoke about the mantra that his company employs to achieve this desired accessibility, using the popular phrase, "easy to learn, difficult to master." Pardo asked, "What is going to attract players to the game, and keep them there for two, three years? How are we going to make this approachable, easy to learn? It starts with the depth first."
He then cited the design of character classes in World of Warcraft as examples. "We spent a lot of time early on. What should our character classes feel like? What should our combat feel like?"
Pardo continued, "The dungeons are there to serve the core market." Player vs. player was another design choice. "We wanted to make sure the player vs. player system was fun inherently."
Exclamation points and accessibility
Pardo then expanded on improving the gaming experience for newbies, and the importance of accessibility. "We shy away from tutorials. Tutorials primarily aren't very fun." Pardo said that he enjoys games that put you in the action from the start, and give you information as you go along. "Within five minutes of starting your game in World of Warcraft, you can fight monsters."
"I look at pacing as the bridge between depth and accessibility," he added.
Speaking further on the subject of accessibility, he commented on the simple use of exclamation points in World of Warcraft, which are used to indicate which NPCs have quests available for players. "The exclamation points became huge." Pardo said that Blizzard has been utilizing them since Diablo II. "Right away, you know what you're supposed to be doing."
He continued on clear, concise objectives, saying, "Don't drive your players to websites to play your game. We try hard in our quests [to tell players] not only what to do, but where to go, and where the quest-giver is."
"The people that don't go to ThottBot are the casual players, and they're the ones you need to hold the hand of. We found that the bigger the quest log gets, the less you feel like you're on a quest or on a mission."
Graphical accessibility
However, accessibility goes beyond gameplay. Graphical choices can also dictate how accessible a game is in a different sense. Pardo talked about employing lower system requirements to make the game workable on more systems. He also said that stylizing the art is one way of appealing to the casual and hardcore market.
Pardo admitted that World of Warcraft, on a visual scale, "won't compare" to Crytek's technical FPS marvel Crysis, but added that Blizzard has "proven it's the gameplay that matters," and that "stylized art styles don't look dated."
Still, driving that ideal into the heads of graphics programmers isn't necessarily easy. "You're really fighting against developers' psychology when you [push for simpler, stylized art]. That's going to be a fight during the entire development."
Pardo said that while World of Warcraft has proven to be both accessible to newbies, and rewarding to the hardcore, the process of creating such a game can be maddening. He recalled, "We were in our alpha test, and we'd have some hardcore players reach level 60 in a week." Pardo described internal panic that proliferated within the company. "What's going to happen? We've got to expand content." But, Pardo said he came to a realization. "You don't design for the guy that plays 20 hours a day. If he unsubscribes, [that's] okay. But you know what? He won't. He'll discover your in-game content. He'll re-role."
Concentrated coolness
Pardo also spoke about "concentrated coolness." "Don't try to make everything," he said. "Instead, make sure everything you create is as cool as possible."
He ended his talk by saying, "The thing I think is unique among MMOs among all those other genres is it depicts a type of gameplay. This genre has the biggest frontier. We should be pushing it in all sorts directions."