Interview with Shane Dabiri

Blizzard has released a few new interviews as part of their World of Warcraft five year anniversary celebration. The latest in Blizzard Staff interviews is from Shane Dabiri, former World of Warcraft Lead Producer.

In this interview Shane talks about the inception of World of Warcraft, going back to his roots as part of the team that brought us the original Warcraft. It's a fascinating interview that details how a bunch of avid MMO gamers at Blizzard got the idea to make their own MMO.

We’d thought about a StarCraft MMO, but we figured that a science-fiction MMO would be a little less approachable. So we were excited to go down that path, and we transitioned the top-secret team to become the World of Warcraft team.

It's interesting to read about how World of Warcraft wasn't always the 'sure thing' that fans assumed, it was apparently quite a trial to get WoW as a concept to be embraced fully even by Blizzard themselves:

Frank Pearce. Back in the day, he was one of the big naysayers. He was one of the guys saying, “Why the hell would I ever play this? Who’s gonna pay fifteen bucks for this? How do you win?” When we moved into our company alpha-test, he was there after work, playing it all the time, on the weekends, and he actually said, “this is really fun.” That’s when we knew we’d made it.

Shadowclan

Anyone who has had the dubious honor of coming in contact with the Shadowclan guild (I personally encountered them on Dark Age of Camelot) will tell you that it is not something that you soon forget.

Blizzard interviews The Shadowclan as part of their ongoing World of Warcraft anniversary. Shadowclan is a guild that focuses on a bizzare sort of roleplay (they are all orcs) that is militaristic, zenophobic, and all around hilarious to watch.

They are heavily focused on PvP, have their own unique language, and engage in large scale roleplay events with hundreds of players - usually some sort of PvP combat. The interview dwells on exactly how this type of in game atmosphere was created and fostered by the Shadowclan's founders.

Shadowclan has always had a designated quality control team, a group of players responsible for handling conflicts between members and enforcing our rules of conduct, while doing their best to allow everyone to have fun. In each game Shadowclan plays (called a 'branch') we have a single branch leader responsible for ensuring that the branch follows the Shadowclan rules, meets the Shadowclan standards, and stays true to the Shadowclan 'vision.' Branch leaders are carefully chosen by the Clan Helm (our clan leadership council) and have demonstrated, usually through long years of previous leadership service, that they 'get' what Shadowclan is about, so we keep a consistent guild 'feel' in each game.

The Shadowclan is constantly evolving in response to the storyline and lore surrounding the WoW universe. They are open to new recruits, and you can learn more at www.shadowclan.com.

Enigma Guild

Blizzard's
latest interview is centered on Enigma (US-Deathwing), a top end raiding guild (currently 75th in the United States). In the interview Engima's guild leader, Fraya, discusses what's involved in running a successful raiding guild, from recruitment to strategy to player management.


You learn a lot of things when you start really leading. I ran into it with the views that if I was kind and good to everyone, they would do their best right back out of respect, but that simply wasn't the case.

All of these articles are interesting and well worth the read. They offer insights into some of the many different facets of World of Warcraft and explore how WoW is something different for everyone. You can get them and more at the Official World of Warcraft Anniversay Site.


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our World of Warcraft Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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