World of Warcraft Devs on Why The Worldsoul Saga Is Three Expansions and Kind of Like the MCU

ign.com:

Blizzard announced at BlizzCon 2023 that World of Warcraft's next three expansions will be part of a larger narrative called The Worldsoul Saga. To learn more, IGN had the chance to speak to WoW vice president Holly Longdale and Warcraft SVP & general manager John Hight about why the team chose to make this saga three expansions and why it's going to be a bit like the MCU.

We began by discussing the decision to develop and announce not one, not two, but three expansions for World of Warcraft. As it turns out, it was a combination of the game's upcoming 20th anniversary and a big idea from Warcraft executive creative director Chris Metzen, who just recently rejoined the company.

"Honestly, when Chris Metzen returned to us is when we started that process," Longdale said. "It was essentially this bubbling up of this passion around the 20th anniversary being almost upon us and a thought that it’s time to change the conversation. Make some big bets. Let’s take World of Warcraft in a direction that we may not have imagined in the past.

"And you throw something like that at someone like Chris Metzen and the team, and they came back to both of us with this idea that The Worldsoul Saga will be an incredible epic story and we wouldn’t be doing it justice if we tried to do it in one expansion. And then we were talking about two expansions and then we’re like, yeah, that wouldn't cut it either."

And that, in a very abridged way, is how The Worldsoul Saga became three expansions. There is also an added benefit to this strategy for the players, as Longdale says it will also, assuming all goes well, keep the wait times between expansions a lot shorter.

So, we are getting a big saga that tells part of a larger narrative. As all this was