Warcraft Adventures

What the future holds

GameSpot: You said before that there were stories you wanted to tell in Warcraft Adventures and that you still want to tell them. Since the game isn't being resurrected, what other avenues do you think you have to tell those stories?

Bill Roper: Yeah, I think that we have some other ways of doing that. One of the things that is going to be great for that is we signed a deal with Pocket Books to do trilogies in our worlds. So we're going to be doing a Warcraft trilogy. I think that it's a great way for us to tell a lot of different stories and really expand that universe. That is one of the ways. Obviously, whatever the next Warcraft product is, we're going to get to expand that, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the Warcraft Adventures ideas or storylines or plot points crept their way into that. I think that not all of that work will go to waste... at least from a creative side. We'll find other outlets for that.

GameSpot: Will one of those books in the trilogy be the Warcraft Adventures story?

Bill Roper: We haven't really started getting into where those stories will go and where they're going to be based from a timeline point. But I think that there is definitely a good chance. I mean, that's part of our presentation to authors, when we put the bible in front of them, and say here are all of the storylines of the games, and here is a whole storyline that we never used. It's very complete and very fulfilled and is definitely a large part of our [what we would want to have happen] in our universe, at least in our minds. So yes, it's highly possible that you'll see that. I can't say for sure, because we haven't had any of those discussions yet.

GameSpot: Anything you'd like to add Bill?

Bill Roper: One thing that you'll probably see throughout the [Gaming Graveyard] series is that [developers will say] you can't have a fear of failure. I don't look upon Warcraft Adventures as a failure but as a very long learning experience. You have to be able to learn from it. It's a failure if you just keep doing the same thing over and over again. I think that there were definitely lessons that we learned. So it was an expensive lesson, to some extent.

Certainly not shipping a product is the most difficult part of canceling a game, because there is still a vision there, a dream and a goal that you're working towards. And that goal is bringing this great gameplay experience and another slice of this world to your players, and not accomplishing that is certainly a difficult thing. But I never look at the total experience for the adventure game as having been an utter complete failure and a dismal speck in the company's history. It's more like, what can we take away from that lesson and how can we use those experiences to make better products in the future?

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