Tom Chilton, the World of Warcraft game director takes a look back at the origins of World of Warcraft, and gives us some insights into the development process that took WoW from a concept to a phenom to an MMO nearing the end of its second expansion and still going strong.The interview with Tom Chilton follow as:

World of Warcraft proved that an MMO can be done on a large scale. Before World of Warcraft, there was a perception that MMOs were smaller,side projects with pretty good money in them if they were done well, but they'd never be mainstream, really big like a console game. More than anything else, that will be World of Warcraft's lasting legacy.

Now the time proved the World of Warcraft is very successful.The player experience is carefully directed through quests.The World of Warcraft have a good rewards cycle for advancement-you don't advance so slowly that you feel like you're not making progress. The game feels very responsive-the controls are good, the framerate's good, it runs well, the world is really inviting, and inspires people to explore it.The zones are really different from each other,and every zone has a lot of character. The NPCs within the quests have personality.It's actually hard to come out of one of the first zones without wanting to see more.