Here's something we weren't really expecting to read: John Romero, the man behind some of the greatest old-school first-person shooter games (Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake), revealed that his most-played game of all time is Blizzard's World of Warcraft. That's about as far from the games he's most renowned for as you could imagine, being an MMORPG with stylized visuals and tab-targeting combat. And yet, Romero himself told PC Gamer that he lived in Azeroth for five years:
It's World of Warcraft. I have probably 3,000-plus hours in WoW. God, I lived in that game every day for five years. Six hours usually, every day. And then weekends were as long as I could stay awake. I was making an MMO at the time, and studying that game was really important to me as far as "Why do I want to do this? Why am I putting up with this? What are you thinking about second to second while you're doing this?"
I was in a raiding guild. You name it, I did so much stuff. I have five main characters with all the gear of different classes. And I had 10 characters total. When you start a new character, you're starting the game from the beginning, but I knew how to optimise burning through. I could get to level six in half an hour.
It's always important to look at those successful games and the systems that are in them as a battle-tested system. The way that they implemented this has been played by millions of people, and they have kept it for years. It works. That's really important for design to just look at those examples. Not that you would directly copy anything, but that you understand why it was done that way and how it works.
The MMORPG John Romero mentioned working on was never revealed, though it was likely during his time at Slipgate Ironworks, between 2005 and late 2010, which fits the five-year timeline and also coincides with World of Warcraft's heyday. We only know it was based on an original IP. The game designer is also credited with a Special Thanks for the free-to-play MMO Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, which was launched in 2011 by Gazillion Entertainment.
Romero recently confirmed that he's talking with other companies to continue developing his next game after Microsoft pulled out as a funder. He then added that it's a very unique game that will be innovative in a similar way to what FromSoftware's Elden Ring did for open world games.
As for World of Warcraft, Blizzard recently revealed the roadmap toward the launch of the game's eleventh expansion pack, Midnight.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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