Brower sat down with computerandvideogames.com to discuss his notable work on “Wow”. “One of our most important tools in “World of Warcraft” is actually silence,” Brower reveals. “You’ll notice the music doesn’t play continuously – and we have found that that’s very potent, because it just makes it all the more special when it comes in. Using silence allows the player to absorb the ambience of the space between the cues that much more – and it also allows us to reserve our larger cues for the bigger story moments.”

He notes that the game allows for a range of emotions to be reflected in the music score. “It’s been really enjoyable to approach “Warcraft”, because everything we do here we like to use the words ‘epic’ and ‘bold’,” he notes. “That certainly describes a lot of the “World of Warcraft” music. On the other hand, if everything’s ‘epic’ and ‘bold’, you need some contrast – it ceases to have meaning after a while, and in the worst case, you get annoying. We have sometimes tried to play against what you’re experiencing and what you’re seeing, being a little bit ironic with the score. One of my favourites is “Grizzly Hills” where the music is representing the surrounds pretty literally – its pretty pastoral. However, the quests you’re going on are certainly no less intense than in other zones. It allowed us to explore a different pallet completely – more of a kind of Americana sound.”

Speaking to G4TV, Brack said that while the team would theoretically love to move “Warcraft” over to the consoles, there are some very big roadblocks that make it happening any time soon, if ever, very unlikely. “I think there’s a lot of reasons,” he confessed. “There’s not one thing. One is, it takes a long time to develop an MMO. The lifecycle of consoles being what they are, you have to really time when your console’s going to come out, what its projected life cycle is going to be with when your game is going to be… which is challenging.” Some MMO’s have gone over to consoles, however, with Square Enix’s popular “Final Fantasy XI” being the most spectacular exception to the rule.

The chances of “Warcraft” itself making that transition are slim, however, according to Brack. “In the case of “WoW”, we talk about it all the time,” he admits. “How would we bring “Wow” to the console?” The problem, it seems, is “those technical challenges. There’s patching challenges, there’s the quality control that we have vs. the quality controls that, say, a Microsoft or a Sony or Nintendo has. All those things sort of raise the bar in terms of the challenges and then specifically in the case of “Wow”. “Wow” was designed to be a keyboard game and its control scheme and its camera control and the number of abilities that you have and the spells and how things work are very keyboard-centric. The idea of translating that to a gamepad is a very, very challenging proposition.”

The report seems to indicate a worry that MMOs like “Warcraft” will face increasing pressure from new methods of playing games, such as iPhone applications. “We compete with other forms of interactive entertainment, such as casual games like iPhone applications and other mobile phone games, and games developed for use by consumers on social networking sites,” the report claims. “Future increased consumer acceptance and increases in the availability of (of) such games or other online games, or technological advances in online game software or the internet, could result in a decline in platform based software and negatively impact sales of our console and hand held products. Newer technological advances in online game software may also render products such as “World of Warcraft” obsolete. Additionally, direct sales of software over the internet by competitors could adversely affect our distribution business.”

The bulk of the comments have been mocked by gamers on the CVG site, who find it extraordinary that the company could seriously believe online MMOs could come under threat from such things as iPhone games. “”WoW” is the biggest MMO hit ever,” slammed only_777. “People don’t think “I won’t buy “WoW”, I’ll buy “Dinner Dash”… Activision, you clowns”, while originalbadboy was even more cutting, declaring “Christ, what a pile of s**te… Activision could become obsolete if they are not careful, they are rapidly becoming the Sony of the bulls**t world”.”

“Imagine a typical computer game devotee and what springs to mind? A “Dungeons & Dragons” playing, “Lord of the Rings” reading teenage boy? A middle aged man who lives with his mum?” begins the typically patronising article in the mainstream rag. “Maybe once upon a time, but not any more,” they claim. “Girls got bored with watching their boyfriends spending hours playing computer games, logged on and got hooked. From stay at home mums to celebrities, the new face of online gaming is feisty, foxy and female.” The article goes on to focus on the story of Jennifer, “a slight, softly spoken 23 year old administrator from who lives in Cumbria” who found her boyfriend Nicky from playing “War of Warcraft”. “When I originally started playing, I had no intention of looking for love,” she claims. “I was settled in a relationship and things were going smoothly. (We) spent every night sharing photos and talking on webcam. In time we grew closer and closer. We didn’t play “WOW” for the game any longer, but rather to be together. Both of us were scared of our feelings, but one night we declared our love for each other.”

The article has been much mocked by gamers on computerandvideogames.com, with user nathar noting “The last girl I spoke to in “WOW” turned out to be a bloke called Brian”, while jon_hill987 doubts the story’s veracity, demanding “”Pictures or it didn’t happen”.”

However, I don’t think that’s what players are looking for,” he says. “Players that have invested time in “WOW” don’t want to do the same thing in another game – they want to try something completely new and different… I think the industry needs to move in that direction to come up with some new innovative MMOs that are trying really different things,” Dabiri argues. “Take “City of Heroes” –at least that’s something that’s not a fantasy game.” Dabiri’s comments, although, as some have pointed out, no doubt at least partially motivated by self interest, have generally gone down well with gamers and also seem to be being backed up by sales figures. “Warhammer Online”, a well made game deliberately designed to be as much like the “World of Warcraft” series as possible, is suffering declining popularity these days. As Dabiri suggests, it would seem that originality really is key.

On the anniversary, GameSpot.com spoke to Blizzard Entertainment’s game design chief Rob Pardo about the stunning success of the game, the global subscriber base for which now stands at an astounding eleven and a half million users. “I was working at Interplay Productions when it came out,” Pardo says. “Interplay was publishing the first “Warcraft: Orcs and Humans” for international back then. So I had the opportunity to play it, and it was pretty exciting, because I had already played “Dune II” so I think it was really cool to see a fantasy version of that… I definitely didn’t imagine back then that “Warcraft” as a franchise would get as big as it would get.”

The first game, while reasonably successful, was not as beloved as the series would eventually become and Pardo admits “It was really “Warcraft II” that I thought really blew things open, because of Kali (the online multiplayer networking service… It came out the same month as “Command & Conquer”, so we had this huge new genre explode at the same time between “C&C” and “Warcraft II”… I definitely saw a lot of potential in the future of the RTS game, and certainly “Warcraft” was a part of that.” As for the future, all Pardo would say is that “I’m hopeful we’ll be having this conversation another five years or ten years from now.”

Now, it appears that the organisation behind the attempt to effectively ban the game did not even have the right to do so. The unlikely defender of “World of Warcraft” turned out to be the Chinese Ministry of Culture, who were unimpressed by the attempt to stop the game by a rival agency, the Chinese General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP). The Chinese Ministry of Culture went on to denounce the attempt, telling the Beijing newspaper Economic Information Daily that “In regards to the “World of Warcraft” incident, the General Administration of Press and Publication has clearly overstepped its authority. They do not have the authority to penalize online gaming”.

The game has become the centre of a larger battle between the two organizations over which of them has the right to regulate the country’s increasingly popular online gaming market. Blizzard do not appear to be overly concerned by the war of words between the two agencies, however, noting that they have had no problems with the online operation of the game in China. “Aside from some downtime tied to the standard maintenance schedule, the game is online, operational and hasn’t been suspended,” a spokesperson for the company told GameSpot.com.

Opening in the November of 2004, “World of Warcraft” has gone on to generate a subscriber base of more than eleven and a half million people in just over four years, and apparently accounted for more than half of the profit generated by Activision so far this year. A live action Hollywood feature film based on the “World of Warcraft” was announced to be in development in July, to be directed by “Spider-Man” helmer Sam Raimi, and the game has even generated its own quarterly magazine that will be available via subscription from autumn this year.