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WoW veteran says the MMO's devs had to make 'ten times the amount of quests' as originally planned to sate playtesters, and now the game has 38,000 of them

World of Warcraft's initial success stemmed from unexpectedly expanding its quest count tenfold during playtesting to satisfy players, a move crucial for its longevity and dominance in the MMORPG genre for two decades.

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20 years on from its release, it's easy to forget that MMO titan World of Warcraft had to start off somewhere, too, and part of that was creating more than tenfold more quests than they were expecting in order to keep their playtesters happy. 

In an interview in Edge issue 405, former executive vice president of game design at Blizzard Rob Pardo spoke about the huge demand for quests during WoW's playtesting phase. During early playtesting, things had initially gone smoothly "until playtesters ran out of quests, at which point they reported that the game felt 'broken'." For Pardo and the team, "the answer, of course, was to simply add more."

This was easier said than done, with the number of quests they needed being astronomical compared to their initial estimates. Pardo and his team ended up creating "ten times the amount of quests" than they had originally planned for, resulting in the World of Warcraft of today offering a monumental 38,000 quests.

Part of this need for more quests came from WoW's Blizzard's desire to compete with EverQuest, the reigning MMO of the day, and a game that Pardo had himself played before joining Blizzard. WoW was supposed to be "more approachable and easier for people to get into", and relied on word of mouth from uber guilds in EverQuest to drum up interest. "If we could make a game that is deep enough for those types of players, we'd have something really good that may last a long time" recalled Pardo.

And last a long time it certainly did. 20 years on, World of Warcraft is the undisputed king of the MMORPG space and has undoubtedly become one of the most iconic games of all time—not bad for a game that had initially aimed to make just $1 million per month.

Take a look at where WoW features on our list of the best MMORPGs around right now.