More <cite>WoW</cite> Film Talk Straight From the Horse's Mouth

Legendary Pictures' Thomas Tull wasn't the only one talking about the upcoming WoW film at the recent Hollywood & Games Summit. During a panel discussion on MMOs and films, none other than Rob Pardo, WoW's lead designer, spoke about the film, noting that the challenges inherent in adapting an IP across mediums are something that Blizzard has had a bit of experience with. He said:

Any time you translate from one medium to another, you have to focus on what’s right for the medium. Even though Warcraft was our own IP, it was still being translated from a different gametype -- it was an RTS, which is very different from an MMO -- so even though it was our own IP, we still found ourselves handcuffing ourselves to certain conventions that made sense for a strategy game, but didn’t make sense for a MMO.

Although I'm a pretty hardcore WoW player, I'm having a bit of trouble convincing myself to get excited about the film. I'm simply not that into the game's narrative elements. This isn't to say that they're not well-conceived--WoW's lore is mostly novel and clever, and the game has style and character to spare. It's just that when I'm playing MMOs, all the real human drama going on makes the scripted game elements feel like part of a wax museum. The Lord of the Rings Online obviously takes the narrative stuff seriously, and its story sequences are leagues better than *WoW'*s as a result.

Still, the fact that I'd much rather play WoW than LotRO
says something about how much players like me value MMO stories. My question: is it my fault, or are MMO devs simply not trying hard enough? Question two: what does this have to do with the WoW movie? I'm not quite sure. There's probably a long-abandoned point in here, somewhere.

H&G: Blizzard's Pardo Talks WoW Film [Gamasutra]