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Just in case you've had your eyelids sewn shut, your ears pinned forward and your ability to absorb information through telepathic means (we're on to you!) nullified, World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King came out last week. Quite a few people (and some orcs and elves, too) braved the freezing cold and queued up at midnight store openings across the world just to get their desperate hands on what's guaranteed to be the biggest PC release of the year. But before the Horde (and the Alliance) descended on HMV Oxford Street, we caught up with Blizzard chief operation officer (that's a big deal, by the way) Paul Sams, to quiz him on everything from future WoW expansions to gamer anger at StarCraft II and Diablo III development. Why not take a break from World of Warcrack and have a read?

VideoGamer.com: How long will it be before someone hits the level cap then?

Paul Sams: I think it'll probably be pretty quick, not that someone could enjoy the content that quickly, but there will be somebody that will try to be the first in the world for the notoriety I'm sure. I don't know how long it will take but somebody will do it and it will astound all of us I'm sure because none of us will be able to contemplate that somebody would have been able to do so that quickly, but I think for the vast majority of people it's going to take quite a while.

VideoGamer.com: The last expansion increased the cap by ten levels and it's another ten levels with this one. Why is ten levels right for a WoW expansion?

PS: I think it's an issue of content. You want to make sure that you spread the content intelligently across the levels and so if you go up 20 then that by default suggests you might need twice as much content. With the time and energy that goes into building the content it's not really reasonable or else we'd be making people wait a lot longer on expansion sets. So it's a balancing act between the amount of time there is between the releases and the amount of content and as a result the amount of levels.

VideoGamer.com: You've said in the past that you're aiming for a new expansion every 12 months. Is that something you're still aiming towards?

PS: It's absolutely what we aim for. The challenge is it's very hard to get there! We're not willing to make content or quality compromises to achieve that timeline. That's definitely the goal and the hope and the dream. We haven't done a real good job on achieving it yet but we'll continue to try and to try and get better each time. We're shorter this time around than last time by a few months and I think that we should hopefully continue to improve on that as we become more efficient in the things that we do.

VideoGamer.com: In terms of further expansions, how long before you have to stop doing expansions for WoW and look at doing a sequel proper? Is that something that you ever have to do?

PS: I don't personally think that there's a requirement to do a sequel. You probably know or have heard that we have another next generation MMO that's unannounced and there's no details about it at this point, but while we're doing it that does not suggest that it has to be a sequel to World of Warcraft. We think World of Warcraft is a great stand alone product and one that a lot of people are very much enjoying. For us we feel like we can achieve great evolution and change and improvement within the World of Warcraft product with content updates and with expansion sets, and will continue to do those for so long as there's a meaningful number of players that are interested in playing it. As it relates to other MMOs, time will tell what we're going to do but doing a sequel can help kill off the franchise and so I think we want people to be able to focus on this and again I think that we're going to be able to provide compelling content that's going to definitely feed the needs of players.

VideoGamer.com: I guess the WoW universe and lore is vast enough to be able to support as many expansions as you want.

PS: You know I think it is. The list of things that the team wants to do and the places the team wants to go within this product is excessively large. I don't know if they'll reach an end point of the things that they want to do. I say often times that the list of things that are on the wish list or the want list or the plan list are four times as long as your leg. It's an exceptionally big list and so I think they're going to have plenty to do.

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