PAX Aus took place in Melbourne, Australia this weekend, and World of Warcraft’s very own Holly Longdale headlined as this year’s Storytime speaker. She spoke about her journey from a childhood filled with the imaginary and video games, to her current role as Executive Producer of WoW. Afterwards, she was interviewed by Clay Stone, WoW Classic’s Associate Production Director.
You can watch the entire keynote on this link, or read our summary and the shortened transcript of the Q&A below.
Her Journey From EverQuest to WoW: Classic
To kick off her panel, Holly described her childhood as one defined by the imaginary. She grew up reading and exploring fantasy and science fiction stories, and spending a lot of time at local arcades. That interest in the imaginary never left her, from her brief attempts at becoming an artist, and through her college degree in journalism.
Video games were always a part of her life, and she mentioned playing Diablo and Dungeon Keeper while she was in college. In her late twenties, she started playing EverQuest. What caught her attention about the game, and MMOs in general, was the other players around her, and the communities that formed.
It quickly became apparent that it wasn’t just a game for her. She found value in getting lost in these worlds. She found value in how people went through life while forming communities in their MMO of choice, from in-game guilds to real-life marriages. It all felt natural to her, and like it mattered.
In EverQuest, one of her guildies revealed that he was a developer who worked on the game, and he encouraged her to apply for a job as a developer. She applied, and got it.
Her biggest realization while working on EverQuest was that the game they made didn’t belong to the developers. It belonged to the players, the community that formed around the game. Holly emphasized that it was the players that create the communities, and they are the ones that keep games alive.
After a detour from EverQuest at Disney, where she got to work on bigger IPs, she eventually found her way back to work on EverQuest 2 as a Senior Producer. Soon she was working on both EQ and EQ 2, and they started releasing “vanilla” versions of their games.
That’s when Blizzard called. They were preparing to release WoW Classic, and they wanted her advice on what to expect when re-releasing beloved content. Not long after that conversation, Blizzard asked her to come work on the Classic team.
It wasn’t long before she was Lead Producer for Classic, but something even bigger was coming her way. Ion Hazzikostas, who at the time was the Executive Producer on World of Warcraft, was stepping into the role of Game Director for all of Warcraft. Holly had been at the company for a year and a half, and went into the interview processes for the job as Executive Producer thinking “I want to tell the leadership at Blizzard what they should be doing.” As we all know, she got the job, but not before Ion dragged her along and teasingly asking her “What if I was your boss?” before revealing she had the job.
So now, going from being a designer on EverQuest to being the Executive Producer of World of Warcraft, what has she learned through it all? In her own words, she says that her job is to enable greatness. To enable the developers and the rest of the team, and to stand shoulder to shoulder with the players.
To cap it all off, she shared that one of the things she loves the most about her job is being able to work with the team and tell them that she believes in them, even if they don’t believe in themselves just yet. And that’s where greatness comes from, enabling people. That’s when they truly get to shine and be their best.
Q&A About Her Role
After Holly’s story of how she got to where she is today, WoW Classic’s Associate Production Director Clay Stone joined her on stage for a Q&A about her job.
Please note, some of Holly’s answers have been lightly edited or condensed for the sake of brevity and clarity.
Clay Stone: You’ve said your job is to hold the wheel for a team full of passion and talent. What does that look like in real decisions?
Holly Longdale: I am doggedly supportive of the team, and I won’t let go of their ideas when we are all bought in. I’ll push their ideas all the way up through leadership if needed, and it’s basically a business about passion and belief. That’s the essence of my job, to unlock great passion and great ideas.
Sometimes Blizzard leadership suggests that it’s better to wait with something, and I’ve told them “I’m going to do it anyway”. And we still get that support from leadership. Our team is not just developers, they’re players. But I’m not suggesting we get things right every time, we’re not perfect.
Clay Stone: You’ve been a player, designer, and a producer before becoming an Executive Producer. What did each role teach you, and what skills do you still use?
Holly Longdale: As a player, everything is from your point of view. Becoming a developer showed me how complex an MMO is, and how one change can cause a lot of damage if you’re not mindful. But a main takeaway is to be kind to players. Don’t make garbage content that will make them mad. Be generous with your creativity.
Leadership to me is about listening. I’m more interested in everyone else’s stories. I like to get to know what players are feeling and be able to represent that to the team.
Clay Stone: Was there anything you had to unlearn?
Holly Longdale: As a developer, you can start thinking that you know better. You don’t. Along the way you get great mentors, but it’s about making good judgement calls and trying to put yourself in the position of a player. Are you trying to outsmart the players? That is impossible, because we are players. It’s all the same community.
I work with a team that really doesn’t have ego. We all have ideas that we hold loosely. There are going to be some that you fight for, but this is an iterative experience, it’s about collaborating and making ideas better by working with other people.
Clay Stone: I loved your story about getting your job. Was there a point when you realized “Oh no, people are actually trusting me to lead this whole thing”?
Holly Longdale: No. Haha! Because it’s not me. I’m essentially a collector of advice and ideas, all these people that have been working on games for a long time. I’m not the kind of leader that makes a decision and moves ahead. There’s all sorts of consultation, I talk to people. That’s the job. Learn from your people.
Clay Stone: I’ve seen you on meetings, backing up teams. Pushing for an idea that they believe in. What does a team look like when they truly are on to something?
Holly Longdale: This is one of the hardest things to describe. In modern day parlance, it’s basically a “vibe”. You all (speaking to the audience) play games, you get a spark, you can feel when something special is happening. It can be in story telling or an idea, and that drives you.
With WoW: Forever, that was it. I remember sitting through the pitch, and it was 1,000% the right thing to do. I will fight for it all day. That’s my job.
Clay Stone: How do you listen to players when millions of people want different things for the same game?
Holly Longdale: It’s really hard. We learn this over time. We have all these social medias nowadays, and we didn’t use to have that. Feedback used to come from small groups of testers, and now feedback comes from everywhere. What I’ve learned the most is that you don’t listen to the loudest people in the room. So we spend a lot of time looking at analytics and data. We may hear a trend, and we’ll start looking at what’s underneath it. What’s the data? We’ll do research, just to make sure we have as much data as possible. And when you are dealing with millions of people in a game, you have to accept that you’re not going to make everybody happy. You have to make some calls to determine “What is our game? Who is it for?”, and we have to try to walk that line as much as possible. Otherwise you’ll give a lot of people a little bit, instead of a complete experience when you focus.
Clay Stone: Has there been a piece of player or internal feedback that changed the way you thought about a game, a certain feature or the community?
Holly Longdale: Not really. It’s a good question, because what we do is so fluid. This industry is going at a million miles an hour it feels like. I’m glad this year is stacked up with great releases. It feels like we’re really getting back into good health in this industry.
I feel like I continue to learn, but I’m steadfast in some of our principles. That’s important to me, that we never lose our way, but we always have to evolve. There’s this notion of evolution, in the industry it’s often called “innovation”, and that’s a word that we absolutely hate now. Because it usually meant something that was a crazy idea that didn’t work, and it was developed BECAUSE it was crazy.
We’ve gone through this remarkable evolution where all of you as players are different than you were 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago. We’re all different. And we have to be mindful of that and make sure that we follow you.
Clay Stone: You’ve hired, mentored, and lead a lot of people. What’s a quality you consistently see in people who end up doing extraordinarily things in game development?
Holly Longdale: It’s two things I’ve mentioned. Fearlessness, but it’s really bravery and belief in your idea. Just a stick-to-it-iveness. When someone says “I have this idea, and I’m going to do it”, and half the people think they’re not going to do it, but they do. WoW: Forever is one of those things, where the team said “yeah we want do it, we actually want to do it, but I don’t know if we have enough time or people”, and I say “We’ll figure it out, we’re going to do it”. And then it just happens. It’s absolutely astounding, it’s the best thing on earth.
I’m not a suit, is what I’m saying I guess.
Clay Stone: You’ve worked in games for years. What’s the hill you’re willing to die on, that would start an argument with every gamer in this room?
Holly Longdale: None. No honestly! Even if I had an opinion, it’s loosely held, because if this whole room was going to be angry about something, I would abandon that opinion. Because it’s wrong. I really lean hard into empathy and really understanding the player and their story, and all their stories. To try and avoid making errors like that.
Clay Stone: Is there a game mechanic you wish you could steal from another game and instantly put into Warcraft?
Holly Longdale: Yes. There are a lot of examples out there. I want World of Warcraft to have spell combos between the classes. (Cheers from the crowd) Did you hear that Ion? We’ll make note, send this video, the players asked for it.
Clay Stone: What’s the impact you hope Warcraft has on someone’s life beyond the game itself?
Holly Longdale: I want everybody to feel what I have, and what other players have, where you become a part of a community. It’s not just a hobby, it’s a part of your life. It’s a social circle, it gives you purpose, it gives you wonder. To see people in MMOs change and develop, go from being a caricature to a leader in real life, I saw that a lot with guild leaders. People who could reverse engineer a game, and go through this path in life to become outstanding engineers. Games can make us better. I wish that for everyone, to find that community, that feeling of home, and being here (at PAX Aus) I feel like I’m with my people. It’s really important to me.
When we get to a BlizzCon or an event like this, to be able to hear how World of Warcraft or any game, has changed you, has made you better, the heartwarming stories, the heartbreaking stories, it’s so astounding to me how powerful it is to be a massive, global community that can be there for each other.
Clay Stone: We don’t necessarily get that on the internet. We get a lot of the feedback on the internet, but that’s what I love so much about actually being in person and getting to meet folks.
Holly Longdale: It’s actually fuel for us, because you get reminded of what games can really do for people, and what communities can really do for people.
Clay Stone: What leadership belief has changed most for you over your career?
Holly Longdale: That I have the answers. I seek out the answers by working with the team. There’s been times in the past when I’ve said “This is a thing we’re doing”, and that’s risky when you do that for a team. I just discovered that that’s not in my DNA. My DNA is to jam with people, and collaborate, and hear their story. Then you come together with these ideas at these leadership moments as a collective. Everyone gets behind that a lot easier, when it’s not just one voice that’s made a decree. I built my leadership style around being collaborative. And not just talking to the leaders that report directly to me, I’ll go across departments, to Customer Service, to QA, to anybody on the team. Because it all matters. They’re all talented, and I benefit from their wisdom.
Clay Stone: Is there anything from that that you still want to learn?
Holly Longdale: It’s endless. And I think that’s part of the curiosity that I’ve always had. I’m always in my head and asking ridiculous questions. I do that to my leadership team. Because I’m curious. We do that a lot, “how’s the game working in the regions?”, we had this conversation about how we are working globally. Somebody on the team will talk about how we’re rolling something out, and we’ll go “What are you doing for Australia?” That’s the benefit of having all these people be part of this journey together. It’s an absolute gift.