Tag Archives: cory stockton

Cory Stockton, lead content designer for World of Warcraft, has described the origins of pets in the game, be it a combative pet or just a rare vanity pet you can tame for bragging purposes.

More »

Lead world designer on World of Warcraft Cory Stockton has told VG247 that upcoming expansion Cataclysm will keep WoW players interested even if they’ve been playing for the last five years.

More »

Like many of Blizzard’s senior development team, lead World of Warcraft world designer Cory Stockton – the guy in charge of rebuilding the game for the incoming Cataclysm expansion – has been working on the IP so long he talks about the virtual world and its denizens as indistinguishable from the real one. The matter-of-fact tone in which he discusses the game’s protagonists and locales is exactly how you’d discuss the latest football result. It’s not the same as the rehearsed patter of producers pressed into media duties, but rather indicative of the time he and others have invested into this game over the past half-decade plus.

Not that Stockton has trouble differentiating reality from gaming. As the lead content designer in an expansion that focuses on ripping up parts of a game world populated by over 10 million subscribers, it’s going to be pretty hard to avoid all manner of “grounding” feedback in the coming months.

We sat down for a chat with Stockton to see where Blizzard’s content team is at with Cataclysm, and what it’s hoping to accomplish – and the one design trait Stockton attributes to the MMO’s ongoing success.

More »