Austin GDC:

In the opening keynote of the Austin Game Developers Conference, entitled "How to Rule the World (of Warcraft)", Blizzard's Michael Morhaime outlined important lessons his company has learned.

Gameplay is first and foremost.

"If we don't get this part right, none of it matters," said Morhaime.

"We view the game market like a donut. The center of the donut represents the core marketâ¦the hardcore players buying and playing a lot of games. The casual market, the mass market, is the rest of the donutâ¦much bigger than the core market. To be successful, we have to hit both markets."

The goal, Morhaime said, is to create a game that is easy to learn but difficult to master. He referred to Guitar Hero as one of the best examples of such a game.

Building and protecting the brand name is also key.

"The Blizzard name is our most important property," explained Morhaime. "We want it to mean something. We want it to stand for high-quality games, fun and polished."

To that end, companies must resist the pressure to ship early.

"Shipping early is a very risky thing. You can do tremendous damage to a brand or franchise," Morhaime said.

With one chance to make a first impression, companies must not "mortgage the future to meet the quarter." Morhaime pointed to Blizzardâs experiences with Diablo and the Burning Crusade expansion pack as prime examples.

"We were working like crazy to get Diablo finished in time for Christmas, but it just wasn't ready. There was not much we could do about it."

The game was instead released on December 31st, and ended up selling well for the next year.

"No one looks back on Diablo and says 'imagine if it had been released three weeks earlierâ¦how much better it would have been.' If you ask people what they remember about Diablo, most people don't think that was the game that missed Christmas and still did well. They just remember that they enjoyed playing it."

Burning Crusade likewise missed the Christmas holiday and was held until January. "We were rewarded once again by the fastest-selling game of all time. 2.4 million copies in one day," said Morhaime.