"It needed a major shift in the way that we operate," Kaplan said. "You perform a variety of activities in an RTS for different reasons in comparison to what you would do with an online game. When it comes to story WoTLK Gold, if we take a look at the end of the first World of Warcraft, you've seen the humans as well as orcs and night elves all collaborating to take on Archimonde in the World Tree. It didn't go well with the design of the MMO in any way. We knew we wanted Horde and Alliance competing against one another. We needed to recreate the rift that stretches all the way back to the first orcs and humans."

"It's equally difficult to manage the psychological needs of the development team," he continued. "We are often compelled to implement things exactly as they were implemented in the RTS but this isn't always the best way to go for the game that is an MMO. For instance, we wanted to offer the ability known as Death Coil to warlocks, because we believed it was a good fit. The game World of Warcraft, Death Coil was the only Death only ability for knights which meant that in addition to being able to cause damage, but also could heal. The people had a difficult time understanding the notion that it was acceptable to alter the game and use the best techniques for the game play of WOW even if it did not match what was seen as being in World of Warcraft."

But, using the RTS as background did more than present challenges, as described through World of Warcraft. "We were greatly helped because we were able to draw on a lot of background within this World of Warcraft franchise," he explained. "So we were able to have all these storylines and worlds. In many ways, at least from the beginning in the process of WOW WoTLK Classic Gold developing the maps and zones there was a lot to begin with."