"We designed it way ahead of time," he said. "To put it in context, Outland and Northrend and many of the concepts in WoW cataclysm Gold were all part the initial shipping plan for the game. Each now and then we'll encounter these moments from a planning and management perspective, when we'll think"What is it that we're actually doing and where should we be? However, part of what brings us there is staking the project for many years and always having a clear idea of where we'd like to go. That's what helps us guide the ship until we arrive there."

Outland and Northrend ended up being an element of The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm is scheduled to come out in the coming year. Oddly to be honest, Cataclysm was not the top priority for Blizzard when it first began to think about expansion possibilities.

"When we had completed the first game, we started working to expand the game," Kaplan said. "We didn't think of the one expansion we'd like to create. We asked ourselves, 'What's the most expansions that we'd like to create for this game? We wanted to create this huge list of options which we can reduce and prioritise. Outland as well as Northrend were on the list. Cataclysm is a fascinating variation from the previous list, since it was not part of the original plan for expansion that we were considering. It evolved from a myriad of interesting ideas that came together at the same time."

As per WoW Cataclysm Classic, Blizzard's initial expansion list also indicated an unrelated release order to what players actually received. "As the truth is when we first launched WOW we first thought that we would release Lich King the first" the author said. He also noted the fact that Outland along with Northrend were listed in the list of expansions.

This unpredictable nature, along with the flexibility of Blizzard to its direction is what also drove the development of Cataclysm as an entire expansion, said the director. "When we launched WOW, the entire concept of Cataclysm didn't exist in any way. We definitely had the concept to create Deathwing however, the overall idea behind buy Cataclysm Classic Gold grew from trying to decide what we believed was the best choice to do next. We didn't think five years ago that breaking the world apart."