Mike Morhaime, CEO and President and Frank Pearce, EVP of Product Development. Both co-founders

How does it feel to be Gamer Gods?

Mike -- We wouldn't know.

It's very good company.

Frank – It's Very humbling and honoring. I've been thinking about this over the last couple weeks since they told us we were going to be winning this award. And one of the things I think is really important to emphasize is that Bilzzard as an organization wouldn't have experienced the success we have without the tremendous talents of all the people that work here. We have a global headcount of somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,800 people and we have probably 800 people that work in product development and they are all some of the best people in the industry. The talent of the people that we have got here is a big factor in the success of our products and the popularity of our games.

The other co-founder, Allen Adham, is he still involved with the company, right?

Mike – No. Allen basically retired from gaming a few years back. Allen was instrumental in the founding of the company and really a lot of our core philosophies. Spiritually he has really been with us pretty much the whole ride.

Are there some of those you can talk about that the company has tried to follow over the years.

Mike: We have a mission statement with eight core values. Our mission at Blizzard is dedicated to creating the most epic entertainment experiences ever. It's very high bar that we set for ourselves. Our first core value is gameplay first. If we were only going to talk about two things that is pretty much it. We really stand behind our games and our games represent what we were all about, the quality of our games, the polish, the attention to detail that we try to put into that whole experience.

What led you to think that online gaming, MMOs and strategy games would be that big in the future?

3:50 – Frank …. We launched our first online game back in December of 1996 when released the first Diablo game on Battlenet. Online gaming has been part of our DNA. But even before that multiplayer and head-to-head gaming with a real person was something that we thought was important and made the experience that much more immersive.

When we launched WOW we didn't have any concept of how big massively multiplayer online gaming could become. This is a story that we tell all the time: the projections that we had for the first year was around 400,000 and some active subs in the first year in North America. I know that Mike had optimistic goals of 1 million active worldwide. Is that about right?

In addition to the annual categories awarded at Saturday's Spike TV's Video Game Awards, a special career Gamer God Award was given to Blizzard Entertainment, the studio that has delivered the World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo games.

The original founders Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce were on hand to accept the award. Prior to the event, Game Hunters talked to Morhaime, who is CEO and president, and Frank Pearce, who is executive vice president of product development.

How does it feel to be Gamer Gods? The only previous recipient is Will Wright.

Morhaime: We wouldn't know. (Laughs.) It's very good company.

Pearce: It's very humbling and honoring. I've been thinking about this over the last couple weeks since they told us we were going to be winning this award. And one of the things I think is really important to emphasize is that Bilzzard as an organization wouldn't have experienced the success we have without the tremendous talents of all the people that work here. We have a global head count of somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,800 people and we have probably 800 people that work in product development and they are all some of the best people in the industry. The talent of the people that we have got here is a big factor in the success of our products and the popularity of our games.

The other co-founder, Allen Adham, is he still involved with the company, right?

Morhaime: No. Allen basically retired from gaming a few years back. Allen was instrumental in the founding of the company and really a lot of our core philosophies. Spiritually, he has really been with us pretty much the whole ride.

Are there some of those you can talk about that the company has tried to follow over the years?

Morhaime: We have a mission statement with eight core values. Our mission at Blizzard is dedicated to creating the most epic entertainment experiences ever. It's a very high bar that we set for ourselves. Our first core value is gameplay first. If we were only going to talk about two things that is pretty much it. We really stand behind our games and our games represent what we were all about -- the quality of our games, the polish, the attention to detail that we try to put into that whole experience.

What led you to think that online gaming, MMOs and strategy games would be that big in the future?

Pearce: We launched our first online game back in December of 1996 when released the first Diablo game on Battle.net. Online gaming has been part of our DNA. But even before that, multiplayer and head-to-head gaming with a real person was something that we thought was important and made the experience that much more immersive.

When we launched World of Warcraft, we didn't have any concept of how big massively multiplayer online gaming could become. This is a story that we tell all the time: The projections that we had for the first year was around 400,000 and some active subs in the first year in North America. I know that Mike had optimistic goals of 1 million active worldwide. Is that about right?

Morhaime: No. I thought we could do 1 million in North America. I thought we could do optimistically, eventually 4-5 million globally. And, of course, we are over 10 million and have been for a few years.

What has helped sustain World of Warcraft as the number one MMO since its release seven years ago? (Blizzard celebrated the game's seventh anniversary last week.)

Pearce: The most important thing as it relates to World of Warcraft and that community, is delivering them new, compelling content on a regular schedule. They consume the content that we create voraciously. So, it will take us two years to make and expansion set for World of Warcraft and the most passionate members of the community will tear through that content in a matter of weeks and some of them even go through it in a couple of days, just because they are so excited about it.

World of Warcraft has managed to survive every potential WOW killer. Is there anything specific you can point to that has helped it dodge all these bullets?

Morhaime: The biggest thing is just that these games are absolutely huge and complex. Probably the most complex thing you can do in gaming is to have a massively multiplayer online game with all of these various players who have their own social connections within the game and really create something that has something for everyone and works without major issues at some point that people can get stuck on. There are a lots of different ways people can enjoy World of Warcraft and a lot of different experiences that people bring with them before they enter the game.

So you have got people who have never played an online game before. You have people who have played every online game. You have people who want to play casually, a few hours a week, and you have people who want to spend a significant amount of time, basically eating up new challenges all the time. How do you make the game accessible and challenging to a wide range of players?

And I would guess you are bringing in new players regularly with the recent ad campaigns. Have you seen that and how did you get Chuck Norris for that most recent ad?

Morhaim: Chuck is interesting because we have been trying to get Chuck for years. We are really happy we were finally able to get him. The ads have been pretty successful bringing in new players. I think a big challenge we face is how to continue trying to make the game more and more accessible to people who have every played an MMO before.

About the new Mists of Pandaria expansion, what would you say to those players who are worried about some of the new features like the Pokemon-style battles with vanity pets?

Pearce: For me, if someone was skeptical about that feature, I would tell them, 'Hey, look, there's plenty of other content that's going to be included in that expansion set. And the pet battles is completely optional, but it's going to be something that can be consumed in more bite-sized chunks and you might want to give it a try.'

Looking past Mists of Pandaria, what future content do you look forward to adding in-game?

Pearce: The development team just issued Patch 4.3, which was a big, huge patch with the deathwing raid and several five-man dungeons. That is one of the largest patches to date in the history of the game. So launching that last week was a big focus. Now they are going to turn their attention fully to Mists of Pandaria and honestly we haven't even started talking about what's next after that. We have a big, long laundry list of stuff that we we'd like to do for Mists of Pandaria. It will be a question of what we are able to get into that expansion pack and we will prioritize everything that falls off the list for Pandaria and what makes sense for a patch post-Pandaria and what makes sense for future expansions.

It's fair to say that you don't really see an end in sight for World of Warcraft?

Morhaime: No. We are planning to continue to supporting it and adding new content to the game for a long time.

Any thoughts on the upcoming Star Wars MMO game?

Morhaime: We are actually good friends with the BioWare guys and we know there is a lot of excitement about the game. It's a popular franchise. We wish them success and we hope they are successful in bringing a lot of new players into the genre and hopefully the entire industry will benefit from that.

Diablo will be big part of the awards show. It's up for most anticipated game and there will be a new trailer, right?

Morhaime: Our cinematics team has been hard at work doing some really beautiful pre-rendered cinematics for Diablo III so I think this is the first one we are showing in its entirety. It's some pretty amazing work. We are really proud of that team. (Here's a link to the Blizzard site where the trailer resides.)

Do we have a release date for the game yet?

Morhaime: As soon as possible. We have pushed it into 2012. Really at this stage, it's about completing the polish on the game and preparing it for launch. As with any Blizzard game, we really try not to rush these things out. We try to give them time to bake. We are in beta right now, so we have a lot of people out there helping us test the game. We have been getting great feedback. People are really excited about it.

Anything you can say about Project Titan?

Morhaime: We are working on a title, it's a next-generation MMO, but we haven't announced the title yet. We have just announced that we are working on it and that we are not talking about it.

Anything else you'd like to touch on?

Morhaime: I'd just echo what Frank said at the beginning. We are really honored that they chose us for this award and we really owe the award to all the passionate and talented people at Blizzard because they are making us look really good.