"Why an MMO?" was the first thing I asked Jeff Kaplan, the game's associate designer, as we sat down for my tour of the World of Warcraft alpha. The obvious answer, of course, was that Azeroth (Warcraft's fictional universe) is a world with an incredibly rich history, filled with fascinating characters, monsters, and places. Blizzard has created that world through a series of well-received real-time strategy games and that's great, but RTS games don't give the chance to do the kind of open-ended, intimate exploration of the world that an MMO would.