The topic on everyone's mind over the last couple of weeks has been the World of Warcraft beta. Since the game is still in beta, though, it's impossible to give the game any substantive criticism, either pro or con. Still, watching the progress of the beta and observing changes that Blizzard made to the title in this latest patch ("The Horde Push"), I found it interesting how much the process of developing the game reveals about Blizzard's game design philosophy. Perhaps observing the way World of Warcraft shapes up can help other game developers learn why Blizzard has the reputation it does.