Blizzard outlines massive effort behind World of Warcraft

By Brendan Sinclair, GameSpotPosted Sep 17, 2009 9:40 am PT

Austin GDC 2009: Frank Pearce explains what it takes to craft 7,650 quests, 70,000 spells, 40,000 NPCs, 1.5 million assets, and 5.5 million lines of code; some 4,000 employees, 13,250 server blades, and 75,000 CPU cores keep MMORPG running.

Frank Pearce at BlizzCon 2008.

Who Was There: Blizzard Entertainment cofounder and executive vice president of product development Frank Pearce and production director J. Allen Brack opened Thursday's schedule of panels with a keynote address titled "The Universe of World of Warcraft."

What They Talked About: In the GDC Austin schedule, Pearce and Brack's keynote address is described as offering "an in-depth at the operational complexities of running a large-scale MMO." While there has been no shortage of people to talk about the difficulties of developing and running MMORPGs, few have experience with anything as "large-scale" as World of Warcraft and its 11-million-strong subscriber base.

Just a few of WOW's 11-million-subscriber army.

The biggest recurring theme of the at-times-technical presentation was "large-scale." Brack began by explaining the studio's layout, emphasizing that Blizzard tries to form its structure around the people, and not the other way around.

The programming team is responsible for updating and maintaining 5.5 million lines of code. The team of 51 artists has created 1.5 million unique assets for the game, with a handful of sub-teams dedicated to weapons and armor; environments; animation; props like torches or fence posts; dungeons and large objects like houses; and technical art to polish what everyone else creates. There are 37 designers responsible for creating classes, professions, events, a library of more than 70,000 spells, and a population of nearly 40,000 non-player characters.

Then there's an entire cinematics department of 123 people that does more than just cutscenes. Pearce said the team acts as reference when merchandising partners want to make replicas, or, say, gaudy 12-foot-tall statues like the one sitting outside Blizzard's headquarters.

70,000 spells? That's a whole lot of magic goin' on...

There's also a QA testing team, which employs 218 people. That group's job gets tougher as time goes on, Brack said, because the amount of content in the game expands, but the size of the team does not. The original World of Warcraft contained 2,600 quests, with the Burning Crusade expansion adding another 2,700, and Wrath of the Lich King contributing another 2,350 to the game--a total of 7,650 in all. Also adding to the QA team's woes, Brack said, is that Blizzard promotes from within, taking some of the most talented QA testers out of the pool to work on other parts of the game.

As if there weren't enough to deal with, Pearce said Blizzard handles the localization of the game in-house. It's crucial for the game, since World of Warcraft is played in English by fewer than half the game's players. He added that the team doesn't do any partial localizations, and adding another language to the game is a commitment to provide ongoing support to that for as long as the game is running.

Combined, WOW and its two expansions have 7,650 quests.

Patching is another problem, with many different versions of the game and previous patches out there for which compatibility must be assured. Brack said every time the company releases a patch, it needs to prepare more than 120 versions of it to make sure every player will get one compatible with his or her game.

Pearce talked about Blizzard Online Network Services, a group of 68 people who run data centers where servers are hosted in Washington, California, Texas, Massachusetts, France, Germany, Sweden, South Korea, China, and Taiwan. Between them, there are 13,250 server blades and 75,000 CPU cores keeping the World of Warcraft up and running.

Then there are international offices, which employ about 1,700 people across France, South Korea, Taiwan, China, and Ireland dealing with local concerns and customer service. Customer service is one of the biggest chunks of Blizzard, Brack said, with more than 2,500 people worldwide dedicated to the team.

It's unclear if Blizzard's infamous April Fools' gags count as part of WOW's 1.5 million assets.

The numbers don't stop: nearly 150 people on the team are responsible for Battle.net, from maintaining billing and the account system to creating the infrastructure that will let the 12 million active Battle.net players keep persistent friends lists across games when Starcraft II launches. There are also dedicated groups for public relations; a Web team for the game's slate of official Web sites; the community team serving as forum mods and liaison between developers and players; and a corporate applications team responsible for fraud detection and data mining on the World of Warcraft achievement system. Pearce dropped a little bit of info on that, noting that to date, World of Warcraft players have earned collectively about 4.5 billion achievements.

It's not over yet. Pearce talked about the eSports team, which has been involved in more than 1,600 tournaments around the world. They also act as a direct line of communication for feedback between the developers and the highest end of high-end players. Blizzard also needs an events team to put together BlizzCon, which Brack said is operated at a substantial loss for the company. While the company doesn't turn a profit on the annual shindig, Brack said the cost is worth it for marketing purposes.

Speaking of marketing, there's a World of Warcraft-specific team for that as well. They're responsible for TV commercials, promotions, and tie-ins like this summer's World of Warcraft-themed flavors of Mountain Dew. A separate licensing department handles board games, plushies, statues, novels, and anything else with the World of Warcraft logo on it.

The Murloc plush toy is one of the items under the WOW licensing team's supervision.

World of Warcraft didn't start off this large, which means Blizzard has needed to establish a recruiting team as well. Blizzard is essentially always hiring, Brack and Pearce said, with 221 job openings worldwide at the moment.

There's a creative development team responsible for chronicling the lore of the series, working with licensing and novelists to ensure the World of Warcraft story is consistent across products. They don't create the lore, Brack said, but they do maintain it.

Wrapping up the presentation, the pair also gave quick shouts to their human resources, finance, facilities, legal, and information technology teams. In all, Blizzard has more than 4,000 employees and 600 licensed partners helping to keep the World of Warcraft turning.

Quote: "The moral of the story is that operating an online game is about more than just game development."--Frank Pearce

Takeaway: Clearly, running a massively multiplayer online game is a massive task indeed. As Pearce noted partway through the hour-long presentation, despite all the numbers thrown at the audience, the most mind-boggling may have been "one," the number of MMO games Blizzard is making in addition to World of Warcraft.

189 Comments

  • hirest-gree

    Posted Sep 24, 2009 8:02 pm PT

    Eventually the mature player base will move on, which will be soon. Sad day, but it's bound to happen.

  • hirest-gree

    Posted Sep 24, 2009 8:00 pm PT

    Blizzard is disappointing me, they want more and more money as you can see. Improving a game for casual players, wrecking the game essence. First we saw server transfers for $, then pve to pvp $, gender changes $, race changes yet? Merging pvp to pve with vault of archavon another scheme. It's all about money and not player satisfaction. I must admit quitting was hard as a gladiator from season 1 to 4, but you have to move on. They are becoming lazier, why improve the game when 10 hardcore players quit when you can get 20 casuals?

  • BloodMist

    Posted Sep 21, 2009 9:37 pm PT

    Gotta love superficiality.

  • dom1000

    Posted Sep 21, 2009 6:09 pm PT

    If you update the graphic you will need 75000+ more cpu and the game will run like hell with 2 hour lag.The only reason why i dont play this game is the graphic but they wont update it soon since the cost would be astronomical.Ill play AION ONLINE instead ,it has the graphic and gameplay im looking for not you hit me i hit you gameplay that look like nintendo 64 animation.

  • darzentas

    Posted Sep 20, 2009 11:35 am PT

    the only think for wow to be the best ever ever its update on graphics.....WOW ftw..

  • freekedoutfish

    Posted Sep 19, 2009 7:36 am PT

    Personally I dont see the issue with making WoW easier and more accessible to new and casual players. One thing I appreciate about wow is how easily you can just jump into it, get the hang of the game, level up to 80 and THEN jump into hard stuff.

    Other MMOs have a bad habbit of making leveling up too hard, require endless grind and take hours to do... something which scares away casual gamers.

    The ease of playing wow, casual nature of leveling up and harder end game content is something I love about it. It apeals to both casual and hardcore players because as a casual gamer leveling up is easy, and you have the harder content at the end and pvp for the more hardcore ppl.

    Its a nice blend for both worlds.

  • roryk666

    Posted Sep 19, 2009 12:36 am PT

    wow is the best game ive ever played in my whole life

  • oflow

    Posted Sep 18, 2009 8:16 pm PT

    the money goes to the shareholders like at any other company.

  • Blank2k2

    Posted Sep 18, 2009 7:32 pm PT

    WoW was certainly a good/impressive/enjoyable game, and i dont see why so many people do the WoW-Hating thing, doesnt make sense, WoW was/is a good game, yes it was a freak of nature by how popular it became but comon, its Blizzard! the Pixar of the gaming world it had a million or 2 subscribers before it even launched (Warcraft / Diablo fans would of instant-bought it) but now ive outgrown it & it seems to have dulled its edge over recent times making things easier & easier while im wanting harder & harder. (Also i thought the LK expansion was pretty crappy)

    Quit 6-7 months ago now, i still admit it was a good game but its not for me anymore, looking forward to see what newer MMO's have in store.

  • sophospeare

    Posted Sep 18, 2009 2:37 pm PT

    I still don't see where all the money goes. If you have 13,500 servers at $4000 a piece (I'm sure it's lower), that's $54MM. You have 4000 employees at, let's say, $100k a piecs (again, probably high), thats $400MM. Throw in $50MM for overhead (ie, buildings, power, computers, etc.). That a total of $500,000,000 in expenses per year. Blizz has 11,000,000 subscribers at $12 (figuring low for 6 month subscriptions), that's $132,000,000 a month or $1.584 billion per year or 1 billion in profit, not including merchandising and licensing fees they rake in. I know it's a cash cow, but I've said it in the past, as good as WoW is, Blizz could be doing so much more with it.

  • Wojcha

    Posted Sep 18, 2009 2:06 pm PT

    @ my previous comment: I was saying that it's good that they're making expansions.
    Don't get me wrong.

  • teaabags

    Posted Sep 18, 2009 1:48 pm PT

    you have to remember that this game has been around ages and when they say how many spells or quests or or armour or weapons, its everything combined from the beginning..of course its going to be a high number considering the amount of years its been going and quite frankly, it had BETTER be a high number. Also there had better be a lot of content etc. considering how much money they make on a monthly basis

  • Wojcha

    Posted Sep 18, 2009 1:41 pm PT

    If they keep making expansions like this this, we'll end up playing a raid with a Murloc Power Ranger level 115, that is specialized for two-handed lightsabers, made with the new Energy Weapon profession.

  • bloodyrooster

    Posted Sep 18, 2009 1:38 pm PT

    They could hire some programmers to chop off some of the tedious work like making 120 different versions of it when a patch comes out. That's a python script

  • buehler_evan

    Posted Sep 18, 2009 1:02 pm PT

    chernnunos: he wasn't talking about ending world hunger. and wow, i never knew it takes that many people to make world of warcraft

  • lozvil

    Posted Sep 18, 2009 1:01 pm PT

    No wonder it's the best MMO in the universe. Keep up the good work Blizzard. We, the gamers, are here to support you. For the Horrrrrddddddeeee.... hehehe... I'm saying that but my toons are Alliance... LOL...

  • Chernnunos

    Posted Sep 18, 2009 10:20 am PT

    Desolation00: Put a sock in it, please? if you want to end world hunger, log off of gamespot and go make a sandwich for a homeless man.

  • swamptick

    Posted Sep 18, 2009 9:46 am PT

    They put out an amazing product. I love Blizz.

  • desolation00 posted Sep 18, 2009 9:38 am PT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)

    desolation00

    Posted Sep 18, 2009 9:38 am PT (hide)

    All the work they're doing. All the investment they've put in.

    It still takes massive downtime every Tuesday.

    They still can't pull off a patch without 10% of the subscribers having to go to the forum to see the apology for it breaking something for em.

    And for some reason my low-pop server has to swap from Pacific to Mountain time going into an instance, and back again when you come out. We piggyback another server's Dungeon server causing dozens of new nuisances dealing with quests that don't update correctly for players already scrambling to find a good group to play with. Little wonder my current server is and always will be bottom 5% of the barrel with the good players (like myself soon) jumping ship daily.

    The investment just doesn't seem enough to match the demand yet.

    As good as WoW has been, I think their efforts would be better spent ending world hunger or something. Heck, not just their effort but that of their 11 million subscriber base and you're talking alot of manpower. We could take over Afghanistan just by setting up free gaming computers with top-flight internet access and plenty of salty snacks and energy drinks.

  • losikar

    Posted Sep 18, 2009 8:12 am PT

    SWTOR is going to be linear.... can't do it any other way with a full voiced NPC's. When I mean linear I mean good, and evil choices bioware offers. Not saying it wont be good, just linear story. Now what I'm really interested in is the 2nd MMO blizzard is making

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