Eyonix enjoys his WoW
by Amanda Rivera 
Oct 24th 2007 at 9:22AM
Eyonix, Blue extraordinaire, and let players know that he has spent a decent amount of time playing the game he works on. Exactly how much? Well, his /played comes to 290 days since the game's launch, which some have figured out to be on average about 6.5 hours a day. Honestly, considering the workload he's under (he says he works at least 45 hours a week) that's a surprising amount of time spent on a game you also work on.Some people in this industry claim that once you actually start working on video games, you will stop playing them. I've met plenty of people over the course of the last year that actually tried to talk me out of living my dream using this exact premise. But here I am, six months in, still enjoying the games I write about. Now I realize that writing about a game and dealing with its quality assurance and testing, its customer service and forum management, these are two very different things. But it looks as if Eyonix still enjoys WoW, so perhaps the jading of one's soul depends on how you perceive the game you work on. Or could it be that WoW is just that much fun?
Filed under: Virtual selves, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
ThorinII Oct 24th 2007 9:42AM
I guess it would be kind of like working in food service. You very quickly get tired of eating whatever it is that place is selling, so you stop eating it. However, there are exceptions to every rule.
Dotixi Oct 24th 2007 10:17AM
I have a feeling Eyonix's /played time also includes his work related testing time...maybe.
That or he has no/hates his family.
I guess love of Warcrft is possible too...
Kyr Oct 24th 2007 10:24AM
The "he has no family" account may be closer to the truth than you think.
Blizzard employees in Europe are required to relocate to Paris, France.
MightyIdle Oct 24th 2007 10:35AM
Dotixi, in the original post he stated that it didn't include internal testing, beta testing, etc. From what he stated, it sounds like it's all from personal recreation time.
I'm personally peaking out at around 180 hours over a two year period.
MightyIdle Oct 24th 2007 10:37AM
Make that 180 days, not hours. 8)
Celerann Oct 24th 2007 10:43AM
Key here is that he's not actually working on the game but on the community, no? The devs don't play, but the CMs do ;)
Melenor Oct 24th 2007 10:40AM
Or, it could be that his play time includes testing a lot of in-game content.
Salty Oct 24th 2007 11:03AM
Start of the Warcraft III Beta … 2002 … my college dormitory. “Dude, we have to get like 20 people to sign up for the beta, at least one of us should be able to get the key!” Shortly, halfassed inkjet printers sputtered out of ink, nerds sprinted down hallways taping notices on peoples’ doors. All in all, we had about 25 people sign up for the beta, including people who never played computer games, people’s girlfriends, etc. The issue was compounded by the fact that beta signups were limited by IP address, which our dorm shared, so we all had to go home for the weekend and sign up at our parents’ houses. To our vast annoyment, when Beta day came – nobody got a key.
We held our heads in our hands and called all of our high school friends and anybody else we knew and couldn’t find anybody with a key who was willing to give it up even just for a peak. Then bnetd and a cracked beta came out, and in short order we had a few concurrent 4-man multiplayer games going on our LAN. After a week, we had bounced an e-mail several times listing our grievances, which I had a friend post on the beta forum; then curiosity tapered off and only a few of us continued to play obsessively into the wee hours of the night, and at least two more reports were compiled for the beta forum.
Fast forward a few more months, the mod community was still in its infancy, people were updating the Diablo II MPQ viewers to work with WCIII, people were figuring out the file formats of relavent files including models, spell databases, maps. The game changed much from Beta to release, and largely due to my inadequacy at RTS multiplayer play and the lack of replay ability in the single player experience, I found myself only interested in modding. I bought the game and a year or so later, the battle chest, but I never actually got back on a multiplayer scrimmage or legitimately finished the campaigns, I just messed with the map editor and hacked together custom 3d models.
The mod community was largely in demand by the campaign developers, and that’s what our role became – changing skins, altering models, adding sounds and graphics, making custom spells, etc for campaigns. What truly revealed the state of our disinterest in the game was that, when the campaigns were released, none of us ever played it – we just took bug reports from players and fixed the campaigns. I don’t think any of us aside from the map designers really ever opened the game up and played through the scenario.
To this day, I still don’t really enjoy playing Warcraft III. I think it’s fun to see the lore unfold, but for a 3D game, the game field and perspective is so constricting and the combat is awkward and indirect. It was so “in between” RTS and FPS-RPG that it was difficult to find a groove, though it still had a strong appeal to the multiplayer skirmishers – you could give those guys checkered geometrical shapes and monotone squeaks for audio effects and they’d still play it fiendishly. I think more than a few players did something like that to alleviate the distraction of certain unit models or map elements.
Anyway, developer burnout is real, and in almost any career path the grind (in the traditional meaning) can suck the life out of any passion. But I think WoW has the kind of replayability and varied play styles that can appeal to any level of interest. You can be the raid jock tweaked out with mods and addons, castsequence macros bar to bar and theorycrafting with talent and DPS spreadsheets, grokking logs for raid statistics. Or you can be the curious little gnome wandering aimlessly lost in Teldrassil whacking critters with a club in awe at all the particle effects and full screen glow gorgeousness.
I just want to hear how a Blizzard employee explains coming in late, or wanting to leave early, or take time off to raid.
hpavc Oct 24th 2007 11:06AM
I have a huge played, the time my played per week falls is when I am working on addons. I wonder what my /played is just waiting for /console reloadui to finish.
Todd Oct 24th 2007 11:08AM
I wonder if Eyonix is compliant with how the game is. Could he not speak up about problems out of fear in losing his job? Probably not... but he can't be happy about the state with everything in game.
Jason Oct 24th 2007 11:22AM
Community Managers sit in the QA section of Blizzard, and generally their account is left logged on during the day, that's where a large portion of his hours come from I bet.
Kaylek Oct 24th 2007 11:25AM
Read a couple articles over at Gamasutra. It may the case for some developers, but most developers giving you good advice will tell you that a key point to being a developer is being in touch with the games that are out there. In other words, playing them.
And I certainly wouldn't compare your game blogging experience to that of any other game industry professional. Far, far different.
Ichigo Oct 24th 2007 12:03PM
#8 Allot of Blizz employees work odd hours to begin with so normal raiding isn't an option. However, there are some that did/do raid, make their own guilds with other employees and stick to specific servers.
Tekkub Oct 24th 2007 3:23PM
#9... totally agree, /played is a meaningless stat to devs. I've been in the gave since it came out, I have 167 days /played, I have _ONE_ level 70... and I write addons.
DavidC Oct 24th 2007 4:09PM
/played numbers don't mean your actually playing during that time.
Let's see ... most wow *addicts* will log on when they get home, if nothing other then to run an AH scan or be "online" for a raid invite.
Then they go about their business ... like using the bathroom, starting dinner, reading email, etc, etc.
Then they might actually *play* the game for a bit ... like clear their ingame email box, throw up stuff on AH, group/raid/quest, etc, etc.
Then after their activities, they might head back and start another AH scan as they get ready for bed.
Then of course comes the weekend where your probably logged on for most of Sat / Sun. How many folks actually "log off" to go mow the lawn (or any chore)?
I will only "log off" if I am leaving for an extended period (like movies, or errands, or what not) and then not if I need to run an AH scan :-)
I now take /played with a grain of salt as it doesn't really mean anything ... unless of course your racing the clock on leveling an alt ... then you log off if your going to scratch your butt!!!
kunukia Oct 24th 2007 4:23PM
I have many, many alts...many. And I have deleted many alts, some 20 plus alts, even a few 40 plus alts. I checked my current toons 60 and up the other day and they have 200+ days played. So, I suspect that my days played is over 300, considering all the current and deleted alts.
I am retired, and most of these hours are actually played, but I love exploring and farming, so it is not all leveling or instancing or RPing. Fishing is great for eating up hours, also.