AGDC09: Blizzard talks about world behind Warcraft
by Adam Holisky 
Sep 17th 2009 at 4:00PM
Unlike the keynote/opening ceremony delivered at BlizzCon, the Austin GDC keynote is geared more towards game developers and industry people than the general game public. For us WoW folks this means a little more details and numbers than you'd see from panels elsewhere.
In fact, one of the most interesting numbers that came out of the keynote today are the sizes of the teams that are working on various parts of WoW. After the break we'll look at those and other highlights from the keynote, as well as provide you with an audio recording of the entire thing for your perusal if you wish. Download the audio or stream it after the break.
Team size at Blizzard
- Game Design: 37
- Cinematics: 123
- Platform Services: 245
- Quality Assurance: 218
- International Offices Population: 1,724
- Game Masters: 2,056
- Billing: 240
- Quality Control: 67
- Technical Support: 121
- Online Technologies: 149
Design Staff Organization
One of the more interesting things for us is to see how the design side of things are laid out. As shown in the above slide, you can clearly see where everyone in the team stands. For instance, the often quoted Lead Systems Designer Greg Street (Ghostcrawler), reports to the Game Director and Production director, who in turn report up to the Executive Producer of WoW.
Of particular note in the design department, which is game design – things like classes and items, not art – is that there are only 37 people working there. Those 37 people are responsible for the majority of what happens in WoW. Everything from the class balance, to the world events, to the levels, to the dungeons.
In some ways I'm surprised that it's only 37 people working on those elements of the game, but in some ways I'm not – from my understanding in talking with Blizzard folks over the years is that the teams are incredibly tight knit and work very closely and well with each other. 37 people, when tasked correctly, can cover a lot of ground for the nearly 12 million of us playing the game.
Patching
One of the least understood yet most important aspects of WoW is the patching deployment that goes on during large events like Patch 3.1. The size of it can be astounding. According to data presented at the keynote, Patch 3.1 delivered more than 4.7 Petabytes of data. That's 4,700 terabytes, or 4,700,000 gigabytes.
For comparison, Facebook has around 1.5 Petabytes of data, AT&T had 16 Petabytes transferred through their network each day in 2008, and according to a New York Time article the entire written works of human kind would amount to about 50 Petabytes of data.
When WoW deploys a patch, it's mind boggling huge.
Bugs
There are 180,000 bugs being tracked by Blizzard for WoW. These bugs can be in various statuses from resolved, being resolved and unresolved. You can read more about this from our announcement.
Filed under: Events, Bugs, Blizzard, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
rhorle Sep 17th 2009 4:10PM
Again like with the amount of bugs, the amount of data on patch days isn't that surprising. After all they need to patch each and every server and that just adds up.
desaphius Sep 21st 2009 12:37PM
Although it's not that surprising that the numbers add up it's still quite impressive to move that much information in the that timeframe.
Amun Sep 17th 2009 4:20PM
This article is not clearly written -- a patch does not invlove 4.7 PB of *unique* data, that's just how much data needs to be moved in order to get everyone with a copy of the game up to date. Comparing it to the written works of humanity is ridiculous because one is unique data and one is not. You can't even say that blizzard moves most of this data either because they use the downloader (torrents) for patching. Blah blah blah.
Bronwyn Sep 17th 2009 5:57PM
I like to hope that anyone with half a brain would realize they did not mean *unique* data when they are talking about a patch. I know I may be giving too much credit to the average internet user, but come on. That's still a lot of data and it's still impressive.
Camaris Sep 17th 2009 4:20PM
This is pretty cool stuff. The server side of things must be mind-boggling in a lot of respects. I remember at BlizzCon they showed a bit of their network monitoring center, and it basically looked like NASA.
Aedilhild Sep 17th 2009 4:29PM
Fantastic! Many of us enjoy discussions of process and method, and especially people behind it all.
ash Sep 17th 2009 4:45PM
What's the crazy awesome picture in the sixth frame? It is set in like a desert or something and has a Broken-like humanoid pointing at some big tumbleweed type thing.
kcirreda Sep 17th 2009 4:55PM
Yeah, frames 6-9, what is all that? The have three guesses and I know the first two are really off. 1.Concept art for WoW that didn't make it. 2. New art for Cataclysm 3. That super secret new MMO's art. IDC how bad that is, I just want some more speculation or actual truth if it's available.
Ed Sep 17th 2009 5:01PM
Those pictures are concept art from Nomad, the game they talked about at the beginning which wasn't turning out well and was subsequently canceled so they could develop WoW instead.
Noah Sep 17th 2009 5:04PM
I'm just a little confused. If the game design is not art, I don't see any art teams on the list (other than cinematics) and I don't see any programmers. Am I missing something? Where do they fit in?
Seraphna Sep 17th 2009 5:14PM
Game Design: 37 (Programmers and Artists)
Cinematics: 123 (More Programmers, Artists, and Directors)
Platform Services: 245 (ITs, Programmers)
Quality Assurance: 218 (Representatives, CMs, Testers and Programmers, Testers)
Quality Control: 67 (Testers, Programmers)
Online Technologies: 149 (ITs, Programmers, Reps)
You're looking for specific words and not thinking about what those people do. Game Design and Cinematics take two major things, Artists and Programmers. All of the support tiers have people of programming skill to correct mistakes, maintain code, etc.
Noah Sep 17th 2009 5:15PM
Ok, thanks, that makes sense now.
PeeWee Sep 17th 2009 5:45PM
@Seraphna:
"Of particular note in the design department, which is game design – things like classes and items, not art"
Keywords in that quote is "not art".
murphsmets Sep 17th 2009 8:10PM
Not sure why any of this information is surprising to anyone. At the log on screen, just click the "Credits" button. You'll see a list of all the people and departments working on WoW.
Sithril Sep 17th 2009 5:10PM
Pictures 7-9 are interesting . Maybe some proposals for Azeroth universe before W3 story (arguebly the "core" from what modern WarCraft has evolved) was finalized ?
Also this unannounced MMO , since they already put it up there with SC2 and D3 , one would guess that within the next year we will see the possible forth major franchise announced finally .
I'm curious , though , just when we will get the first leaks-tit-bits of info about it .
Gridneo Sep 17th 2009 5:30PM
I have to be honest.
This is the type of WoW information I love the most. I just want to see their server farms.
Keep giving us the technical detail posts. As vague as this one is, I love it.
jugglervr Sep 17th 2009 7:56PM
I think i see 123 headcount that they can lose without any real impact.
Seriously, that many people to put together trailers that really mean nothing to the game itself? That's way too much headcount devoted to creating "bullshots."
SaintStryfe Sep 17th 2009 8:40PM
That's the reason you don't own a multi-billion dollar gaming corp and run the biggest for-pay MMO in the world...
Sorcefire Sep 18th 2009 11:53AM
Good point and I don't know why he got voted down. The cinematics have been, up until recently, beautiful rendered experiences. Now they seem to be moving towards using in-game assets to create what amounts to machinima. Look at the preview of Cataclysm compared to expansions of the past. Seems that you could get an intern to do it with the modeler and some video software.
NeoGhostz Sep 17th 2009 8:36PM
I know for a fact that Blizzard are using the HP C-class blade environments. In the range of 40,000 blade units, apparently they whinged about the fact that OpenView can only handle 16k units from a management perspective. I would assume given the launch of WoW they're started running on BL 46x's or 68x's blades, potentially the 49x if they're virtualising. Interesting when you think of what that entails but again this was a passing comment by a HP pre-sales engineer lead on OpenView and Orchestra.