Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBlizzard is tracking 180,000 bugs in WoW
by Adam Holisky 
Sep 17th 2009 at 1:00PM
During the keynote today at the Austin Game Developers Conference, Executive Vice President Frank Pearce and Production Director J. Allen Brack spoke at length about the internal workings of the WoW team and how they get their jobs done.
One of the more stunning things to come out of the keynote, which we'll have fully written up for you later today, is the fact that there are just under 180k bugs Blizzard is tracking in WoW. That means their bug database has 180,000 entries which are in some stage of being fixed (have been fixed, have not been fixed, or being worked on).
To me this number seems very large for a video game. I can understand an operating system like Windows 7 having an unreasonably large number of bugs in it like this, but for a video game -- even one as complex as WoW -- that number is quite astounding.
It does raise the inevitable question: what is Blizzard doing to fix all these? And how does this relate to the extremely long wait times for GM contact in game? We also learned that Blizzard only employs 2500 worldwide in Customer Service. That includes things like phone bank operators, GMs, forum mods, etc...
One of the more stunning things to come out of the keynote, which we'll have fully written up for you later today, is the fact that there are just under 180k bugs Blizzard is tracking in WoW. That means their bug database has 180,000 entries which are in some stage of being fixed (have been fixed, have not been fixed, or being worked on).
To me this number seems very large for a video game. I can understand an operating system like Windows 7 having an unreasonably large number of bugs in it like this, but for a video game -- even one as complex as WoW -- that number is quite astounding.
It does raise the inevitable question: what is Blizzard doing to fix all these? And how does this relate to the extremely long wait times for GM contact in game? We also learned that Blizzard only employs 2500 worldwide in Customer Service. That includes things like phone bank operators, GMs, forum mods, etc...
While those 2500 people might seem like a lot, and in many ways it is, the recent customer service level of WoW shows that these resources might not be enough.
On that note as well, I'm quite surprised that Blizzard actually released these numbers. I loath what the forums will look like in a day when people start quipping to Nethaera or Ghostcrawler about the 180,000 bugs. But it was Blizzard's decision to put that number out there. Here's hoping it doesn't skyrocket to 200,000 when Ony starts to spawn more Whelps in patch 3.2.2.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Bugs, Blizzard, News items
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 5)
Korenwolf Sep 17th 2009 1:40PM
Seems completely reasonable, particularly given this won't just be the client. It'll include the server side, the database, and probably the tooling they use in the design of WoW.
SunGod228 Sep 17th 2009 1:33PM
I work for IT at company with ~10k employees. We have 1,204,995 issues we have tracked. Now considering WoW has 5million subscribers I would say those numbers are actually very very low.
Seraphna Sep 17th 2009 4:42PM
A lot more then 5 million subscribers, unless this post is from 2006.
Liltimmy Sep 17th 2009 1:33PM
Anyone know what bug tracker they use?
maniraptor Sep 17th 2009 2:02PM
They didn't say in the keynote. (It was a pretty high-level overview of the organization, especially the support and management structures involved with developing and maintaining the complexity that is WoW.) They did talk a little about the development of in-house tools, though. These are pretty extensive, with dedicated teams developing software used throughout the corporate organization. Their bug tracking tools may also be proprietary.
Kalis Sep 17th 2009 2:09PM
DevTrack, I assume. That's what Vivendi used.
Beliam Sep 17th 2009 1:37PM
Bug #1,794: Flying mounts sometimes not animating
Bug #154,433: Hammer of Justice range weirdness
Bug #87, 612: Warlocks.
Bug #32,112: Lack of ingame pony
lidstrom Sep 17th 2009 1:44PM
bug #1: no cow level
Suzaku Sep 17th 2009 1:54PM
Sorry, but that doesn't seem like that big of a number, at all. *Especially* since it's stated that they include bugs that have already been fixed and problems that were addressed in alpha and beta testing phases. There shouldn't be any controversy here.
If you've ever written a program, you know that debugging is a fundamental stage of creating software. Sometimes you'll have a thousand lines of code and one missing semicolon will produce a few hundred errors. The amount of code going into the game, including both server and client software, is likely immense.
Though, I'm sure there will be people today, who only having read the headline of the article, will head to the forum complaining about how Blizzard shouldn't be making new pets or something when they could be fixing bugs.
crschmidt Sep 17th 2009 1:48PM
"It does raise the inevitable question: what is Blizzard doing to fix all these?"
Writing code. Fixing models. Updating artwork. Changing designs. Releasing patches.
I'm not sure what that question is trying to ask, but it seems kind of silly. What are they doing to fix bugs? Well, they're fixing bugs.
Long GM wait times seem likely to be almost entirely unrelated to this. The only relationship I can imagine is one where a bugged quest -- like the little disguising robot dude in Stormwind Castle -- can lead to a GM having to dedicate ongoing time to 'resetting' the quest, because the bug isn't fixed.
180k bugs seems in line for the size and age of the product and size of the userbase.
Aaron B Sep 17th 2009 1:50PM
In the immortal words of Beavis, "that's not that much, really."
There are tons of players and infinite interactions and game mechanics. These things happen. How many of these bugs are actually effecting game play?
The instance problem was terrible... and last night our guild bank disappeared. I wonder if there's a way to rank the severity of bugs. I would like to see how many severe bugs there are. We don't care if a tree branch goes into a mountain, or if the head of my Swift Zhevra disappears into a brick wall.
Suzaku Sep 17th 2009 2:06PM
Eh, the article seems mostly like rabble rousing. Note the diggs and the somewhat misleading headline, the note for a real writeup coming later, all of that stuff. Digging for controversy where there shouldn't be.
I almost didn't bother commenting, knowing that it only encourages bloggers to do that, since they get more ad revenue, but I felt the need to chime in with the crowd pointing out that 180,000 bugs in a game that's been in constant development for 7+ years, with new patches and updates released on a near monthly cycle, is actually astonishingly small, especially when you consider how small and unimportant the vast majority of bugs would be.
wow Sep 17th 2009 1:52PM
It says they're ***tracking*** 180,000 bugs. That includes bugs that have been fixed. Working for a software company, I'd wager that the vast majority of those 180,000 fall into the "fixed" category.
It doesn't mean there are 180,000 open, unfixed bugs outstanding.
Flash Sep 17th 2009 1:52PM
One for everytime you had to use Auto Unstuck in any mountainus reigon two expansions ago (and a couple for the times you didn't have to, but did anyway).
Brownb Sep 17th 2009 2:16PM
Does Divine Storm grAphic count as a bug, cause it should. I'm just saying
Sir7 Sep 17th 2009 2:02PM
Holy shit, so I guess that roughly 180,000% of the internet works for IT, a SaaS, or just just writes code for fun, and all of you decided to comment on the non-severity of this issue at once. CRISIS AVERTED, WHEW!!!
Seraphna Sep 17th 2009 4:45PM
Hi there. I'm an IT at a large SaaS company.
This game has a very small amount of bugs considering it's file size imprint and amount of code, on top of constant patching, additions, and expansions.
Kalis Sep 17th 2009 2:05PM
As a former tester, I say that 180k bugs for a 4+ year live project seems low. Is this counting all bugs? or just open ones?
Suzaku Sep 17th 2009 2:11PM
According to the article:
"That means their bug database has 180,000 entries which are in some stage of being fixed (have been fixed, have not been fixed, or being worked on)."
Note the part where it says their bug database includes entries that "have been fixed".
Kalis Sep 17th 2009 2:08PM
LilTimmy: If forced to guess, I'd assume it was DevTrack. That's what Vivendi (now ActivisionBlizzard) used.