Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 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 5 of 5)
SpaceGoatPriest Sep 17th 2009 3:48PM
This made me remember an awesome xkcd comic. Wonder how many bugs Blizzard gets that they could not reproduce.
http://xkcd.com/583/
Psyche_DH Sep 17th 2009 4:21PM
Keep in mind that declining customer service evaluations may simply indicate that GMs are now only dealing with the tough(er) issues. Simple things like trading a piece of Tier armor for the one that matches your spec or giving an epic piece of loot to the right person because the master looter screwed up are no longer GM issues. These are both in game features now. That means every positive satisfaction survey they used to get for their GMs is no longer going to come in.
micgillam Sep 17th 2009 4:54PM
I'd also add that people that have dealt with Blizzard customer service a few times over the years and always had pretty consistent quality of service may not fell much like filling out the survey anymore with essentially the same scores. I've done it a couple of times by phone and email, I would say is generally pretty decent but email-based support people seem to really lack the authority or rights to fix a lot of common issues (because they can't really verify your identity, so account specific issues are pretty much out). But how many surveys is it really worth filling out to say the same thing as last time, especially if you ever have an ongoing issue where you deal with 6 different support people and get a survey for each one. Positive feedback for the one who fixed it, sure, but do I really feel like filling out a bunch of other surveys to say "Fudgeeo did a slighly above average job collecting information and passing it on to Horatio."?
Ringo Flinthammer Sep 17th 2009 4:42PM
"the recent customer service level of WoW shows that these resources might not be enough"
Based on what? You had a hard time getting a GM to respond to you? That's kind of a major statement to make without any substantiation in the article.
briansaysdie Sep 17th 2009 5:39PM
i think there's a bug in your comment system. lol.
Sarakin Sep 17th 2009 6:03PM
I wonder how many of them are just repeats though. Like a bug that makes a small section in org look funny like a couple pixels on a wall and then the same in stormwind. Would they consider that two bugs? There could be thousands like that that we wouldn't really notice
Thao Sep 17th 2009 9:56PM
Yea but you have to realize what they call bugs. An item has the wrong icon? Thats +1 to the bug count. A period is missing in a quest text? Thats another +1 to the bug count. In a simple program with only 100-200 lines you can find dozens of bugs, so I cannot imagine that they are doing to bad for a game with hundreds of thousands of lines of code.
CK Sep 18th 2009 1:51AM
180,000 bugs is not a big number for an MMO as old as WoW.
Most of them are fixed and closed, I'm sure. Say, remember an old windfury nerf? That was maybe around 50,000th bug, called something like "Windfury weapons do too much burst damage in pvp". If I were to make a wager, less than 5000 of those bugs are still being worked on, and the rest are filed away as fixed or "working as intended".
Remember that an MMO is a service, and patches and updates are a process, so there's a constant stream of bugs and bugfixes being generated by the devs and QA.
mrcalire Sep 18th 2009 3:11AM
I haven't had much complaints with bugs other then Arantir's Shadow in Lakeshire (FREAKING GRRRRR X2) My biggest complaint and concern about the quality of customer service is why they let the goldspammers create the dead toon advertisments in Stormwind and other places, Despite reporting, they will sit there for hours often most of a day before they dissapear. For me it disrupts the feel of the game and bugs me to no end. Do the GM's find it amusing? Do they not care? It takes obviously 30 to 40 accounts maybe to do that as you can't be logged on to more then one toon at a time. A few minutes and everyone of those accounts perma banned I think would send the spammers back to blighting trade chat instead of the scenery.
Raz Sep 18th 2009 3:14AM
Walk into the tailoring shop in Dalaran, turn to the left, and look at the rug. Not sure if it still does, but the rug had a clipping issue where the floor would show through some of it. That's a bug.
Last year, one of the chairs in the Falconwing Square inn was showing it's file name in the lower right when highlighted (something along the lines of "bloodelf_doodad_104" or some such thing). That's a bug.
There are plenty that aren't serious issues, and they have a Quality Assurance department that spends 5+ days a week fixing these issues. We're going on 5 years now, is that right? Not a shocker. Besides, plenty of other games probably have a ridiculous number of bugs that are too small to notice for most, but if you think about it, since the game is constantly changing & kind of always a work in progress, it has over 12 million "play testers" to catch all of these.
@"It does raise the inevitable question: what is Blizzard doing to fix all these?"
You already said that that number includes works in progress & bugs that are already fixed. Bugs that are already fixed. Bugs. That are already. Fixed. *Five Years.* I'm doubting their QA guys spend all day picking their noses & counting the tiles on the ceiling. The percentage of those fixed is most certainly extremely high after, again, five years.
The way you phrase that seems misleading, and I don't care for sensationalist bullshit- that's for tv news. Good articles keep people coming here, so don't sink to that level. The sky isn't falling.
As for the GM problem, please visit WoWBash & just look at some entries. How many times a day do you think the GM Department gets some stoner trying to Rick-Roll them? I'd say other players without legitimate problems slow down the system more than anything, but even if it's not the biggest contributor, you have to admit it's part of the problem.
Congratulations & thanks if you read my entire entry. I'm good at TLDNR posts, I know :p
Verit Sep 18th 2009 11:40AM
Thats the way Adobe Systems does it - having worked for them in the past for several years.
Plus not all bugs are all that serious - many have quick work-arounds, or are cosmetic (looks crappy, but works). I've seen products with more bugs in them than WoW, but seemingly bug free to most end users.
Sancus Sep 24th 2009 2:29AM
How stupid do you have to be to let someone with no meaningful programming or computer science background write an article about how many bugs Blizzard has? "to you that seems like a lot". I bet it does, since you don't have the faintest clue what a "bug" means to a programmer or how bug tracking is used.
No wonder this site is so pathetic when you allow people who have no experience, and no common sense to write articles on topics they do not have any understanding of.
annerjb Sep 26th 2009 4:11PM
I remember Talking with somebody about a madden game those games last 1year on development and he told me that the previous version of the game had about 200k bugs.
So i am not surprise to see wow have this many.