Blizzard employees receive a set number of 25 year game time cards they can give to friends and family. Since that game time is already free, it doesn't qualify to receive the Annual Pass bonuses; they aren't getting a commitment of money they can show investors and shareholders, thus no freebies for you.

Nope. That grabbed my attention too.

I wonder if Blizzard is looking to hire anyone with my (lack of) qualifications?

I stopped reading after that and started plotting how I can work for Blizz.

No, you're not. Seems like a set deal: you work at a great company, you play your favorite games for free

I've said this before, but just the fact that you work for one of the busiest game developers will almost guarantee that you will have much less game play time than you do now. There was a recent post that highlighted a day as a QA employee and 16 hour days seem pretty normal. I'm pretty sure the 25 year game cards will be used by family and friends, not by yourself.

The best action plan is to get real buddy ol pal ol friend with somebody applying for a Blizzard job and swipe one of their cards. Achievement: Friend in High Places!

Yeah I noticed that too.

My thinking is, people who work for Blizz and need to have access to the live game are given a 25 year card which is effectively "unlimited" (does anyone think WoW will be around that long?) but probably limits some headaches of a "lifetime" account.

Nice to dream about getting one of those cards though...

If I work for Bliz, I wouldn't be playing WoW for sure. That's like bringing work home with you...

No matter how good you think something is, it's very difficult to use it for work and for play. Example, I used to work at a concert arena (that gets triple A bookings), for the first few weeks I thought I had the greatest job in the world. Now, it'll be a cold day in hell before I voluntarily attend another concert in my lifetime.

I'd imagine, though, that working for the company makes playing the game a lot less fun. You know how, if you work at a burger joint for a living, no matter how much you love their food, it gets to a point where you never want to eat another burger from them as long as you live?

I know a guy who wound up interviewing with Blizzard and got hired.

Sure, he doesn't play as much as he used to but he still plays. He's just busier because he's got more work to do - as far as I can tell. From what I heard from him, a while ago - probably when Wrath was still in its internal alpha - they were told, across the company, that they should spend time playing around in the alpha looking for bugs and giving feedback. Sure, he gets to play the games for free but he's also working, in a sense, at the same time.

If _working_ for Blizzard means that playing WoW now feels like a job for you, you certainly wouldn't want to actually work there.

I think i gotta go make a Blizz Employee friend!

@Amaxe: "(does anyone think WoW will be around that long?)"

Yeah, it might be.

Everquest has been up and running for about 12 years, and it's never come anywhere near the popularity of WoW. Plus, it's run by SOE, a company which honestly doesn't seem to care that much about their IPs.

World of Warcraft at its peak was more than twelve times more popular than Everquest at its peak, and is operated by a company that still supports 10-year-old RTS games with infrequent patches.