The reason why WoW isn't free.

[FireFlyHolland]

Blizzard Entertainments lead producer J. Allen Brack and Vice-president Frank Pearce held a speech during the Game Developers Conference in Texas. During their speech the game a couple of numbers related to the game. For example Pearce gave the info that the Blizzard Online Network-group datacenters are all controlled from a central control room in Irvine, Californië. And that the server park consists of 13,250 blade-servers, with a total of 75,000 cpu-cores. The servers got a total of 112.5 terabyte of ram and contain 1.3 petabyte of data. The amount of data send from the servers is also very large. Only for the downloading of patch 3.1 for example the data sent from the servers was an amazing 4.7 petabyte.

Brack made clear that it takes a lot of work to create patches for the game. Because the game has been released in different languages, the patches also have to release in different languages. The result of this is that every patch has to be released in 10 different languages, and all of those have to be tested before they can be released. Pearce added to that that the players in the English language are a minority and that there are more players that play in a different language. Because testing takes more and more time there are 245 people working on the testing department. They mostly test if all the quests still work with the release of a new patch. This is a large task because in the original WoW there where over 2600quests. With the first expension, The Burning Crusade, there were about 2700 quests added and with Wrath of the Lich King another 2350. This brings the total to 7650 quests. Since the release of the game the testers have found and fixed about 180,000 bugs. The amount if bugs that are still open was not released by the speaker. They did let us now that the game consists of 5.5miljoen lines of code, written in C++ and LUA.

However the testing department is not the largest group of people working on World of Warcraft. The Game masters, who are able to give direct help in the game, are the largest group. Blizzard has 2056 game masters in service, spread over north-America, Europe and Asia. Besides those there are also 340 billing managers, who assist with payment issues.

Source: Tweakers.net but translated.

[vandy_vs_gator]

My friend here at AIT was a GM for WoW up until he left for basic.

[FireFlyHolland]

One of the more then 2000

[The_Real_PlodeZ]

Blizzard Entertainments lead producer J. Allen Brack and Vice-president Frank Pearce held a speech during the Game Developers Conference in Texas. During their speech the game a couple of numbers related to the game. For example Pearce gave the info that the Blizzard Online Network-group datacenters are all controlled from a central control room in Irvine, Californië. And that the server park consists of 13,250 blade-servers, with a total of 75,000 cpu-cores. The servers got a total of 112.5 terabyte of ram and contain 1.3 petabyte of data. The amount of data send from the servers is also very large. Only for the downloading of patch 3.1 for example the data sent from the servers was an amazing 4.7 petabyte.

Brack made clear that it takes a lot of work to create patches for the game. Because the game has been released in different languages, the patches also have to release in different languages. The result of this is that every patch has to be released in 10 different languages, and all of those have to be tested before they can be released. Pearce added to that that the players in the English language are a minority and that there are more players that play in a different language. Because testing takes more and more time there are 245 people working on the testing department. They mostly test if all the quests still work with the release of a new patch. This is a large task because in the original WoW there where over 2600quests. With the first expension, The Burning Crusade, there were about 2700 quests added and with Wrath of the Lich King another 2350. This brings the total to 7650 quests. Since the release of the game the testers have found and fixed about 180,000 bugs. The amount if bugs that are still open was not released by the speaker. They did let us now that the game consists of 5.5miljoen lines of code, written in C++ and LUA.

However the testing department is not the largest group of people working on World of Warcraft. The Game masters, who are able to give direct help in the game, are the largest group. Blizzard has 2056 game masters in service, spread over north-America, Europe and Asia. Besides those there are also 340 billing managers, who assist with payment issues.

Source: Tweakers.net but translated.

This is the definition of why Blizzard owns k2.

[3xiT]

c 13,250 blade-servers :_o