Blizzard Didn't Anticipate WoW's Demand

vansau

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May 25, 2010
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Blizzard Didn't Anticipate WoW's Demand



Blizzard "grossly underestimated" the demand for World of Warcraft to the point where it had to stop shipping boxes to stores.

World of Warcraft is pretty much the benchmark by which all other MMOs are measured against these days. However, you'll probably be surprised to hear that Blizzard didn't actually think the game was going to be anywhere near as big of a hit as it was. In fact, it turns out that the company "grossly underestimated" how high the demand was going to be, which led to the game's early launch problems.

Speaking at DICE last week, Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce explained that "I don't think we had any idea what we were getting ourselves into" when he talked about the game's 2004 launch. As a result, the studio of "just" 500 people had to stop shipping boxes out to stores. Since then, the company's grown to include 4,700 employees worldwide.

These days, Blizzard has a much better finger on the pulse of its online community, meaning it can gauge where interests lie and anticipate for activity increases when new expansions and features are launched.

Source: Massively

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Zen Toombs

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Nov 7, 2011
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I've been noticing a number of short, relatively low content news posts recently. Is it just me, or are others noticing it too?
 

JakobBloch

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Hmm this one isn't news. This was given as reason way back when it was something to give reasons for (as in just after launch). Why bring it up now? What is the context for it?
 

Monkeyman O'Brien

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Jan 27, 2012
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Wow. What is this? International Humble Day? First Tim Schafer not thinking he would get jack all for his kickstarter, now blizzard saying they did not think WoW would be this popular.
Thank fuck for Jaffe and his trying to compare his silly little car game to Skyrim.
 

Baldr

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Jan 6, 2010
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It was launched at the height of Everquest popularity, with close to a half a million concurrent subscribers. I don't think anyone was predicting the numbers WoW got except one reviewer in PC Gamer February 2002(pg 54): "A World of Warcraft MMORPG will be like owning a license to print money. A lot of money."
 

PingoBlack

Searching for common sense ...
Aug 6, 2011
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Actually ...

Pierce talked about this in detail in 20 Anniversary documentary. And others as well.
That documentary is still publicly available as far as I know.

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/b20/videos.html#blizzard-retrospective
 

Baldr

The Noble
Jan 6, 2010
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JakobBloch said:
Hmm this one isn't news. This was given as reason way back when it was something to give reasons for (as in just after launch). Why bring it up now? What is the context for it?
That is what the DICE summit is all about. Talking about past experience to help developers so they don't make the same mistakes or learn what they can do right.
 

praetor_alpha

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Mar 4, 2010
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Hammeroj said:
This is probably the first time I'm saying this, but how is this news, exactly? People from Blizzard have been saying this for years now in their interviews.
+1

I've known this for many many years as well. Slow news day, I guess.
 

Epona

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Zen Toombs said:
I've been noticing a number of short, relatively low content news posts recently. Is it just me, or are others noticing it too?
How would you define low content posts?
 

Zen Toombs

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Crono1973 said:
Zen Toombs said:
I've been noticing a number of short, relatively low content news posts recently. Is it just me, or are others noticing it too?
How would you define low content posts?
What I'm referring to is short news posts that talk about very minor events. Effectively, a "slow news day" type of situation.
 

dragongit

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4,200 empoyees more then they had 7 years ago, and yet they still recycled 6 bosses in their last raid. I know they were working on a new expansion, but come on, 10 of those guys could have been used to make new models.
 

Fappy

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Zen Toombs said:
I've been noticing a number of short, relatively low content news posts recently. Is it just me, or are others noticing it too?
Could be a slow news day. Some news is better than no news.
 

Vrach

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Hammeroj said:
This is probably the first time I'm saying this, but how is this news, exactly? People from Blizzard have been saying this for years now in their interviews.
Yeah, Escapist has been pulling a lot of these lately. Check out their "YOU CAN GET A VIRUS DOWNLOADING PIRATED MATERIAL" news post a week or two back, it's baffling what they consider to be news.
 

CardinalPiggles

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Maybe plenty of people were having issues with Everquest at the time, and as we know, popularity snowballs.

JakobBloch said:
Hmm this one isn't news. This was given as reason way back when it was something to give reasons for (as in just after launch). Why bring it up now? What is the context for it?
It's news to me... Just because you and many others have heard this before doesn't mean it can never be brought up ever again... ever.