Being a long time gamer of many types of games and a on again / off again player of the World of Warcraft (WoW), I was amazed at an article I read / listened to on a podcast. At the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) in Austin, Blizzard bared “all” about WoW.
Overall WoW has 12 million subscribers and has 4600 people employed. Even more amazing are the IT numbers.
“The Blizzard Online Network services group is Pearce’s next focus. A huge group, they have data centers from Texas to Seoul, and monitor over 13,250 server blades, 75,000 cpu cores, and 112.5 terabytes of blade RAM. He points out the picture of the GNOC in their slideshow, a data core that even has televisions tuned to the weather stations. They use those to ensure that conditions of the data center are up to their standards; with only a staff of 68 people they ensure connectivity across the globe for the numerous WoW servers.”
Full article below:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25307
By the way, don’t play WoW with my 6 year old, you’ll never get the winning roll on any good drops. Ah, the luck with the young.
