World of Warcraft: Facts about the Development of the Game

World of Warcraft: Facts you may or may not know

World of Warcraft is one if the most successful MMO's ever. Stats tell us that the game has over 100 Million registered users by 2014 and depending on how you view it, is one of the longest lasting MMO's in the history of multiplayer games. Here we gonna tell you some facts that you may have not known about the Creation of the greatest MMO of all time.

Teamplay is everything

Fact 1: Development Started in 1999

Devs cited that the development has taken 4-5 years roughly. The game released in 2004 which means, that development must have began somewhere 1999. The timing was quite right because that's where the Internet Boom really began to take off, with online games coming around almost every week. The bet was right obviously since the game became very, very succesful.

Fact 2: Development took more than 60$ Million

Triple A Games these days can easily cross over 50$ Million in development costs with a certain risk attached to recoup that cost. That's why often Publishers aren't interested in risking a new IP because sometimes you can lose alot of money if the game isn't a hit. World of Warcraft certainly took that risky path over 20 years ago with a whooping 60$ Million investment in the development of the game. That was a big risk back then, because most Triple A games maybe had 4-5$ Million dev costs. WoW surpassed that big time plus the ongoing maintenance cost of the servers which some claim are over 200$ Million to this date.

It's safe to say their risk worked out big time in the end, because Blizzard (now owned by Microsoft) has made over 10$ bn in Revenue with WoW alone.

Fact 3: They had the weirdest Office

Blizzard is known to have made Quality Games back then alot. To the outside that screams of good structure and management in their Office places. However, quite the contrary was the case. Some developers reported that the office was a mess. You often find papers and other stuff spilling into the hallway from office desks and the chairs were hardly functional. Maybe that's the secret to make good games?

Blizzard Office circa 2001 (colourized)