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The best of WoW.com: September 15-22, 2009
It's a special time of year in the World of Warcraft -- the leaves are a'changing and the brews are a'flowing. Brewfest is upon us! Time to go imbibing the finest in Dwarven ales (and deliver some, too, on those crazy rams). If you need a guide to all of the festivities, you know Joystiq's WoW-obssessed sister site WoW.com has you covered -- here's our top ten posts from the past week. News Brewfest 2009: Coren Direbrew's new level 80 loot revealedSame boss for the Brewfest ingame holiday, but there is some new loot. Blizzard is tracking 180,000 bugs in WoWThat includes fixed bugs, but still -- that's a lot of edited code. WoW.com's guide to Patch 3.2.2A brand new patch in the game, with some special anniversary fun included. High-rated PvPers do the robotA little bit of sneakiness on the part of PvPers. Tips for taking down Coren DirebrewWant to bring down the Brewfest boss? We've got you covered. Features The Overachiever: Guide to Brewfest 2009 achievementsGet all the points you can during the holiday celebration. Insider Trader: Patch 3.2.2 madnessHow to make some money in the newest patch. Raid Rx: 14 Patch 3.2 trinkets to check outGet some of the best raid healing trinkets around. Ask a Faction Leader: Garrosh HellscreamEveryone's least favorite Horde fanatic answers our readers' questions. AGDC09: Blizzard talks about the world behind WarcraftInteresting info from Blizzard's presentation at this years Austin Game Developers' Conference.
AGDC09: Blizzard talks about world behind Warcraft
Thursday's keynote at the Austin Game Developers Conference was given by Frank Pearce and J. Allen Brack. Pearce is the Executive Vice President of Blizzard, and Brack is the Production Director. Both are heavily involved in WoW and are part of the team responsible for its success.Unlike the keynote/opening ceremony delivered at BlizzCon, the Austin GDC keynote is geared more towards game developers and industry people than the general game public. For us WoW folks this means a little more details and numbers than you'd see from panels elsewhere.In fact, one of the most interesting numbers that came out of the keynote today are the sizes of the teams that are working on various parts of WoW. After the break we'll look at those and other highlights from the keynote, as well as provide you with an audio recording of the entire thing for your perusal if you wish. Download the audio or stream it after the break.
Blizzard is tracking 180,000 bugs in WoW
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/World_of_Warcraft_has_180_000_bugs'; During the keynote today at the Austin Game Developers Conference, Executive Vice President Frank Pearce and Production Director J. Allen Brack spoke at length about the internal workings of the WoW team and how they get their jobs done. One of the more stunning things to come out of the keynote, which we'll have fully written up for you later today, is the fact that there are just under 180k bugs Blizzard is tracking in WoW. That means their bug database has 180,000 entries which are in some stage of being fixed (have been fixed, have not been fixed, or being worked on).To me this number seems very large for a video game. I can understand an operating system like Windows 7 having an unreasonably large number of bugs in it like this, but for a video game -- even one as complex as WoW -- that number is quite astounding.It does raise the inevitable question: what is Blizzard doing to fix all these? And how does this relate to the extremely long wait times for GM contact in game? We also learned that Blizzard only employs 2500 worldwide in Customer Service. That includes things like phone bank operators, GMs, forum mods, etc...
