Blizzard Still Dealing with Consequences of World of Warcraft Success

The MMO World of Warcraft is the most successful subscription-based game in the world and the development team in charge of it at Blizzard says that they are still dealing with the consequences of its remarkable success.

Frank Pearce, who is one of the co-founders of Blizzard, stated at the 2012 DICE conference that, “I don't think we had any idea what we were getting ourselves into.”

He believes that the team underestimated the demand coming from the market and, at one point, even stopped shipping boxed games to stores because they neglected to put them together.

The size of the World of Warcraft team has also grown significantly and now development for the MMO is going on in 11 different cities, which makes coordination a challenge.

Pearce also approached the subject of gaming addiction, which has seen World of Warcraft blamed for many lost night and even months, and said, “We think about it all of the time... if there's something that you're really passionate about, whether it's video games, a book, a TV series we have to consume it in moderation.”