Blizzard Offers Look Inside WoW At GDC

Yesterday morning at GDC Austin, Blizzard's J. Allen Brack and Frank Pearce took to the stage to finally give a peek inside the inner workings of World of Warcraft. Tipping the scales at around 4,600 people utilizing 20,000 computer systems and 1.3 petabytes of storage, Blizzard has created a raging behemoth. The Online Network services group alone has "data centers from Texas to Seoul, and monitor over 13,250 server blades, 75,000 cpu cores, and 112.5 terabytes of blade RAM. [Pearce] points out the picture of the GNOC (Global Network Operations Center) 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."

Comments

Re:Well, Look at Their Monthly Revenue

[whisper_jeff]

You're right. Some pay more because they pay month-to-month ($15/month) while others pay for longer (reducing it to $13/month for a six month subscription) while some lucky bastiches don't pay at all. $12 a month, however, is a reasonable _average_ for the point of discussion.