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About the Author
John Staats was born and raised in Akron, Ohio. He earned a BFA from Kent State University’s

Visual Communication Design program and spent ten years in advertising in NYC. Before joining

Blizzard he had decades of amateur level design experience, from tabletop games to first-person

shooters. His homepage, whenitsready.com, marks the progress of his various projects, including an

upcoming board game based on dungeon crawls.

John built 90 percent of Vanilla WoW’s non-instanced caves, crypts, dens, mines, and hive tunnels.

His Vanilla WoW portfolio includes:

Ahn’Qiraj Temple
Blackfathom Deeps
Blackwing Lair
Blackrock Mountain
Blackrock Depths
Booty Bay
Karazhan (w/Aaron Keller)
Loch Modan Dam
Lower Blackrock Spire
Molten Core
Razorfen Downs
Razorfen Kraul
Scholomance
The Slag Pit
Upper Blackrock Spire
The Wailing Caverns
Warsong Gulch (w/Matt Milizia)
The WoW Diary

A Journal of Computer Game Development

JOHN STAATS
Copyright © 2018 by John Staats. All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyright

hereon may be transmitted or reproduced or used in any form or by any means without written
in critical articles and
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied
reviews.

Artwork, Photographs, Images, Logos © 2018 Blizzard Entertainment. Warcraft, World of Warcraft,

and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., in

the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks referenced herein are the properties of their

respective owners.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017908847

ISBN: 978-0-9990824-0-9

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition February 2018

Design and spot illustrations by John Staats

Edited by Ben Way, Jim Spivey, Dan Foster, and Scout Festa

Published by whenitsready LLC

9101 W. Sahara Ave., Suite 105-1448, Las Vegas, NV 89117

www.whenitsready.com
For Team 2, both old and new
TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S

May 2016: Preface

Why MMOs Are So Difficult to Create

March 2001: My First Six Months

Antecedents: Nomad and Warcraft III

Programming: The First Hurdle

April 2001: Doubts on Journalism

May 2001: The Little Engine That Could
Animation

June 2001: Milestones Real and Imagined

E3 2001

July 2001: Nine Months Down the Tubes

Lore

August 2001: The Trials of Self-Promotion

Production

First Contact: CGW Magazine

Announcement at the ECTS

September 2001: Belated Progress with Dungeons

October 2001: Learning from the Good and Bad
Art and Zones

November 2001: Client–Server Headaches

December 2001: Holiday Quietude
Gameplay

January 2002: The Stitches of a Seamless World

February 2002: We Built This City
March 2002: Competitive Collaboration
April 2002: The Occasional Paradox
May 2002: Opponents in Masquerade
E3 2002

June 2002: The Secret Sauce

July 2002: A Modicum of Luster, A Pivotal Juncture
August 2002: Ingenuity with Cheats and Bugs
September 2002: Internal Alpha 1.0
October 2002: Still Unanswered Questions
Quests

November 2002: Internal Alpha 2.0

December 2002: Blizzard Looks to Asia
January 2003: MMO Miasma
February 2003: The Rightful Fear of Artificial Intelligence
March 2003: Internal Alpha 3.0
The Growing Pains of the Wailing Caverns

April 2003: A Slightly Higher Profile

May 2003: The Sweat behind the Easy Sell
E3 2003

Programmer Isle

June 2003: A Crunchier Crunch

Wowedit

Scripting a Monster

July 2003: Unexpected Giants

Character Design

August 2003: Internal Alpha 4.0

September 2003: A Sense of Place
October 2003: Free Pizza and Other Hardships
Announcing the Korean–American Beta Test

Trade Skills

How to Make a Potion

November 2003: Friends-and-Family Alpha

December 2003: Stepping on Toes
Dungeons: The Last Hurdle

January 2004: One Year Left

February 2004: New Hands at the Helm
March 2004: Public Beta 1.0
April 2004: Curious Tidings from Abroad
May 2004: The Care Bear Game
E3 2004

June 2004: Public Beta 2.0

July 2004: Public Beta 3.0
August 2004: Public Beta 4.0
September 2004: Going Gold
October 2004: World’s End
November 2004: Open Beta
Launch Day

December 2017: Fourteen Years Gone

Epilogue
 “I imagined the space shuttle blueprints were going to be the

largest project I’d ever work on. I was wrong. Our game’s editor

has more lines of code.”

— David Ray, World of Warcraft database/tools programmer

At its November 2004 launch, World of Warcraft

(WoW) was the biggest game ever made,
pushing past two million lines of code, roughly
four times the size of most top-tier computer
games. Its development team and budget were
larger than any of Blizzard Entertainment’s
previous projects. Its subscriber base grew to
the size of the world’s biggest cities and
generated a virtual goods economy comparable
to the GDP of small nations. The company grew
from hundreds to thousands of employees, the
bulk of whom were customer service
representatives who became Blizzard’s single
costliest expenditure. At launch, the interface,
quests, and game elements used over a million
words that translated into six languages. There
were almost nine thousand types of monsters
or non-player characters (NPCs) in the game.
The most varied creature was the ogre (170
versions), followed by the murlock (100
versions). Until YouTube began streaming
videos a year later, WoW servers handled over
10 percent of global Internet bandwidth in
downloads, and its players contributed to
roughly half of active global Internet traffic at
any given time. The sun never sets on the
Warcraft empire.
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“Titan” was a canceled project whose assets were used for Overwatch. Although
nothing I created was used by Overwatch, it was nice to be included in the
acknowledgments. Blizzard’s classy move of thanking everyone who contributed
to the doomed “Project Titan” emboldened me to finish the story about making
World of Warcraft so people might appreciate how hard it is to make computer
games. Images provided courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.
May 2016:
Preface

I am writing this in late May 2016, days after Blizzard’s newest title,

Overwatch, has launched. My former team leader and ex-roommate Shane

Dabiri shared a Facebook post celebrating Blizzard’s latest title, which

prompted me to recall the time when Shane and I saw each other every day

while we worked on World of Warcraft. Although we drifted apart after

WoW shipped in November 2004, whenever we saw each other he often

asked, “What ever happened to that World of Warcraft diary you were

working on? Everyone wants to read it!” I sometimes got this question when

I reconnected with anyone from the old crew. Everyone on the team knew I

was writing a “developer diary,” since I’d spent four years interviewing

people about their jobs and keeping tabs on the game’s incremental

progress. Seeing Shane’s Facebook post about Overwatch inspired me to

polish and publish this four-year time capsule about making the game now

referred to as Vanilla WoW.

I have only a diminished view of WoW these days. Is “Vanilla” the

correct term? Or is it “Classic”? I have no idea. I neither make nor play

computer games anymore. I only recently learned Blizzard was shipping an

expansion called Legion during a conversation with friends while playing a

tabletop role-playing game called Pathfinder. In terms of computer games, I

am, as I once was, out of the loop.

The reason I wrote this diary has its roots in my life before game

development. I didn’t come from a place where computer games were made,

nor did I know anyone in the software or entertainment industry. I was born

and raised in Akron, Ohio, and spent ten years working in Manhattan ad

agencies after graduating college. Until I began editing games myself in the

mid-1990s, I’d never known anyone in the electronic entertainment industry,

and so the process of developing computer games remained an impenetrable

mystery. After the Internet gave everyone access to everything, gaming fans

began connecting with developers. My introduction to this community was

playing first-person shooter (FPS) online games, whose most popular titles

—Quake and Unreal—catered to hobbyists who modified their games into

new versions, called “mods.” When I learned there were mod tools that

would allow me to build my own 3D levels, I bought my first PC the very

next day (I had played games on my roommate’s machines until that point)

and built my own first-person shooter levels over the next five years. I soon

joined a group of fellow artists and programmers, a mod team, called Loki’s

Minions Capture the Flag, and began learning the basics. I worked tirelessly

at my new hobby, putting in over-one-hundred-hour weeks on mods when I

was between advertising campaigns.

First-person shooters were in their heyday in the mid to late nineties for

the simple reason that they supported the only worldwide 3D gaming

community, and many FPS game developers (known as “devs”) worked in a

spotlight. Devs published daily updates about their development progress,

which gave fans like me the first inkling into what kind of effort went into

making games. Many pros became subculture celebrities, and magazines

wrote stories about these “Game Gods.” Some became popular because they

were the best in the business, while others were prolific writers or had

outlandish personalities. I, too, found Game Gods entertaining and dreamed

of becoming one in my own right someday. After five years of modding, I’d

inadvertently developed a respectable portfolio of original 3D levels, and

when someone from my mod team told me Blizzard was hiring level

designers, I applied in the summer of 2000.

At the time, I was in New York City, working at a Madison Avenue ad

agency, and my only exposure to game development was through the guys in

my mod group. We communicated only in emails, instant messages, and the

occasional LAN party (where people met their Internet pals at hotels and

played networked computer games all weekend). We were a bunch of

hobbyists tweaking games for fun without any promise of a career in the

industry. I was successful at my day job in the corporate world, but since I

had spent every free waking hour building Quake levels, the idea of going

pro wasn’t so crazy. Although I was comfortable as an advertising

department director, I wasn’t artistically satisfied, so I jumped at the

opportunity to work at Blizzard and submitted my latest 3D levels. They

proved to be good enough to earn me a phone interview.

I wasn’t nervous during my first conversation with Blizzard because we

were talking about level design, so I was well inside my comfort zone. My

ebullient enthusiasm convinced them I was worth a closer look, so they flew
me to Orange County, California, for a face-to-face meeting. OC was

certainly different from NYC, and I’d joked that it felt like the frontier. I

remember staring at the bizarre tropical trees growing outside my hotel

window, wondering if I’d ever fit into this alien world of endless summer,

valet parking, and underground lawn sprinklers.

To say that Blizzard was laid-back was an understatement. Their building

was in the middle of a sprawling corporate park surrounded by scores of

identical cookie-cutter office prefabs that were typical in Irvine, a planned

city where trees grew in straight rows. The lobby was tiny and quaintly

decorated with faded posters of old Blizzard games. Guests waiting for

appointments could flip through binders filled with fan art drawn by

children who had mailed it to Blizzard in lieu of hanging it on their

refrigerators. Those charming binders of pictures were more seductive than

any extravagant lobby I’d seen in NYC. This place seemed special already.

It made me recall the summer I worked for my aunt and uncle who ran an

industrial sales company back in Akron. My uncle was the closest thing to a

white-collar worker in my family, and since I was the first generation to get

a college degree, any business advice he gave made a strong impression. I

remember how he once disparaged successful companies who squandered

money on expensive conference tables or designer furniture. Although I

recognized my uncle’s ideology in Blizzard’s modest office decor, I’d be

remiss to omit my initial reaction to Blizzard’s development area. The Team

2 area was a dump, decorated like someone’s basement. With a glance down

the hallway, I could see that half of the fluorescent lights in the ceiling were

burned out. The closest thing to a kitchen was a tiny microwave next to a

sink filled with dirty dishes. Food stains, blackened with age, had been

ground into the carpet. The halls were littered with spent halogen floor

lamps and torn cardboard boxes filled with discarded toys and books. The

conference tables were cluttered with soda bottles and stacks of unused

condiments, and these tables were orbited by a graveyard of broken and

unmatched office chairs. A set of black leather couches faced at haphazard

angles with no purposeful direction. The walls were covered with dog-eared

posters, and every desk and shelf was laden with dusty statues and action

figures. People walked around wearing shorts and flip-flops. All evidence

indicated this was not an ego-driven environment, and it struck me as a very

comfortable place—a person could just plop down and get to work. These
offices were so dissimilar to Madison Avenue that I wondered how I would

fit in. I didn’t even own jeans or sneakers; all my clothes were work related

(slacks, dress shoes). Was it possible that this casual atmosphere shared the

same work ethic as the career-driven culture I knew from in Manhattan?

With a welcoming smile, Mark Kern introduced himself as Team 2’s co-

lead and the company’s temporary recruiter. He escorted me past the team’s

area for an interview with the designers, Eric Dodds and Rob Pardo, who

were both friendly and personable. We talked in a conference room

furnished with matching chairs and wall-to-wall windows that provided an

unobstructed view of the 73 toll road. The interview went well. I rambled on

about level design, games, and other geek influences. I learned that the level

in my portfolio that everyone especially liked was called The City of Brass,

a reference to the Dungeons & Dragons rulebook, The Dungeon Master’s

Guide.

I’d even met a couple of members of the development team, including

one of the Game Gods from id Software, John Cash, who was once

technology lead for Quake II. (I later learned that Mark usually introduced

job candidates to John because his presence on their unannounced project

gave it more credibility.) One of my 3D levels was filled with graves whose

epitaphs included the names of friends and celebrities in the first-person

shooter community; John’s name was among them. Unfortunately, I’d given

him a lackluster plot in the graveyard (all the good plots were assigned to

artists and level designers from id and my mod team), and I used the

opportunity to apologize for the oversight. John couldn’t have been nicer. He

and I laughed and chatted about his first-person shooter days, and anyone

who knew John knows how much he loved to tell old war stories from his

time at id Software. He was so friendly (everyone was) it really made me

want to be a part of this team, even if they couldn’t tell me what kind of

game they were working on.

A week later I received the first job offer Blizzard had ever made to a

level designer outside of the company. The offer was $50,000—which was

$30,000 less than what I made in advertising. I accepted in a heartbeat.

I absorbed so much on my first day on the job. One thing I learned was

that Blizzard’s public relations philosophy was diametrically opposed to that

of the first-person shooter community. Nobody publicly took credit for what

they did on a game, so everyone in the company could share in the

ownership. In fact, contact with the public was prohibited. Blizzard went

against the grain of an industry that considered every piece of publicity

good for the company. The founders only wanted to be known for their

finished work, and that mentality trickled down through their corporate

culture. This immediately dispelled my Game Gods delusion that the most

renowned developers were also the most crucial. My new teammates

explained that Bill Roper was the voice of Blizzard, and he was our official

press liaison. They even joked that if the fans got the impression Bill single-

handedly built all the games, then all the better. This let employees focus on

their jobs, and it extinguished the danger of people becoming jealous over

one another’s acclaim. It made sense. Blizzard embraced this radio silence

to such an extreme that rank-and-file developers rarely communicated with

the fans and never spoke to the press.

I later discovered that the only problem with this approach was that it

made it difficult to hire industry veterans. Blizzard was a black box, so few

had a positive impression of its corporate atmosphere—one that embraced

geek culture, that was a fun place to work, and where management listened

to employees. But since Bill Roper, the corporate PR guy, was the only

person who spoke about how awesome it was to work at Blizzard, many

outside developers remained skeptical.

This was my long-winded answer to Shane’s question as to why I waited so

long to polish and publish this diary. I couldn’t write a development diary

without breaking the company’s code of silence. My byline would paint a

target on me for journalists, and I didn’t want (or deserve) Bill Roper’s job

of being Blizzard’s spokesperson. But avoiding undue credit for my

contribution to the project was just one reason why I didn’t finish this book

sooner.

I had a similar misgiving about how to give credit to my teammates and

other supporting people in the company. In the years it took to write this

book, I would see some people more frequently than others, so naturally my

monthly entries focused on them. But some of the hardest workers weren’t

as social and kept to themselves, hunched over their keyboards. And though

Team 2 was a model of team ownership, I’d made disproportionate mentions

of the decision-makers, which might devalue everyone else’s contribution

and paint an inaccurate portrait of how the team actually worked. I referred

to leads frequently because they often made announcements and represented

the team’s collective decisions, not because they were the most important

devs. Citations in this book were by no means commensurate with

individual contributions, and giving accurate accreditations would have

bogged down the narrative with names. I didn’t want anyone with whom I

interacted on a day-to-day basis begrudging me if I misrepresented their

role. Releasing this journal now, many years later, hopefully softens any

disappointment at not being accurately remembered or portrayed. I

apologize if I misunderstood, omitted, or underplayed anyone’s contribution

to this massive project. My anxiety about omitting people’s contributions

was so bad that I overcompensated by neglecting to cover my own area of

specialty, the interior level design (dungeon) department. I was so worried

about being perceived as a self-publicist, I barely wrote about the dungeon

team’s contribution at all. Aside from the references to the dungeon team—

which I recalled from memory—the rest of this memoir is as I wrote it over

a decade ago. I changed my prose to past tense and cleaned up the text only

for grammatical and narrative purposes.

I was also too nervous to show my scribblings to anyone. This was a

development diary, a personal thing, and I’d worried my teammates would

give me good-natured ribbings if I goofed up the facts. I enjoyed being the

guy whose ear was close to the ground, who knew all the gossip. My

officemate Aaron Keller would often get excited about telling me juicy

inside info he’d just heard over lunch, and I’d inevitably disappoint him by

telling him I’d already known for weeks. “Dang it!” he’d cry while I cracked

up. “How did you find that out!?”

And what of the post-launch WoW devs? Would it affect them if I

published a book that left all of them out? Team 2 staff had reduced to half

(thirty-five people) after WoW shipped, and with all the new faces replacing

the departed, the team had changed its structure, process, and vibe. I didn’t

want my new coworkers wondering, “What in the hell is John writing about?

It’s not like that here at all!”

Waiting to publish this was the right call. My distance from the project,

the company, and the industry provides me with the perspective not only to

explain this process in layman’s terms but also to appreciate the experience
as an outsider and not the jaded veteran I’d become. I’ve developed a more

mature perspective. And so too, I suspect, has the reader. Enough people

have tried WoW that I can use it as a common frame of reference. A

postmortem of a lasting game will be more meaningful than reviewing the

latest fad.

It is with this frame of mind that I beseech the reader to regard this

journal as the work of only one proverbial blind man feeling a very big

elephant. A large group of creative people doesn’t work like a hive mind;

when I describe the team as having felt one way or another, it is a

generalization. I exaggerate for the sake of clarity. There are, no doubt,

former coworkers who will disagree with my account, and I’m fine with

that. I am guilty of mistakes, misquotes, and personal interpretation, so

don’t treat these words as canon.

This brings me to my final explanation for sitting tight on this diary. Like

the ouroboros snake eating its own tail, this last reason circles into my

original inspiration for writing it in the first place: I wanted this journal to

be educational. I originally came to Blizzard with fresh eyes and wanted to

record everything I learned for people who, like me, believed in Game Gods

or other industry myths. Years later, having learned so much, I want to pass

it on.

In my efforts to understand and describe the moving parts of a

development team, I asked my teammates questions while we worked on

WoW. I took it upon myself to visit everyone’s office to see what they were

busy with and pick their brains. I was genuinely curious about their roles on

the project. I wanted to know about their limitations, bottlenecks,

opportunities, and discoveries. I would poke my head into their office and

ask, “Hey there. Whatcha working on?” That question was all it took to get

the conversation rolling, and the summation of their answers resulted in this

book.

I am no longer in the gaming industry, because I developed a neurological

problem in my hands that hinders me from using a computer for significant

lengths of time. This pain prohibits 3D modeling, which requires constant

mouse-and-keyboard interaction. It also prevents me from playing computer

games. Even now, I write this using voice-to-text software to rest my achy

fingers. As I turn toward what I hope will be a career in writing or

academics, I will attempt to demystify game development, pass on what

I’ve learned, and possibly expose this misunderstood industry to a wider

pool of potential talent. This diary is a textbook of essays. It isn’t a

corporate promotional piece or fan fluff to collect; I am not trying to make

Blizzard look good. If I am complimentary, it is because I genuinely admire

their methods.

In the spirit of education, the first thing I would like to impress upon you

is one of the most surprising lessons I learned: Public speculation is always

wrong. Always. Blizzard operated under a blanket of scrutiny, and only after

I was in the meetings could I appreciate how inaccurate public analysis was.

Unless you’re in the room, you have no idea what’s going on. Unless

someone knows firsthand the reasons why a company makes decisions,

popular conjecture is completely off. For a company as secretive as Blizzard,

the tinfoil-hat theorizing about why we did anything was severe, cynical,

and reactionary. It struck me how people universally assumed corporate

decisions were thoughtless or callous—like if a feature was dropped, it was

done so without regard for the feelings of the fan base. When decisions were

made for financial grounds, people assumed it was because developers

lacked imagination. Whenever technical or gameplay decisions were made,

it was assumed the company was penny-pinching. I’m not even referring to

the trolls dredging the game forums for flame wars; I’m talking about the

intelligent, well-substantiated, and reasonable arguments about why

Blizzard did this or why Blizzard did that. But…all of it was wrong and

certainly not because the fan base was stupid. People were wrong because

they considered only variables that were public knowledge—which were

only a fraction of the pertinent factors.

Game development is incredibly complicated, and fans see only a few

pieces of the puzzle. Games are often headless monsters; moved in different

directions by technological, design, or financial limitations, instead of by

anyone in the studio. Game development is sustained improvisation, and if

this book can hold your attention long enough, maybe you’ll walk away

understanding how many pieces it takes to build a massively multiplayer

online game (MMO).

 Development is often random and iterative. There are failures and

discoveries, and the process zigzags until someone says, “Ship it!” Even

some developers wouldn’t know what was happening on their own project

until they got out of their seat and talked to the devs who had been in the

room, in the meeting, and directly asked questions about what was going on.

That’s basically what I did for four years—I got out of my seat and asked,

“Whatcha working on?”

I tried to confine this narrative to layman’s terms with minimal technical

descriptions and industry jargon. I imagine many gaming veterans might roll

their eyes at my simplifications, opinions, or experiences, since much of this

journal covers topics already familiar to them, but maybe stepping back for a

moment might help them appreciate how fortunate they are to work in a

field that affords them even the smallest measure of enjoyment, creativity, or

pride. To give outsiders more pieces of the puzzle, I think it’s worth

covering a few basics.

I’m also hoping that an independent publication (this is not a product of

Blizzard Entertainment) has the best chance of painting a credible picture of

game development—but in full disclosure, I offered a preview manuscript to

Blizzard to ensure I didn’t reveal anything that could damage their image or

products. They even corrected some mistakes. If you’re hoping for a tell-all

exposé filled with gossip, proceed no further. I have no desire to embarrass

anyone. I wrote about people just doing their job. I want to humanize,

educate, and document the unfamiliar process of making a top-tier computer

game. My goal is to put you in the room.

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Why MMOs Are So Difficult to Create

Before I describe my journey, I must explain the differences between

massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) and other kinds of computer

games. Even regular games are difficult to make, possibly the riskiest

software to develop because it’s hard to know if something is fun unless it’s

experienced—and getting there can take years of work and lots of money.

On top of all the demanding requirements necessary to make a computer

game, MMOs amass even more difficulties.

Because MMOs connect thousands of people together in the same play

space, they require extremely efficient network code. MMO servers keep

track of movement, targeting, and inventory. If a character moves or faces a

different direction, the server must send the movement update to every

player in the area. This is compounded by the fact that players might be

surrounded by hundreds of other characters. This can cripple network traffic

because MMOs are open worlds where player congregation is unrestricted

and unpredictable. No other games need to do this. Even the code for simple

player positioning must be extremely efficient; otherwise, the server’s

processors can’t handle the workload.

Cheating is a bigger problem for persistent games. MMO exploits can

ruin a game’s economy by devaluing incentives for everyone, cheaters and

non-cheaters alike. If someone discovers a shortcut, the networked masses

could quickly learn it and take advantage.

All gameplay features must be built within the severe restraints of a

client–server architecture to prevent software hacks. Things like precise hit-

detection (a common game mechanic in FPS games) couldn’t be processed

on heavily populated servers; nor could it be processed on the ever-hackable

client.

Not only are MMOs constrained by harsh technological limitations, but

features supporting gameplay must be flexible enough to be interesting and

fun in the long run. Gameplay must be recursive. For every suggested

feature, it must be asked, “Will players want to do that every day? Can this

feature be reused differently to branch into other kinds of gameplay?”

 There are gameplay issues in creating enough incentives for what is

essentially an endless game. MMOs are role-playing games in which players

measure progress by the equipment they acquire. Since some items are more

powerful than others, a complicated balancing act ensues to prevent the

better equipment from bestowing unfair advantages. If gear always lets some

players steamroll others, the audience will fracture into the haves and the

have-nots, creating an environment that deters casual players from continued

play. While equipment cannot be so different that casual players can’t

compete, high-end rewards must be good enough to justify investing the

extra time needed to get them. To further complicate things, rewards of one

activity cannot supplant those of another—so items have to be evenly

dispersed to avoid rendering some content obsolete. Establishing a harmony

with rewards is also bedeviled by the fact that there are far more activities

and zones than there are item slots.

Not only is balancing rewards compounded by persistent gameplay, so

too is creating content. A never-ending game must appeal to audiences with

very different levels of commitment. MMOs need months of content, not

hours. They must accommodate both casual players and those who play over

a hundred hours a week, and that requires a large content creation team—

which is another reason why MMOs are so expensive to make. Hiring

enough highly skilled, specialized employees to meet the content and

technological demands is difficult, costly, and time consuming.

Finding realistic investors who can afford to support a product to a

polished completion is nearly impossible. As hard as it is to find the right

investor, it’s harder for them to find a studio that can be trusted with an

eight- or nine-figure budget. Incompetent and untrustworthy studio heads

are often good salesmen and difficult to distinguish from trustworthy

developers. The amount of time and money necessary to build an MMO is

so great, a dishonest studio head doesn’t even need to care about sales; the

investment itself attracts scammers.

The combination of these risks creates a gravity well of failure that very

few companies escape. Just one miscalculation can spoil a title, which must

become a commercial hit in order to support its own weight. Massively

multiplayer online games are that hard to make; but we did it.
Blizzard’s Team 2 was grooving on the new colored lighting, March 2001. Using
my retouching skills from my advertising days I Photoshopped our blurry team
picture into one of our first zones, Westfall. The head count had almost doubled
since I’d joined half a year earlier. Image provided courtesy of Blizzard
Entertainment, Inc.

Standing, top left: John Staats, Shane Dabiri, Mark Downey, Justin Thavirat,
Matt Sanders (giving a Benny Hill salute), Brandon Idol, Eric Dodds, Allen Dilling,
David Ray, Twain Martin, Toph Gorham, Dan Moore, Matt Oursbourne
Kneeling: Josh Kurtz (choking Bo Bell), Kyle Harrison, Collin Murray, Jeff Chow
(giving bunny ears), Tim Truesdale, Mark Kern, Kevin Beardslee, Joe Rumsey
Sitting: Bo Bell, Gary Platner, Tom Jung (with bunny ears), John Cash (with
bunny ears)
Sitting front: Brenda Perdion, Scott Hartin, Jose Aello, Brian Hsu, Bill Petras,
Chris Metzen, Solomon Lee
Lying coquettishly on the ground: Roman Kenney
March 2001:
My First Six Months

“The origin.”

— Written in the corner of the men’s room, whose white tiles and black grouting
formed a 3D grid.

Blizzard celebrated its tenth anniversary on a Saturday evening in March

2001. At the time, there were teams working on Warcraft III, a Diablo II

expansion, and World of Warcraft. Team 2, whose project was the latter, was

staffing up to conquer the largest project the company had ever undertaken:

a massively multiplayer online game. I decided to write this development

diary on the night of the anniversary party, after I’d been on the team for

half a year. I thought it would be interesting to keep track of our progress

simply because I could tell it wasn’t always going well—especially with the

dungeons, which were a mess. I leaned forward in my ridiculously fancy

boardroom chair and began writing.

My chair was conspicuously posh and the envy of the team (or, at least, it

should have been), since many of the seating options in Team 2 were cheap,

uncomfortable hand-me-downs. Whenever someone’s office chair broke,

they swapped it with another. Since the hallway conference table was at the

bottom of this pecking order, it made for both a precarious place to sit and

slim pickings for the new hires. Whenever the producers ordered more chairs

for the conference tables or future employees, people quickly filched them

for their own offices. While the conference table chairs were always fair

game, occasionally poachers would swap chairs with those who were on

vacation! To avoid playing musical chairs, I purchased a beige leather throne,

an executive boardroom model that stood out from the black and plastic

standard-issue seats everyone else used. I found it at a used office furniture

store, reasoning that the $200 investment would pay off over the years of late

nights ahead.

I was midway through building a tower called Karazhan, using an editor

called Radiant, software that many of the FPS games used to build their 3D

levels. Radiant was developed by id Software, the company that pioneered

3D games and where John Cash, our technology lead, hailed from, and he’d

secured id’s blessing to evaluate their editor to see if it was the right tool for

our project. I’d worked with Radiant (or similar editors) for over five years,

but after six months of applying it to an MMO, I was beginning to think we

were headed in the wrong direction.

In the months that I’d been on Team 2, I was easily averaging over eighty

hours a week building 3D levels, and yet the only thing we’d finished was a

single goldmine. By “finished,” I mean we could load it into the Quake III

engine (copies of the game floated around the office so others could evaluate

my work). It was bizarre running through our goldmine as Quake characters,

although it was fun to rocket-jump up to hidden perches along the ceiling.

Often I would enter my map and one of the producers would appear out of

nowhere to blast me into a pile of guts—followed shortly by guffaws of

laughter from down the hallway.

But Karazhan was far bigger than a goldmine, and I was working on it

because it was our worst-case scenario. It was so big that Quake III couldn’t

even run the file. Scott Hartin, the programmer in charge of writing WoW’s

game engine, explained he’d have to write his own compiler to handle our

big files, so I continued building Karazhan with the faith that our

technology would catch up. But my confidence had been wavering those

past few weeks. It took over five minutes just to save the file, and that was a

problem because Radiant (an unsupported program) was repeatedly

crashing.

I was welcomed to the team with enthusiasm and high hopes that I’d help

iron out one of the issues plaguing the project: how to build 3D dungeons

and cities. Blizzard had zero experience with 3D level design, something I’d

already figured out from the questions I was asked in my interview. I could

tell they were pumping me for information, such as time estimates and

production pipelines for building 3D architecture.

Before I joined, the company had a terrible time hiring 3D level

designers, but now that I was on board, I was having a terrible time hiring
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DAKTARI.
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BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID.
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Twentieth Century-Fox Productions, Ltd.
HELLO--GOODBYE.
Twentieth Century-Fox Television, Inc.
LAND OF THE GIANTS.

U
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BALEARES 1970.
Ultra Film, S.P.A.
BETTER A WIDOW.
Uni-Bet Productions.
TAMMY AND THE MILLIONAIRE.
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MRS. POLLIFAX, SPY.
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Universal City Studios. Emka.
SEE Emka.
Universal City Studios, Inc.
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Universal City Studios, Inc. Universal Pictures.
 SEE Universal Pictures.
Universal Pictures.
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Universal Television.
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University Films.
MACMILLAN ENGLISH FILMSTRIPS.
University of California at Los Angeles. Dept. of Chemistry.
NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE.
University of California. Regents.
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DO YOU KNOW.
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PUERTO RICO AND THE PUERTO RICANS.
Urban Task Force, United States Catholic Conference, Inc.
SEE United States Catholic Conference, Inc. Urban Task Force.
Urbex Affiliates, Inc.
AGENDA FOR THE 70S.
Uris, Leon.
TOPAZ.

V
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DOMICILE CONJUGAL.
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DARKNESS, DARKNESS.
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BOY OF BOTSWANA.
CITY BOY OF THE IVORY COAST.
TWO BOYS OF ETHIOPIA.
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CHORDATA.
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Von Meek, Barbara.
THE MUSIC LOVERS.

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Wah Chang.
SEE Chang, Wah.
Wallop, Douglass.
THE GOOD LIFE.
Wally, George B.
WALLY: HIS WORK AND HIS LOVES.
Ward, Fred
MEXICO: 12,000 YEARS OF HISTORY.
Ward (Fred) Productions, Inc.
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THE ALL AMERICAN BANDS. (R)
ARMY SHOW. (R)
BACKGROUND TO DANGER. (R)
BEHIND THE BIG TOP. (R)
CHAMPIONS TRAINING CHAMPIONS. (R)
CHILDHOOD DAYS. (R)
CONSTANT NYMPH. (R)
DESERT SONG. (R)
DESTINATION TOKYO. (R)
DUDE RANCH BUCKAROOS. (R)
EDGE OF DARKNESS. (R)
FIND THE BLACKMAILER. (R)
FREDDIE FISHER AND HIS BAND. (R)
GREY WHITE AND BLUE. (R)
GUN TO GUN. (R)
HAPPY TIMES & JOLLY MOMENTS. (R)
THE HARD WAY. (R)
HIT PARADE OF THE GAY NINETIES. (R)
HUNTING THE DEVIL CAT. (R)
INTO THE CLOUDS. (R)
KING OF THE ARCHERS. (R)
LITTLE ISLES OF FREEDOM. (R)
THE MAN KILLERS. (R)
MISSION TO MOSCOW. (R)
MOUNTAIN FIGHTERS. (R)
MURDER ON THE WATERFRONT. (R)
THE MYSTERIOUS DOCTOR. (R)
A NATION DANCES. (R)
NORTHERN PURSUIT. (R)
OKLAHOMA OUTLAWS. (R)
OLD ACQUAINTANCE. (R)
OUR AFRICAN FRONTIER. (R)
OUR ALASKAN FRONTIER. (R)
OZZIE NELSON AND HIS ORCHESTRA. (R)
PRINCESS O'ROURKE. (R)
REAR GUNNER. (R)
ROD AND REEL ON ANTICOSTI ISLAND. (R)
 ROVERS RANGERS, (R)
A SHIP IS BORN. (R)
SNOW SPORTS. (R)
STARS ON HORSEBACK. (R)
SWEENEY STEPS OUT. (R)
SWEETHEART SERENADE. (R)
THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS. (R)
THIS IS YOUR ENEMY. (R)
THREE CHEERS FOR THE GIRLS. (R)
TROPICAL SPORTLAND. (R)
TRUCK BUSTERS. (R)
UNITED STATES ARMY BAND. (R)
VAUDEVILLE DAYS. (R)
VOICE THAT THRILLED THE WORLD. (R)
WAGON WHEELS WEST. (R)
WATCH ON THE RHINE. (R)
WOMEN IN SPORTS. (R)
Waterbury Films, Ltd.
SCROOGE.
Wathen-Dunn, Peter.
SCAG.
Weitman (Robert M.) Productions.
THE ANDERSON TAPES.
Welcome Wagon International.
EVERYONE LOVES A BRIDE.
IT'S BABY TIME.
Werrenrath, Reinald, Jr.
NATURE IN THE CITY.
REFLECTIONS IN A POND.
VOWELS AND THEIR SOUNDS.
Westerman, R. C.
ROD RUDSTROM'S VARIATIONS ON THE WESTERMAN
TECHNIQUE.
Western Minerals, Inc.
GRAND CANYON, A SIMULATED FIELD TRIP.
Westinghouse Electric Corp.
ANOTHER CLEAN STORY.
THE EASY EIGHT WAY TO INCREASE DRYER SALES.
A NEW TWIST.
THE STORY BEHIND THE FEATURES.
Weston, John.
HAIL, HERO.
Weston Woods Studios, Inc.
THE COW WHO FELL IN THE CANAL.
NORMAN THE DOORMAN.
ROSIE'S WALK.
THE SELFISH GIANT.
Westward Productions.
HOUSE OF CARDS.
Westward Productions, Inc.
STORY OF A WOMAN.
Wexler Film Productions, Inc.
MODERN OBSTETRICS: POSTPARTUM HEMORRHAGE.
Where's Poppa Co.
WHERE'S POPPA?
White, Lionel.
THE NIGHT OF THE FOLLOWING DAY.
Wild Dog Films.
BOTSWANA, WHERE A RIVER DIES.
Wilde, Oscar.
THE SELFISH GIANT.
Wiley (John) & Sons, Inc.
THE ACCOUNTING MACHINE.
ARTERIAL BLOOD PRESSURE REGULATION.
 THE CARD PUNCH.
DNA: BLUEPRINT OF LIFE.
FOURIER SERIES.
GROUND WATER: THE HIDDEN RESERVOIR.
INTRODUCTION TO BIOLOGICAL CONCEPTS.
LEGS: A SYSTEM OF INDIVIDUALIZED INSTRUCTION FOR
NURSING EDUCATION.
MASS SPECTROMETRY.
MICROELECTRODES IN MUSCLE.
MUSCLE SPINDLE.
NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE.
POSITION FROM VELOCITY.
REVOLUTION.
VELOCITY FROM POSITION.
Willard Pictures, Inc.
BOATING U.S.A.
Williams, Charles.
DON'T JUST STAND THERE.
Wine Institute.
SCIENCE AND ART OF WINE MAKING.
THE WINE IN YOUR LIFE.
WINE IS FUN.
WINE LAND OF AMERICA.
Winkast Film Productions, Ltd.
A SEVERED HEAD.
Winters, Shirley Jean.
YOU CAN COMPOSE A DANCE.
Wise Owl Club of the National Society for the Prevention of
Blindness.
SEE National Society for the Prevention of Blindness. Wise Owl
Club.
Wolfe, Dan E.
SEE De Wolfe Photography.
Wombat Productions, Inc.
I THINK.
Wonderful Films.
I AM ALSO A YOU.
Woodfall Films, Ltd.
KES.
Woodward, Charles.
THE BOYS IN THE BAND.
Woroner Films, Inc.
THE DISTURBANCE CALL: GENERAL.
SHOOT--DON'T SHOOT.
Wrather Corp.
LASSIE.
Wyeth, Andrew N.
THE STORY OF CAESAR RODNEY.

X
Xanadu Productions.
THE NATIONAL FLOWER OF BROOKLYN.

Y
You Discover, Inc.
YOU DISCOVER SAUDI ARABIA.
Young Horizons, Inc.
ZOO WORLD OF ART.
Young, Jeffrey.
THE STRONGER.

Z
Zouary, Maurice H.
THE REBEL PRIEST.
Zwart, Gerrit C.
CHORDATA.
Zwart, Helen Smith.
CHORDATA.

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1972 O - 450-642

Catalog of Copyright Entries: Third Series

Volume 25, Parts 12–13, Number 2

Motion Pictures and Filmstrips

July-December
1971

COPYRIGHT OFFICE · THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

WASHINGTON: 1972

L.C. card 6—35347

This number identifies the Library of Congress

printed card for the complete series of the
Catalog of Copyright Entries.
 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents,
U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington,
D.C. 20402. Price of this part is given on page vi.
 Preface

The CATALOG OF COPYRIGHT ENTRIES is published by authority

of sections 210 and 211 of Title 17 of the United States Code.
Section 210 provides in part: “The current catalog of copyright
entries and the index volumes herein provided for shall be admitted
in any court as prima facie evidence of the facts stated therein as
regards any copyright registration.”
The Catalog is subdivided into parts corresponding to the classes
of material listed in section 5 of Title 17 of the United States Code.
The table at the end of this preface shows the organization of the
Catalog, the symbols used with the registration numbers to identify
the classes, and the prices of the semiannual or annual issues.
The record of each copyright registration listed in the Catalog
includes a description of the work copyrighted and data relating to
the copyright claim (the name of the copyright claimant as given in
the application for registration, the copyright date, the copyright
registration number, etc.).
For a more complete description of the contents of this issue of
the Catalog see p. vii.
Information as to changes of copyright ownership is not included
in the Catalog, but a search of the Copyright Office Assignments and
Related Documents Indexes may be requested from the Register of
Copyrights. A fee for the search and report will be estimated at the
statutory rate of $5 per hour.
For each registration listed, except for renewals, there has been
deposited a copy or copies of the work in accordance with the
provisions contained in sections 12, 13, 14, or 215 of Title 17 of the
United States Code.
Orders, payable in advance, for all parts of the Catalog of
Copyright Entries should be sent to the Superintendent of
Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
20402. Orders may be placed for individual issues, as subscriptions
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the title and the inclusive dates of the part wanted. Checks or money
orders should be made payable to the Superintendent of Documents.
The Copyright Office welcomes inquiries, suggestions, and
comments on the content and organization of the Catalog. Such
communications should be addressed to the Chief of the Cataloging
Division, Copyright Office, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
20540.
Organization of Parts
Each part listed in the following table records all current
registrations in the class or classes indicated by the alphabetical
symbols. Renewal registrations are listed separately at the end of
each related part. Some parts also contain registrations made under
symbols other than those listed for the particular part, if the subject
matter or type of material is similar to that generally included in the
part.
The first letter of the symbol is that of the class under which
registration is made. Second and third letters, if any, that follow the
initial letter are added by the Copyright Office for the purpose of
statistical analysis. Their significance is as follows:

F Published foreign works. In the case of books and periodicals, it

designates works manufactured outside the United States
(except those registered for ad interim copyright). In all other
classes to which it applies, it designates works first published
outside the United States, the authors of which are neither
citizens nor domiciliaries of the United States. (AF, EF)
I Books and periodicals registered for ad interim copyright. (AI,
BI)
O Published works of foreign origin registered under the waiver-
of-fee provision (section 215 of Title 17 of the United States
Code). (BIO, GFO)
P Domestic published works in classes for which registration is
possible for either published or unpublished works. (EP, JP)
U Unpublished works in classes for which registration is possible
for either published or unpublished works. (DU, EU)
 Price per
semiannual
issue

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Contributions to Periodicals (In 2 sections) $7.50
A Books
BB Contributions to periodicals
R Renewal registrations

Part 2 Periodicals (Annual issue) 5.00

B Periodicals
R Renewal registrations

Parts Dramas and Works Prepared for Oral Delivery

3–4 2.50
C Lectures and other works prepared for oral
delivery
D Dramatic or dramatico-musical works
R Renewal registrations

Part 5 Music (In 2 sections) 7.50

E Musical compositions
R Renewal registrations

Part 6 Maps and Atlases 2.50

F Maps
R Renewal registrations

Parts Works of Art, Reproductions of Works of Art,

7–11A Scientific and Technical Drawings, Photographic
Works, Prints and Pictorial Illustrations 2.50
G Works of art and models or designs for works
of art
H Reproductions of works of art
I Drawings or sculptural works of a scientific or
technical character
J Photographs
K Prints and pictorial illustrations
R Renewal registrations

Part Commercial Prints and Labels (Annual issue)

11B 5.00
KK Commercial prints and labels
R Renewal registrations

Parts Motion Pictures and Filmstrips

12–13 2.50
L Motion-picture photoplays
M Motion pictures other than photoplays
R Renewal registrations
Subscription price: Complete Catalog for the year $50.00; $12.50
additional for foreign mailing. Orders, accompanied by remittances,
should be addressed to the Superintendent of Documents, U.S.
Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402.
Table of Contents

Page
Current Registrations 87

Renewal Registrations 147

Name Index 157