In the second floor of a building in Irvine’s University Research Park, about 75 people,some with purple hair, others with nose rings,take calls from customers seeking help.
But don’t call them customer service representatives or help-line operators. They’re game masters.
If you’re scratching you’re head, then you’re probably not a video game player. The game masters work for Irvine-based Blizzard Entertain-ment Inc. handling calls from players of its “World of Warcraft,” in which thousands of people face off with each other online.
In game speak, “World of Warcraft” is a “massively multiplayer” game. In it, players from across the globe go head to head in a virtual world run by Blizzard.
For the uninitiated, “World of Warcraft” is a role-playing game where players take on the part of a unique character who goes on adventures, completes quests, acquires wealth, sleeps, fights and dies.
“World of Warcraft” is a big reason why Blizzard has grown into Orange County’s second largest software company by local employment, after Costa Mesa business software maker FileNet Corp.
Blizzard, part of France’s Vivendi Universal SA, employs about 650 people in Irvine and 1,250 worldwide.
“We’ve been hiring like crazy,” says Mike Morhaime, Blizzard’s chief executive.
“World of Warcraft” always is on. Game masters work in three shifts around the clock, seven days a week managing it.
Blizzard employs about 300 game masters. They don’t actually play in the game. They get what are called “tickets” from customers, essentially requests for service.
Some calls are for questions about the game. Others are complaints about something that’s happened. A typical call might be about a character that was accidentally deleted, or from a player being unable to complete a quest because of a glitch.
In a game this size, there’s definitely room for a glitch or two.
With nearly 100 servers in four spots around the world serving more than 1.5 million game players, the scale of the operation is massive.
Blizzard’s technicians manage the virtual world remotely from service centers similar to the one in Irvine. The company has centers in South Korea, France and China. The game sits on servers in data centers in those countries and on both U.S. coasts. The West Coast servers are in Los Angeles County.
“It’s an absolutely huge project,” Morhaime said.
The largest of Blizzard’s facilities is Irvine, which includes two buildings in Irvine. The company doesn’t like to expand on exactly where its facilities are. Blizzard uses just a post office box for its address.
“We have very enthusiastic fans,” a spokeswoman said.
Players have been known to come from as far as San Francisco eager for a tour of the facilities, she said.
“We have to tell them, ‘Thanks, but we don’t give tours,'” she said.
Inside is what you might expect for a game company. Stains on the carpets, food lying around, raucous ping-pong games and furniture moving from one office to another.
Producing “World of Warcraft” was a massive undertaking.
Along with writing of the game’s software code, Blizzard’s development team of about 60 people had to come up with the extensive storyline in “World of Warcraft.” They had to develop the rules in the game, concepts for characters and draw the entire world it takes place in.
Blizzard hired about 100,000 testers to get the kinks out before launching.
The actual “world” is loaded onto a player’s personal computer. The game costs $49.95 off the shelf. To play online is $15 a month.
‘Extremely Profitable’
Blizzard, which is conservatively estimated by the Business Journal to have yearly sales of $300 million, doesn’t disclose financial details. “World of Warcraft” has been “extremely profitable,” Morhaime said.
The company has benefited by being part of Los Angeles-based Vivendi Universal Games Inc., according to Morhaime.
During development of “World of Warcraft,” “It was very helpful to have access to the cash,” Morhaime said. “They’ve been very supportive,” he said of his Vivendi bosses. “And the game has really exceeded everyone’s expectations. It’s been good to be a part of a big company so we could rapidly deploy it.”
There aren’t plans to make another massively multiplayer game right now, according to Morhaime. It takes too much to do it, he said.
“Players can generally focus only on one main game,” Morhaime said. “You develop a character and explore different areas of a game. There’s a limit to the amount of time a player has.”
It’s not unusual for players to spend hours. They can interact with each other, form fighting teams, explore together and interact in other ways that turn minutes into hours.
It also can be dangerous. Earlier this month, a South Korean man died after playing an online version of Blizzard’s “StarCraft” game for 50 hours nonstop. His heart gave out from exhaustion, according to Reuters and other published reports.
“World of Warcraft” was designed to encourage breaks, Morhaime said. It’s easier for players to win fights and complete quests after they let their characters rest, he said.
Even so, Morhaime said Blizzard is considering putting a warning on the game telling users to take it easy.
“It can be a pretty big time investment,” he said.
