It might have only lasted a short time, but World of Warcraft Classic’s beta test certainly made an impression — on both the community and Blizzard. In fact, the studio said that it was surprised just how much players were engaged with the temporary test realm.
“One thing I noticed was just how passionate people were about the beta,” said Lead Software Engineer Brian Birmingham. “We were really thrilled and blown away by just how much people wanted to play, night after night, even though they know these characters are going to get wiped out before we release. It really blew us away how dedicated people were.”
Birmingham said that between now and the launch of WoW Classic on August 27th, the team is hard at work squashing as many of the bugs that surfaced during the beta as possible. In terms of launch day queues, he noted that Blizzard is better prepared than it was in 2004 to handle crazy large influxes of players — the studio will even set up a “war room” to monitor the first day of live operation.
“Definitely, in terms of rough sizing, we are treating it as the same level of event internally as a major expansion launch. It’s all hands on deck. The whole World of Warcraft team is lending a hand, making sure we’re good to go,” he said.
In response to what might happen after the six phases of post-launch content are rolled out, Birmingham said that he didn’t know of any plans right now but that the studio would continue to evaluate community feedback on the issue.
