Common Paradox Tech Blog

Aside from one obscure little game whose name escapes our memory at the moment, WarCraft has been out of action since WarCraft 3: The Frozen Throne’s release back in 2003. Don’t take this world without WarCraft to mean that Blizzard’s completely iced the idea of a fourth entry in the popular fantasy RTS series, though. Just be prepared to wait a tick before scratching your orc-commanding, night elf-outsmarting itch.

"Warcraft 4 is certainly something that gets talked about on a pretty regular basis," Blizzard’s J. Allen Brack said in an interview with AusGamers. "While I think we’re all excited about a Warcraft 4, in concept, [the WarCraft 3 team is] going to finish up StarCraft 2, and then they’re going to work on the two StarCraft expansions that we’ve announced, so they’re booked for the next few years."

And though he stopped just short of nailing the team to the project, Brack did say that "it does sort of make sense."

Another Blizzard game, another tremendous wait. But at least we can while away the, well, years until Diablo III’s launch with Torchlight. As for WarCraft 4, though… hey Runic, ever think about making an RTS?

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 4600 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.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.