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Short filmTranscript
00:00A computer password is, in a word, precious, because it holds the key to just about every
00:14aspect of your life.
00:16And without one particular password, one of the greatest fantasy video games of all time
00:22may never have happened at all.
00:28Welcome to the world of Warcraft.
00:30Millions of people played that game.
00:33Everyone was playing.
00:34But it wasn't guaranteed to be a success.
00:36But to create this MMO?
00:38The hardest game to make.
00:40Way massive.
00:41Way bigger.
00:42It was super expensive.
00:43Worlds would fall.
00:44The whole thing was blowing up on us.
00:46I think it's broken.
00:47Nine months, right down the tubes.
00:50Having a room full of executives laugh at me.
00:52We are under attack.
00:53And we just felt like failures.
00:56Fellow adventurers, choose your weapons wisely.
00:59Sword.
01:00Battleaxe.
01:01Shield.
01:02Daggers.
01:03Long hair with ponytails.
01:04And join us as we delve into the digital realms of Azeroth.
01:09Everything was brought to its knees.
01:11But protect your gold.
01:12They used to pay us with their credit cards.
01:15All the money is spent.
01:17And trust no one.
01:19There wasn't everyone in the company that believed in the game.
01:21Hey, we're going to bankrupt the company.
01:22It's too big for our britches.
01:24Why are you taking this huge risk?
01:26Because these powerful heroes.
01:28Photo retoucher.
01:29Head usher.
01:30I don't know anything about video games.
01:31We were kids.
01:32We didn't know what we were doing.
01:34Set out on a quest to change the world.
01:37A world of hurt.
01:38There's a very real possibility this game might not get made.
01:41You'll figure it out.
01:42Burned out.
01:43Disgruntled.
01:44Okay, we'll just figure it out.
01:46But what the f*** is wrong with you guys?
01:48We were like, holy...
01:54What the f*** is wrong with you guys?
02:24Long before passwords, blazing download speeds, or bandwidth, back in the 1980s, the beginnings
02:30of fantasy video games were being set forth in many an American basement.
02:35The notion of what games looked like began to evolve pretty heavily.
02:38The invention of tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons was a really big deal.
02:42Not quite.
02:43What's your strength?
02:44You're sitting around a table with your friends, and it is the friendships, it is the people,
02:49the randomness of the humanity component that made it so special.
02:53We just got wiped out.
02:55The world that we were in was dominated by witches and sorcerers, wizards, magic, dragons
03:02and flying creatures.
03:04Then as we saw the rise of technology and computers, there was game developers wanting
03:10to bring that Dungeons and Dragons experience into a virtual space.
03:14There were two such developers who were inspired to do just that, were Alan Adham and Mike
03:20Moorhunt, to start a company called...
03:22Midnight Studios.
03:23No, that's a porn company or something.
03:25Blizzard was the name that we picked.
03:27Blizzard Entertainment.
03:28And Blizzard would eventually upend the entire MMO industry.
03:33But before we roll the 12-sided die on that, we'll need to begin at the start of their
03:39journey.
03:40I started programming as a freshman in high school.
03:48There was a system back then that was just sort of emerging, the Apple II Plus.
03:53I immediately became fascinated with understanding how text-based adventure games work, games
03:58like Zork.
03:59You would interact by typing, pick up lantern, turn on lantern.
04:05And so I started learning to code basic as a freshman in high school.
04:08I definitely loved games, and growing up, we had the Valley Professional Arcade.
04:13You can even create your own games with Astrocade Basic.
04:16And that allowed you to program your own applications or games.
04:20And that was my first exposure to programming, and I thought it was just amazing.
04:24But soon, a most unlikely circumstance would forge a bond between these two young students.
04:30One day, we were sitting side-by-side in one of the UCLA computer labs.
04:35We're the only two people there.
04:36And I got up to go get a cup of coffee, and I locked the computer, you know, using my
04:42password before I left.
04:44After 10 minutes, the terminal unlocked.
04:46And so I looked over and was like, okay, I'll just play a little practical joke on Alan.
04:50I relocked the terminal.
04:52But this time, with his own password.
04:55So he comes in.
04:56He sits down in his terminal.
04:57I typed in my password.
05:02And it kept working.
05:03And so I'm like, I'm just looking over.
05:06How did you do that?
05:07What do you mean?
05:08You just type in a password, and then you unlock it.
05:10We had chosen the same password.
05:12We just laughed for, I don't know, half an hour.
05:14We just couldn't believe what are the odds that we would have chosen the same password.
05:18Well, whatever the password is, we will try to work it out.
05:22This serendipitous security breach unlocked an amazing future for the pair.
05:27I knew that I wanted to start a gaming company the day I graduated.
05:31It wouldn't be long before he'd ask his fast friend Mike to join him on his quest.
05:35I don't know anything about video game creation.
05:37I didn't study programming in college.
05:39Mike was on the fence.
05:40He thought it might be a good idea, but he wasn't sure.
05:43I don't know how to do this.
05:44I need more time to learn some things before I jump in.
05:47And Alan's response was, it's not rocket science.
05:49If we put our minds together, we can do anything.
05:52And while figuring things out on the fly would later become a core philosophy of their company,
05:58to complete the triumphant of power needed to face the perilous journey ahead, they needed
06:02a third, ideally a computer wizard or a gaming warrior.
06:07Instead, they found Frank.
06:10Frank Pierce and I had a class together.
06:12It was an AI class.
06:14Back then, AI, and in particular this AI class, it was really, really dry.
06:19So Alan skipped class and went to the arcade, which was the exact same idea Frank had.
06:25And that's kind of how Frank and I met.
06:27Frank started the same day that I did.
06:29So now, all the fellowship needed was a name.
06:32We had this brilliant idea to call it Silicon and Synapse.
06:37I think pretty quickly, you know, we started getting phone calls for people mispronounce
06:41it as silicone and synapse.
06:43Which is entirely something different.
06:45Silicon, silicone, what are we talking about here, guys?
06:48It's just a horrible name.
06:49Well, that's the name they came up with.
06:51But now, they'd need to come up with money.
06:54I had $11,000 in my college savings account left over.
06:59Mike borrowed $11,000 from his grandmother.
07:01I actually borrowed $15,000, so I kept five, and that was what went into the bank for me.
07:07Nice one, Grandma.
07:08And so now, Al and Mike and Frank began their new company together with everything they
07:13needed to get started, minus a few details.
07:17We had no business plan.
07:18We kind of jumped into it completely unprepared.
07:22We were 21, 22.
07:24We were just kids.
07:25We could learn whatever we needed to learn.
07:28So with the financial backing of Grandma, these young, inexperienced entrepreneurs set
07:34down the path of which there was no turning back.
07:38It wasn't guaranteed to be a success.
07:40Really, it was almost guaranteed not to be.
07:45In 1991, Alan Adham and Mike Morhaim and Frank Pierce had ventured off into the exciting
07:52world of entrepreneurship.
07:54Now they needed to make money.
07:55Back in the early days, there were a lot of different computer systems, and there was
07:59no one cross-platform engine that you could use.
08:03And so there was the opportunity for small companies porting games from one system to
08:09another.
08:10So they put the pedal to the metal.
08:14Our first job was this game called RPM Racing, taking this old Commodore 64 racing game and
08:20importing it to work on the Super Nintendo.
08:23But even though they were revving to go, we'd never made a Super Nintendo game.
08:28It was the biggest project I had ever seen in my life.
08:32So I was just overwhelmed.
08:34I went to Alan because he told me that he was going to help me.
08:37And the solution was, we'll go buy a book on the thing.
08:40We felt like, if other people can learn how to do this, then we can too.
08:44We can figure out how to do anything.
08:46And they did.
08:47And the ports just kept coming.
08:49By getting ports under contract, we got paid every couple of months.
08:53Lord of the Rings, Battle Chess, a game called Mahjong for Activision.
08:59Whilst the business of porting kept the lights on, we were starting to do original developments.
09:04The Lost Vikings, Rock and Roll Racing.
09:07The green flag drops!
09:08They both did great.
09:10So we were starting to come into our own as a developer in our own right.
09:14But to help them become the game developers they all believed they could be, they'd need
09:19to bring on a big name from the world of entertainment.
09:22You know, I was the head usher at a local movie theatre.
09:24Okay, so maybe not a big name.
09:27Tell them how you met Mike and Alan.
09:28Yeah, I just kicked open the door and said, hey look, I'm looking for a job.
09:32And they of course hired me.
09:33No, I come home with my, you know, tuxedo stained with butter and popcorn and, you know,
09:40soda spills.
09:41And I see in this local paper, make art for video games.
09:45I'm like, that seems kind of sketchy, right?
09:48It's like, I don't know, like if I show up there, is it going to be like some kind of
09:51like, you know, murder closet?
09:53The job was legit.
09:54There's no murder closet.
09:55I got the job.
09:57And jobs were being handed out all over the place.
09:59I said, well, we have a role that we think that you might be suited for.
10:02We want to basically make you a producer.
10:05What the heck is a producer?
10:06You're hired.
10:07Okay, I think I can do that.
10:10Mike and Alan both basically would tell me, hey, can you take care of this thing?
10:15And I would say, I have no idea how to do that.
10:17Because I don't even think Mike and Alan necessarily knew how to do it properly.
10:21And they would say, you'll figure it out.
10:23Silicon and Synapse's employee roster was expanding faster than their profit margin.
10:27You know, we were very tight on cash.
10:29I think we tried to be as transparent to our employees as possible and just make sure we
10:33never missed a payroll.
10:34Make sure you ask Alan and Mike about how they used to pay us with their credit cards.
10:39And we didn't know.
10:40That really wasn't something that we broadcasted.
10:42We had to look around for ways to borrow money.
10:46It's free and it turns out you could get a cash advance on your Discover credit cards.
10:50Not just a lack of loose change was on their minds, but also change of another kind.
10:56And so we knew we had to change the name, because nobody knew what either one of those
11:00things were.
11:01Nobody knew what they meant.
11:02No one knew how to spell it.
11:04We changed it to Chaos Studios.
11:08It was a reference to our development process, which Alan referred to as controlled chaos.
11:13More employees equals more debt.
11:15And, well...
11:17We were barely profitable.
11:18I think we'd made $100,000 in the previous year, and that's inclusive of the fact that
11:23Mike and I hadn't taken salaries.
11:24But soon, the numbers would start to add up.
11:27We were working with Davidson and Associates, which is an educational software company.
11:32At the time, they were famous for Math Blaster.
11:36And we'd done some ports for them, porting their educational games from one platform
11:41to another.
11:43Davidson themselves started doing the math.
11:45Our credit line was maxed out.
11:47And so they started talking to us about, hey, how about we acquire you guys and you'd be
11:51our entertainment division?
11:52They made us a very interesting offer.
11:54Which the financially strapped company answered with an enthusiastic...
11:58Absolutely not.
11:59Clearly a clever negotiating tactic.
12:01It wasn't a negotiating tactic.
12:03We wanted to stay autonomous, keep our freedom to make cool games.
12:07And sticking to their guns was the right decision, because...
12:10They came back a few months later and they said...
12:13Nothing has to change.
12:14You'll have full creative autonomy, full creative control.
12:18And by the way, we'll roughly double the offer.
12:21To the tune of $6.75 million.
12:26Couldn't understand how they could offer us that amount of money for a company of 19 kids
12:30that were barely profitable.
12:32And so, with money chaos finally behind them, now it was other people's chaos they had to
12:37worry about.
12:38We were contacted by this company that was called Chaos Technologies.
12:41They said, hey, you know, we'll let you continue using the name, but it will cost you $100,000.
12:47And the chaos continued.
12:49We got a cease and desist from Sony Music, which had a label, Chaos Music.
12:54We decided not to fight them.
12:56Name change time again.
12:58I looked through an English dictionary and I pulled out maybe 30 or 40 cool words.
13:04One of the names that we liked was Midnight Studios.
13:08But people thought that that's a porn company or something.
13:10I think there was a, one was like Ogre.
13:14Didn't think the shareholders of this educational company would like their subsidiary being
13:18called Ogre.
13:20What's our name now?
13:22And the final round, Blizzard was the name that we picked.
13:25That's the route we should go.
13:26It was so fun.
13:27There you go.
13:29More developments continued to keep the cash flow coming in.
13:31Blackthorn.
13:33Superman.
13:34But developing games for others to publish is one thing.
13:37And to publish under your own name, now that they had one, is another.
13:41And that's when a little inspiration blew into Blizzard from the spice-rich deserts.
13:46Also known as Dune.
13:48Dune 2, actually.
13:50This was like one of the first games that everyone in the office was playing that we
13:53unanimously loved.
13:55You build up bases, you build up armies, you attack, oh, it's, you know, awesome.
13:59And then, like a sandworm, an idea began creeping in.
14:04We were playing this game so much and we were talking about, I wonder if we could do a
14:07game like this but with fantasy.
14:09What would our version of that game be?
14:12And the Dune 2-type game Blizzard was looking to make was known in the gaming world as an
14:16RTS.
14:18Also known as Real-Time Strategy.
14:20Which was great, except no one at Blizzard knew anything about how to make an RTS game.
14:25We all didn't know, necessarily, how to do a lot of things.
14:28And so everyone had to sort of step up and take control and learn for themselves.
14:33It would be a battle for the ages.
14:35You had humans on one side, you had orcs on the other.
14:39We basically took our love of all things fantasy, from movies, comic books, Dungeons and Dragons
14:46for sure.
14:47And we basically wanted to do our own fantasy world.
14:50But what would it be called?
14:52We were in a meeting talking about various names, I just shouted out, what about Warcraft?
14:58What about it, indeed?
15:00The name Warcraft actually came from one of my old Dungeons and Dragons characters, believe
15:04it or not.
15:05He had the sword, the battleaxe, the mace and the shield, the spear, daggers, crossbow,
15:10long hair with ponytails, you know.
15:13Warcraft.
15:14Orcs and humans would not just be their first RTS.
15:17It was really the first Blizzard published title.
15:20With the game ready to ship.
15:21We're ready, master.
15:22I'm not ready.
15:24Blizzard needed to prove to the Davidson's company, and to the gaming world, it was worth
15:28their investment.
15:29We wanted them to have confidence that we knew what we were doing.
15:33Did they know what they were doing?
15:35We didn't know what we were doing.
15:39Blizzard's first game as a publisher, Warcraft Orcs and Humans, was about to debut, putting
15:44the young company's reputation in the hands of the players for victory or...
15:49Damn, man.
15:50RTS Warcraft was very popular.
15:53To be a little more specific, super popular.
15:56Warcraft sold more than 100,000 copies the first year alone.
16:00But the Warcraft RTS wasn't just a big deal for Blizzard.
16:04It was a big deal for computer gaming as a whole.
16:07Warcraft 1 is one of the first real-time strategy games where you can play head-to-head.
16:12Just so much more fun.
16:14But in these early Warcraft days...
16:16It was just a mess.
16:18You had all these little, tiny, different characters.
16:21And then you zoom them way down.
16:23It just looks like this blur of eight to ten pixels doing something that you can't even
16:28really tell.
16:29It just looked really...
16:30Doink.
16:31Doink.
16:32Is the perfect word for it, in my opinion.
16:34Small, weak, frail.
16:36We are under attack.
16:38Doink.
16:39Doink.
16:40So realistic animation didn't pay off.
16:43Realistic proportions didn't pay off.
16:45Realistic colors didn't pay off.
16:47But doink or not, gamers were clamoring for a sequel anyway.
16:52Mole lick.
16:53Which led to...
16:54Warcraft 2 Tides of Darkness.
16:57Which expanded the Warcraft world population considerably.
17:00With...
17:01Dwarves.
17:02Elves.
17:03Ogres.
17:04Welcome to my nightmare!
17:06Enter the fray.
17:09But to be successful, the sequel would need to be supersized.
17:13We started bulking them up.
17:15Or undoinkifying it.
17:17If you will.
17:18Everyone is at least six feet tall.
17:21All of his characters had like these massive shoulder pads and big boots and big gloves.
17:26They were always oversized and kind of super deformed in a way.
17:29We would ask people to just over accentuate everything.
17:32And when Warcraft 2 debuted, even the sales were bulked up.
17:36Warcraft 2 was a smash hit.
17:39That was probably one of the biggest titles.
17:42And in its first year, it would sell ten times more copies than Warcraft 1.
17:47From Warcraft 2, we finally established the Blizzard art style.
17:51Bold, big characters, super heroic.
17:54Which led to expansion pack sets and add-ons that showed Blizzard was clearly catching on and finally finding their stride.
18:01It really did build a fan base, a player base that was passionate about where the story was going.
18:07Give me a quest!
18:09And that story arc did evolve and continue to grow.
18:12It is a huge portion of why a lot of the player base is passionate about it.
18:16And to follow this huge hit, for their next game, Blizzard sidestepped into other epic realms.
18:23Diablo.
18:24It's very biblical in tone.
18:26Angels and demons.
18:28Diablo was also another genre shift.
18:30From the turn-based RTS game to an action RPG.
18:34Or a role-playing game.
18:36A genre that is story-rich and character-based, which would become one of the signature strengths of Blizzard games.
18:42Blizzard's commitment to not just the gameplay, but also upholding the fantasy was a critical part to their success.
18:49But success is measured in different ways by different people.
18:52And Alan would receive a valuable lesson after the release of the RPG, Lost Vikings 2.
18:59So I drove down there at my lunch break to go see it.
19:02And as I was walking up, a boy started playing.
19:05And the very first level, all you had to do was jump over a tiny little bit of electricity.
19:10And he ran straight into the electricity, got electrocuted, put the controller down and went to a different video game.
19:17That lesson informed all our future design.
19:21It's easy to get into and difficult to master. That's the Blizzard philosophy.
19:25And that was a revolutionary idea at the time.
19:28Most studios were going the opposite direction.
19:31In one studio, Sony was running full speed away from this philosophy with...
19:36EverQuest.
19:37And even though it was a competitor's game, ultimately, the Blizzard team were gamers at heart.
19:43We were all playing EverQuest, spending hours and hours playing EverQuest.
19:47All hanging out, having a blast.
19:49EverQuest not only established itself as the number one selling online role-playing game in the U.S.,
19:55but as a highly successful...
19:57Massively...
19:58Multiplayer...
19:59Online...
20:00Game.
20:01Also known as...
20:02MMORPG.
20:03Or...
20:04MMO.
20:05For short.
20:06You were playing on the server with hundreds, if not thousands of other people.
20:09They promised to be a persistent world.
20:13That when you log off and go to sleep, the world is still there.
20:17It presents you a fantasy that literally doesn't end.
20:20It doesn't end until you decide to stop playing, or the developer decides to shut the doors and stop developing for the game.
20:27It's the amount of work you have to create to expand that game into every direction that makes it so difficult.
20:34EverQuest had set the bar high.
20:36A brilliant, imaginative world.
20:39But there was room for improvement.
20:41But it was really difficult.
20:43EverQuest embraced punishing.
20:46They punished the players for failing.
20:49Too complex and too geeky.
20:52But maybe it was EverQuest itself that had failed.
20:56The reason we come to video games is to feel great, to escape the real world, to have some fun and some joy.
21:03And of course you do want challenge, but in time.
21:06So, with EverQuest's failings in mind...
21:08Alan came and said, we should do this.
21:10And we all thought, are you kidding?
21:12And he said, no, why not?
21:13Well, the usual reasons, probably.
21:15No one knew how to make it.
21:17We didn't know how to make MMOs.
21:20Talking something way massive, way bigger.
21:22It was super expensive and super large.
21:24There wasn't everyone in the company that believed in the game.
21:27There was a lot of internal skepticism.
21:29Too big for our britches.
21:31Hey, we're going to bankrupt the company.
21:32To which Alan replied, you'll figure it out.
21:36Okay, we'll just figure it out.
21:39Alan Adham sets a new course for Blizzard to make the highly risky move to convert Warcraft into a whole world called World of Warcraft.
21:48Or WOW for short.
21:50And they found themselves in a world of pain.
21:54The reason why an MMORPG is the hardest game to create is the amount of content you need for an audience that will consume it voraciously.
22:06And to do that under one single engine makes it technologically very, very difficult to do.
22:13Alan was the one that sort of gave us that inspiration to do that.
22:16And by inspiration, I mean, not everyone believed that this was a little scary idea to go down this path.
22:22As the company kept up its income stream, developing Starcraft and Diablo expansion sets.
22:27Which is how Blizzard was able to pay the bills.
22:30But to put the massive in massive multiplayer, Blizzard would need to look at things in a whole new way.
22:363D.
22:37The worst game any company makes is their first 3D game.
22:42That's where you make all your big mistakes, all your assumptions just dissolve.
22:47It was not something that everyone thought that we could do.
22:50But that hadn't stopped them before.
22:52Fake it till you make it.
22:54And going from 2D to 3D would require a lot of help from this guy.
22:58My name is John Statz and I was the first level designer for World of Warcraft.
23:04Yeah, the cat knocked the water bottle.
23:06Sorry, we have a E-Line emergency here.
23:09Okay.
23:12Yes, okay.
23:13So the difference between 2D and 3D is when you're painting 2D, you're just painting on a...
23:22Hold on.
23:23Come on.
23:24Kitty.
23:26I'm sorry, the cat was digging its claws in my back.
23:30John and his cat met Blizzard's usual standards.
23:33John had never worked in the game industry before this point.
23:36I was a photo retoucher.
23:38Worked on ad campaigns for pharmaceutical products.
23:41But after retouching photos all day, John had a side hustle skill Blizzard might just be interested in.
23:47Making 3D levels for first person shooter games.
23:52That was what I wanted to do more than anything.
23:55Now, John would get his chance.
23:57They had no idea what to do with a 3D game.
24:00I wasn't going to the expert, I was actually going to be the expert there.
24:03And I'd done it out of my living room.
24:06Being particularly picky in the past...
24:08I was the head usher at a local movie theater.
24:10I don't know anything about video game creation.
24:13I have no idea how to do that.
24:14That was good enough for Blizzard.
24:16I was mostly figuring out things when I first started.
24:19To keep the whole development process from veering too far off...
24:22This way.
24:23No, that way.
24:24Blizzard would need to split up.
24:26We had two teams.
24:27We were working on Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft.
24:30Team 1 were the rock stars.
24:32They had made Starcraft, Warcraft 1 and 2.
24:35Team 2 was the red-headed stepchild.
24:38When we started, it was only around ten of us.
24:40That included Shane Dabiri, John Statz, and Jeffrey Kaplan.
24:44I had never done any sort of game development job.
24:47Perfect!
24:48You're hired.
24:49Everyone treated us like we didn't know what we were doing.
24:52And we, in fact, didn't know what we were doing.
24:55We were trying to figure out how to build these things called dungeons.
24:59Dungeon is loosely a play space where a group of people...
25:03play through a series of challenges and get the prize at the end.
25:08By far the hardest part, it's the point of pain.
25:11I was working till midnight, one o'clock, two o'clock, every day.
25:18But that's what it takes to build 3D levels.
25:21And the game is that play together.
25:23Well, in this case, work together, eat together.
25:27Pizza is the lowest common denominator that the team would agree to.
25:31To this day, I still don't like pizza.
25:34But they couldn't do it on pizza alone.
25:36The team were hungry for leadership.
25:38And so Alan gave up a very big slice.
25:41I asked Mike if he would like to take over as president of Blizzard.
25:45And I take the title Chief Development Officer.
25:48Which gave him more time to focus on being on World of Warcraft.
25:52And I spent the majority of my day helping run the team and design the game.
25:57Alan brought that drive and inspiration.
26:00We're going to the moon and you're all coming with me, whether you wanted to or not.
26:04He's only a few years older than I am, but he was like this father figure.
26:09Reverence. Not just respect, but reverence.
26:13He was the one that sort of got us all energized about crazy ideas.
26:16One of those ideas was to break the traditional gaming business model.
26:20You buy the box.
26:21And you take that home, put it into your console.
26:23And you play for many years.
26:24But this way of thinking would limit not only their sales,
26:27but also the scope of how many people could play the game together.
26:31So Blizzard subscribed to another idea.
26:34To go with a subscription business model.
26:36Although common now, in the late 90s,
26:40there were very few games dabbling with the subscription model.
26:44Meridian 59, Ultima Online, or EverQuest,
26:47these are some of the early ones that had subscription models.
26:49And that subscription allowed the developers to keep creating content for that game
26:53beyond the original relief.
26:55We knew that in order to have a competitive game,
26:58we would need to be able to do the same thing.
27:00Our finance team really didn't know how to model it.
27:03And so they basically modeled it like any other game,
27:06where you have initial sales, and the sales die off.
27:09And then basically, after three years, nobody's playing the game.
27:12And the numbers didn't look very good.
27:14People would ask, like, why are you taking this huge risk?
27:18You don't know if the subscription business model is going to work.
27:21There were all those questions.
27:22This is insane.
27:24Except the ticket price for this game was going to be big.
27:28Which meant they would need a lot of subscribers.
27:32There had been a few other MMOs,
27:34but none of them had had more than maybe 250,000 users.
27:39But Alan and the team would need more than that.
27:43Millions of people.
27:45More than quadruple EverQuest.
27:48I remember once in an executive meeting
27:50saying we thought we could get to a million users,
27:53and having a room full of executives laugh at me
27:55and say that's just totally unrealistic.
27:58I remember talking to a seller at a convention.
28:02At E3, I said, I think it's going to be around for 20 years.
28:06And he looked at me for a long time
28:09to see if I was playing a joke on him.
28:12This is before WoW even shipped.
28:14John's confidence in the game wasn't lacking,
28:16but his previous experience...
28:18Making 3D levels for first-person shooter games...
28:23Was.
28:24We realized that the technology that has worked
28:27for every first-person shooter game out there
28:30wasn't going to work for building dungeons.
28:33The tech we were using wasn't fast enough.
28:36We were going to abandon the technology,
28:38and it meant nine months completely down the tubes.
28:42And suddenly, another chaos-level spell befalls Blizzard.
28:47Are we even going to be able to do this thing?
28:50There's a very real possibility this game might not get made.
28:55Nine months into designing dungeons,
28:57Blizzard realized the technology they were using wasn't going to work.
29:01Way more complicated than we could have possibly imagined.
29:04It was looking really rough for dungeons,
29:06and we started having conversations.
29:08What happens when World of Warcraft doesn't have any dungeons?
29:12If we don't build any architecture, what does that look like?
29:21That's me out of a job.
29:23John had to switch from the 3D program he knew how to use
29:27to one he didn't.
29:28It meant scrapping everything that I worked on,
29:31crunched long hours on.
29:33No one had used it for levels before that we knew of.
29:36The great thing about not knowing
29:38is that you're going to make a lot of mistakes,
29:40but you're also going to potentially do some things
29:43that an experienced person would have never tried.
29:46Within a week of testing, we realized,
29:49oh, this is way, way, way easier.
29:52In other words, we figured it out.
29:54It's just a matter of now finishing the job.
29:57But this worried the WoW team.
29:59A lot of the rest of the WoW team looked at the design team
30:03as too inexperienced to be making the game.
30:05We hadn't really earned it, and we were making bad design decisions.
30:09So that was a little bit hurtful.
30:11It wasn't the most collaborative environment.
30:14They told us, you're not allowed to task anything out.
30:18It has to go through Alan.
30:20Only there was one little issue.
30:22Why aren't the producers talking to Alan?
30:25Because Alan had suddenly stopped talking to anyone.
30:29Alan was just sitting with his door closed.
30:32You know, you kind of had that feeling like,
30:34I think Mom and Dad are in a fight,
30:37but no one wants to talk about it.
30:40But I really think the stress dealing with the team politics
30:44and the arguing that happens,
30:46I think they all took their toll on Alan after a while.
30:50We were at a point in the project
30:52where it was going to take all of us to be all in,
30:56but I needed to take a break.
30:58I left.
31:01To all those he'd inspired, Alan was truly loved.
31:05He was like this father figure.
31:07Not just respect, but reverence.
31:10And ironically, love was why he left.
31:14I'd met a girl, best thing that ever happened to me.
31:19I had spent the first 13 years at Blizzard
31:22working 7-day work weeks, 12 14-hour days.
31:25I wanted to make sure that that relationship
31:28ended up where it needed to end up.
31:30So Alan chose love over Warcraft,
31:33and the Blizzard crew didn't love that at all.
31:37Suddenly our lead designer was retiring.
31:40What are we going to do?
31:42When Alan Adham left, it was crushing to me.
31:45It was a big blow to us.
31:47He was my mentor.
31:49How are we going to make this work?
31:51What are we going to do without him?
31:53No one was ready to lead.
31:55It was a race to get to the finish line.
31:58Whenever that was, we have the Blizzard phrase
32:01coming out soon-ish.
32:03But Alan had trained us, he was still there, right?
32:06What are you going to do, stop, quit? Hell no.
32:09The project didn't finish when Alan started,
32:11and as luck would have it, he already worked on the project.
32:14Rob Pardo was already in on all the design discussions on WoW.
32:19And he really came in and he picked up where Alan had left off.
32:23Okay, we can do this.
32:26So the question was, did they?
32:28And you don't know until the very end of the project
32:32when all the money is spent.
32:34The day, or rather the night, of the launch had arrived.
32:38We had planned to do a bunch of midnight signings for the release.
32:43I remember driving there that night.
32:45There's no traffic on the freeway until I get to the off-ramp,
32:48and it's totally backed up.
32:50It's backed up for like one exit, and it's like,
32:52what are all these people doing here?
32:54And I remember getting a text from Shane DeBury who said,
32:57get down here.
32:59There was a line of people.
33:01It wraps around the building twice,
33:03it wraps around the whole parking lot,
33:05and then it goes down the street.
33:07It was the same before. It was unbelievable.
33:09We were like, holy s***.
33:15Excuse me?
33:16Yeah.
33:17Do you think you have a close enough copy for these people?
33:19Oh yeah, he doesn't copy.
33:21And we stayed until 5 in the morning.
33:23Eventually the people from the store whispered in our ear
33:26and said, we're out of games.
33:28We saw our sales literally skyrocket beyond our expectations.
33:33We sold a quarter million in the first day.
33:36We were like, what just happened?
33:41I think World of Warcraft encapsulated the perfect time and place
33:45for the progression of game development,
33:47the fidelity of the art,
33:49as well as the accessibility of the internet
33:51at that specific point in time that I think made
33:53World of Warcraft in particular such a big hit.
33:55World of Warcraft had very low system specs.
33:58Your father's machine can handle a Blizzard game.
34:02No other studio built that way.
34:04When they made the Warcraft franchise,
34:06this game that everyone loved to look at,
34:08they were finally able to play it.
34:10And not just play it, they were able to live in that world of Warcraft.
34:15But with the hefty price tag dangling above them,
34:18the Ghost of Leader's Pass reminded them...
34:21Millions of people.
34:22...were needed for ongoing costs to run the game.
34:25And so, did they get there?
34:27And we went through our million subscriber number
34:30within the first two months.
34:32And those online hordes got busy.
34:35We accounted for 10% of all global internet bandwidth.
34:4110% of planet Earth.
34:44This basically everyone was playing.
34:47The servers were under a world of hurt.
34:51It was just melting.
34:53Everything was brought to its knees.
34:56We can't support everybody playing at the same time.
34:59And there were very long login queues.
35:05The server's capped. You can't get in.
35:07Now you have to wait in line.
35:09Who waits in line to play any game?
35:10The players hated to wait in line.
35:12The whole thing was blowing up on us.
35:14It seemed like it might be the end of the world of Warcraft.
35:20With the launch of World of Warcraft,
35:22millions of players were logging in
35:24and Blizzard was melting under the pressure.
35:26They actually stopped selling the box altogether.
35:28To try to catch up and order more equipment.
35:31We're just like, put it all up.
35:33Whatever you have to do, get it in the centers.
35:35What are we supposed to tell people?
35:37When are the servers going to be back online?
35:39I felt like if we weren't delivering on that,
35:42then ultimately they would leave and not recommend the game.
35:45And there was a very loud, vocal, angry community yelling at us.
35:50I have no idea why this is taking so long.
35:53I think it's broken.
35:54And then behind the scenes, what nobody was seeing at the time,
35:58there was a lot of inner turmoil on the team.
36:01We had multiple mass exoduses of developers right after we shipped.
36:07These people who were kind of burned out, disgruntled,
36:10upset with Blizzard or WoW or those dumb designers on Team 2.
36:16But the show had to go on.
36:18And so recruiting became a big effort.
36:21It had to add a lot more people, a lot more equipment, a lot more things.
36:25Every department had to be scaled up to support that game.
36:28We went from about 250 people to over 2,000.
36:33We're having this team meeting, and everybody's looking at their feet.
36:38Everybody was down in the dumps, and we just felt like failures.
36:42And I remember the new guy going,
36:44Hey, I know I'm the new guy here,
36:48but what the f*** is wrong with you guys?
36:51You just made World of Warcraft.
36:54This is like the best game that anybody has ever played,
36:58and it's all anyone's playing right now,
37:01and you're acting like hurt puppies.
37:04Like, what is wrong with you?
37:06So they set out to make what was wrong with the game right.
37:10We had eight months' worth of bugs to fix.
37:13Tons and tons and tons of cleanup work,
37:16and it wasn't fun work to do.
37:18But had they patched things up with the players enough,
37:21and more importantly, would they like it?
37:24Personally for me, I've never made art or games for an audience.
37:28I always made it for myself, and if we liked it, the audience would.
37:32I think any creator is lying if they say that doesn't matter to them.
37:35It means everything to you if they like it or not.
37:38Blizzard eagerly watched as subscriber numbers grew.
37:41Millions of people played that game.
37:44The ghost of Alan has spoken.
37:46Millions of people, right?
37:49Even Alan himself was joining in on the fray.
37:52I played World of Warcraft every day from the outside,
37:55watching World of Warcraft just explode into this international phenomenon.
38:00You know, watching its success with pride, it was amazing.
38:04Three years later, in 2007, the first expansion was released.
38:09He's been standing here for like 13, 14 hours.
38:12I actually took the week off so I could sit there and play it all day
38:15and don't have to worry about working.
38:17Everybody managed to come in, hardcore players, mid-core players,
38:20and casual players, and have fun.
38:22It is everything to everyone.
38:24Even more amazing are the billions of dollars
38:27that World of Warcraft has pulled in since its release.
38:30John's prediction had come true.
38:32I think it's going to be around for 20 years.
38:35Well, we are 20 years later.
38:40Dragons!
38:42Oh my God, he just ran in.
38:44Acquired by Microsoft in 2022,
38:47Blizzard is no longer helmed by the original creators.
38:50And then I left at the end of 2018.
38:52But World of Warcraft is bigger than ever.
38:5520 years, new expansions are still coming out.
38:57Commercial on TV.
38:59What's your game?
39:02Cultural phenomenon.
39:04The Sword of Azeroth.
39:06This is what the last 97 hours have been about.
39:08Dad, not now!
39:10Just take it! Here!
39:12How do you hand something from one player to another?
39:15And now...
39:16Welcome to BlizzCon.
39:17Here's BlizzCon.
39:18It's a multi-day convention for thousands of fans to attend
39:21and celebrate all things Blizzard.
39:23And to think, it almost could have been synapse in silicon.
39:27Look how awesome that is.
39:29Oh, she looks so badass.
39:31And it's here that you realize
39:33the infinite world of Warcraft isn't just limited to the screen.
39:37There have been thousands, maybe even tens of thousands
39:40of marriages from people who met in World of Warcraft.
39:43I have been invited to several weddings.
39:45And they have kids, and their kids are named after
39:48some of the characters in World of Warcraft.
39:51Why is World of Warcraft so successful?
39:53There is one reason that comes to my mind.
39:56It's community.
39:58This woman came up to me, and she said,
40:00Well, I want to thank you, because if it wasn't for this game,
40:03I would never get to speak to my son.
40:05We live in a village, and we don't get to see each other very often,
40:08but every week we get to get together in the game,
40:11we get to spend time with my son.
40:13And so having an instance like that is a...
40:19I'm sorry, I'm getting emotional.
40:22It makes it a job more worthwhile.
40:29My whole identity was wrapped up in Blizzard and the idea of Blizzard.
40:33A lot of talented people working very hard to create those games,
40:37and I'm super proud of all of them.
40:40If there's one thing I wanted to say, just thank you.
40:44It's been a dream to think that a kid who likes playing video games
40:50could make a career out of making video games.
40:53It's just nuts.
40:55So, thank you.
40:58And to think, a company was formed
41:01and made a game so incredibly successful,
41:04all because of a harmless little prank in a computer lab
41:08and the pure coincidence of a shared password.
41:11Just three little lowercase letters that spelled...
41:14Joe.
41:17Blizzard had created a world that brought players together.
41:21To take your money.
41:22Gaming's next frontier...
41:23Build your own virtual world.
41:25Would be paved...
41:26Let them do whatever they want.
41:28By the players themselves.
41:30The impact of Minecraft's modding community was huge.
41:33Microsoft, they were afraid.
41:35Oh my god, I'm in so much trouble.