Since we last spoke, World of Warcraft has been launched around the world; how has the performance of the game compared to your expectations?

Paul Sams: You know, it's far surpassed our expectations, to be candid. We... We had high hopes, I guess. However, the numbers that we've seen, especially in Europe, have been really really staggering. When we decided we were going to open an office in Europe specifically dedicated to Blizzard and World of Warcraft, there were points of nervousness about that. Obviously, when we looked at the market at the time, MMOs had not really taken over.

We really believed in the market - the European market has been incredibly strong for us historically with our PC boxed products, and we really believed that the gamers there were ready. We believed that gamers there would respond well if a good game came to them that really tied well with what their preferences and their game experience preferences were, and if we properly supported them in Europe. So, in doing that, yeah we were nervous, but I think so far the results have really shown us that it was the right decision. It's been a great success.

What kind of numbers has World of Warcraft actually done worldwide now?

Well, we have in excess of a million and a half paying subscribers - it's been going really, really well. We're basically in three territories at this point - we're in North America, we're in Europe and we're in Korea. We're in an open beta phase in China [Editor's Note: The commercial release took place in China earlier this week] and the Chinese open beta phase is going gangbusters. We've basically been in open beta for a couple of weeks and we have concurrency of over half a million, and six figure queues. So there's a staggering number of players in China that are wanting to play, that are enjoying it quite a bit.

Each of the other markets have been going really well for us. We're number one in North America, we're number one in Europe, and in Korea we kind of move back and forth between number two and three. We expect for that to continue to go up - that's probably the most competitive market in the world for these types of games. In China, from a concurrency perspective in open beta, we've broken all records in Chinese history for these types of games, so we're quite excited.

I think the last time we spoke, we talked about a theme of being concerned and somewhat fearful of what we were facing... I think that continues, because China is going to be quite huge for us, and I think we've got Taiwan following soon after. Taiwan is a major market for this type of product as well.

So there's a lot to do, not only for future stuff but also for our current markets. We have to continue to maintain them and focus on them, and give them the level of attention that they deserve, and not lose sight of that while we're trying to bring on new markets. There's a lot to do, we're stretched very thin; however, it's exciting! We're having fun, and it's one of those things where I look at it, and any time I get frustrated or down because of the amount of stuff that we're doing, I tell myself that it's a high-class problem, and push through! [laughs]

Too many customers is a good problem to have.

Yeah, it really is. It really is.

I think we've created a great game, one that personally I like playing better than the other MMORPGs out there, but from a service perspective we have more work to do and I think that we'll get there. It's a commitment from our management that we intend on providing best of class service as well. It's just something that's taking a bit more time than we anticipated because... Well, trying to service that many people is hard!

six figure queues.

That is all.

six figures = 100,000+...

It takes 30 minutes to get through a queue with a few hundred people in it in my experience.

100,000+ means trying to log in for DAYS so I'm guessing people aren't logging out at all so as to avoid the queue which should point out a fairly serious self-feeding problem.

Or you may just be a fanbois and think six figure queues are all fine and dandy and not a problem of the first magnitude. YMMV.

Or you may just be a fanbois and think six figure queues are all fine and dandy and not a problem of the first magnitude. YMMV.

Or you may just be a fanbois and think six figure queues are all fine and dandy and not a problem of the first magnitude. YMMV.

The first two data centers in China, hosting close to 100 servers, were
full in just a few hours after launching in the early morning of April 26.
During peak times, the All-access Open Beta was so popular that queuing
players on each server reached 2000. Three days later, Blizzard and The9
opened a third data center. In less than one hour, all of these new servers
were full to capacity as well. The overwhelming appeal of World of Warcraft
has shocked the whole of China by exciting millions of Chinese players in just
a few days.

Are you unclear on what beta testing is?

God I hope you're being sarcastic. How many times has it been now that the game in open beta was identical to the game at launch?

OH YEAH, EVERY FUCKING TIME.

God I hope you're being sarcastic. How many times has it been now that the game in open beta was identical to the game at launch?

OH YEAH, EVERY FUCKING TIME.

There is no magical debug code that will suddenly make the server queues go away when they flip the launch button.

Like I said your looking at login times in terms of days here. How can that not be seen as a problem?