GDC Austin: WoW needs 20K systems and over 4600 staffers to stay up

By Stephany Nunneley

During a keynote delivered at GDC Austin, Blizzard’s J. Allen Brack and Frank Pearce dropped some numbers regarding what it takes on a daily basis to keep World of Warcraft running.

The game needs 20,000 computer systems, 13,250 server blades, 75,000 CPU cores, 1.3 petabytes of storage, and over 4600 staffers to keep it going.

“Operating an online game is about more than just game development,” said Pearce. “World of Warcraft has completely changed the organization”.

And then some – the game has 7,650 quests, 70,000 spells, 40,000 NPCs, 1.5 million assets, and 5.5 million lines of code.

For more astonishing numbers, Gamasutra has the full thing, and and so does Gamespot.