How World of Warcraft led to Glassdoor

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-world-of-warcraft-led-to-glassdoor-2015-5

by bmahmood • 11 years ago

72 57 11 years ago

david_shaw• 11 years ago

This is a pretty interesting story, and speaks to the oft-cited leadership and goal-pursuing qualities that playing a major MMO can foster.

On the other hand, like many others, I've also seen brilliant developers seriously stagnate their careers thanks to video game obsessions.

I got a kick out of this tidbit, too:

In fact, Glassdoor wouldn't even be around if it weren't for StarCraft's older, sister game, World of Warcraft, he tells us.

I think the journalist is either confusing WoW and Starcraft 2, or was talking about the Warcraft vs. Starcraft series in general.

personjerry3• 11 years ago

In that context, the word "StarCraft" referred to Starcraft 2, because the author had previously been talking about the playing of Starcraft 2.

Aardwolf• 11 years ago

I agree that this is bad quality.

The order of games was: WarCraft I, WarCraft II, StarCraft, WarCraft III, World of WarCraft, (... much later ...), StarCraft II

jmngomes• 11 years ago

I think the "confusion" stems from the fact that this article is basically at the same level of quality as any other by Business Insider, i.e. void of content and filled with the traditional hype/BS on "how to be a phenomenal founder", "what entrepreneurs do during their 60hr work day", "how to learn to code", "how to build a startup without learning to code", etc...

thirsteh• 11 years ago

Generally, there's a good chance that most of these kinds of "Wtf?" logic errors are on the part of the journalist, not the person being interviewed. In the U.S, journalists don't send drafts over for comments, and rarely change published material, so there's little opportunity to get misleading stuff corrected.

kendallpark• 11 years ago

Yeah. That line was like, WTF. I don't think anyone considers WoW the same game as Warcraft. I think the author meant Starcraft 2.

Scoundreller• 11 years ago

To this day he runs his 450-person startup... I guess reporting about non-startups just isn't cool anymore.

hueving2• 11 years ago

I think that's just the word for any company that doesn't seem to be sustainable in it's current form. (e.g. VC funding expecting an exit)

teddythetwig• 11 years ago

It took him a whole year to hit max level?

tomlock• 11 years ago

This is exactly what I thought immediately! Seems a bit long...

diminoten2• 11 years ago

When he was playing, it was a lot harder to level. That being said, I doubt the reporter got it quite right, or simplified it intentionally, wistfully thinking non-nerds would be reading the article.

smtucker• 11 years ago

On top of that in vanilla WoW people actually went through all the content in the game. People would complete most of the quests, go through the dungeons in your areas multiple times to get armor sets, and do PvP (open world and battlegrounds). It might take an hour or two to get together a group to do some of the less popular dungeons and Battlegrounds queue times could easily take upwards of 40 minutes. Open world PvP and ganking would almost always take a couple of hours as you had to sometimes infiltrate enemy territory to claim your victims.

Nowadays WoW feels more like a virtual lobby system for the dungeon finder/PvP queue rather than an actual MMORPG. No one really bothers to play the game as you would expect a traditional RPG to be played.

RafiqM• 11 years ago

I would guess that it was "max progression" rather than max level. So, maxing out your gear, completing all the available raid tiers or hitting top rank in PVP.

noinsight• 11 years ago

In Vanilla it took like at least 9 days or so of /played (so 9x 24 hours of actual played time) to reach the cap. I remember it took 12 days on one of my characters.

Luyt• 11 years ago

I started WoW in december 2005, and hit 60 in februari.

Also, when you reach max level, doesn't mean you finished the game. There is tons of instances to do, special loot to earn, and other stuff; even in 2006.

globuous• 11 years ago

I actually hear many many times that the game starts when you reach the top level ^^ I've unfortunately never played the game enough to confirm though

thret• 11 years ago

The full year/full time was possibly to complete Naxxramas? I assume with his money he was playing with similarly dedicated people. My guild did Molten Core but we never even set foot in Naxx. I assume that's where the full-timers were, getting Tier 1.

joopxiv• 11 years ago

I don't really get how WoW led to Glassdoor, just because he got a call the day after he hit 'max level'. Correlation does not imply causation.

smcl• 11 years ago

    At 22, I went to work at Microsoft. When I tell young people that today, they look as if they are embarrassed for me. And I have to tell them, 'No, no — it was like getting hired at Google back then, or Facebook. This was 1993.

Who on earth is reacting like this?

personjerry3• 11 years ago

Precisely what it says: young people.

Source: I'm majoring in CS in university right now, and most of my colleagues hold startups/Facebook/Google in high prestige, while older companies such as Amazon and Microsoft are often seen as second tier.

lorenzfx2• 11 years ago

Amazon was founded in 1994, Google in 1998. Do those four years really make the difference? I believe the reason for Google being hold in high prestige must lie somewhere else than being a 'young' company.

UmDieWelt• 11 years ago

I guess CS students can't be bothered to know anything about companies, because there's no rational way to rank companies the way you described.

hueving2• 11 years ago

I know it's glib, but young people. People that got into technology from mid 2000s and beyond just see Microsoft as a big fumbling giant.

I think the Zune and the botched attempt into the smartphone market are what come to mind when they think of things Microsoft Works on. Either that, or it's the image of the giant enterprise company that only innovates in the way it bundles licenses to the markets it has monopolies on.

I know it's unfair and judgemental, but it's even the way I unintentionally react when I hear about friends working there. I just envision mass paralysis around innovating on the products that make money, and no real weight given to new projects because the cash cows need to be tended to.

merb• 11 years ago

God, when I think back at Microsoft I could only think at Age of Empires and Age of Empires 2. God how often did I played the Age of Empires 1 Trial that were part of Windows 98..

morganvachon2• 11 years ago

You would be surprised at the number of Millennials and Digital Natives who only ever heard of Microsoft's fumbles in the past 20 years. For me (born in 1977) it was Apple who was the red-headed stepchild of the computer world when I was growing up; if you had a Mac in the 90s you were a know-nothing "luser" with a toy computer. Every generation has its heroes and villains, and for the current teen-to-twenties hipster crowd, Apple is king and Microsoft is lame. And I suppose GNU/Linux is that weirdly interesting know-it-all uncle your parents don't want you hanging out with.

sklivvz19712• 11 years ago

It takes about 3-6 months to level up to top level in WoW playing occasionally. I am very skeptical he "played for a year nonstop and then I hit the maximum level in WoW."

He goes on to say that "I was maniacal in chasing this goal and literally the next day I started a company, Glassdoor."

This are ridiculous statements for any WoW player. Leveling up is considered almost a "tutorial" to the "real" game that starts at top level, which is where everyone is at.

I can't see someone that was serious abot WoW making this statement, and it seems that he's either badly misquoted or he is not sincere.

yarou• 11 years ago

I think you're missing the point entirely. His one year experience of playing WoW was a learning experience that ended up shifting his worldview enough that he was able to start Glassdoor. Whether or not he was a hardcore player is an entirely different matter, and frankly, quite irrelevant.

lmartel3• 11 years ago

No, it's important as a source of credibility. Imagine an article about how a career in software inspired a CEO to start his company, and it quoted him as saying "I got tired of writing all those PHPs for Googer."

It's so far from what an actual domain expert would say that it's impossible to ignore.

sklivvz19712• 11 years ago

I am not missing the point. It doesn't take one to be a hardcore player to level up to max level. I am simply skeptical that he did that in a year. Hardcore players do it in days.

http://www.quora.com/How-many-hours-did-it-take-to-get-a-lev...

lmartel3• 11 years ago

Agreed, this jumped out at me as well. Charitably, he was giving the reporter a dumbed-down explanation, because he didn't want to explain what it means to "have raids on farm."

Misquote is also certainly possible, but if he actually said and meant "max level" then this story is 100% made up for Nerd Cred.

sshagent• 11 years ago

perhaps that one year was to reach top raider kind of level. probably a lot easier to summarise as max level than them letting us know what dungeons and raids he spent his time in.

Squarel3• 11 years ago

or to do the PvP etc. The ranks back then had decay on honor, so it was crazy to try keep on top of it.

Not to mention the dungeons took 3-4h to do at 60, and then the once a week raids which took 4h+ each to do.

Squarel3• 11 years ago

I played 6 months just after launch, and got to level 40. I was playing 8h per day.

this is one of my first characters in WoW

First Seen Dec 01, 05 (from Warcraft Realms info)

https://i.imgur.com/rNbHQmW.jpg

So, yes, it can take a while to level

danielsamuels2• 11 years ago

Not any more though, you can easily go from 0-100 in a single digit number of days now.

fmavituna• 11 years ago

Later on the article it reads

  So the day after achieving the highest score in WoW

So I suppose the initial sentence of "highest level" is not correct. I guess they are talking about "Server Rankings" - i.e. http://www.wowprogress.com/realms/rank/us

Which is very hard (apparently) to accomplish and I think they get reset now and then. There are other key achievements in WoW such as being the first guild to kill a boss etc.

So I think he was actually ranked #1 in the server, that's what "highest score" refers and that can take months.

I don't know much about WoW but I have a friend who still brags about his #1 in a WoW server 5 years ago :), so it's a big deal.

danielsamuels2• 11 years ago

Which is very hard (apparently) to accomplish and I think they get reset now and then. There are other key achievements in WoW such as being the first guild to kill a boss etc.

These are the same thing. When a new raiding tier is released the rankings become relevant to that tier, so the first guild to kill the final boss on the hardest level of difficulty (currently Mythic) becomes the world first guild.

Lancey• 11 years ago

Keep in mind the author's research into video games in general was probably only skin deep. Statements like saying World of Warcraft is older than Starcraft indicate that they probably paraphrased a lot of the vidya discussion.

longlivegnu• 11 years ago

Well the Warcraft Franchise is older IIRC

MagicWishMonkey• 11 years ago

There's a big difference between what WoW was in the beginning (presumably when this guy played) and what it turned into over the following decade. I played 8-10 hours daily for the first 2 months after release and I only reached level 30 before realizing I needed to kill my sub (too much of a time sink).

gbrhaz• 11 years ago

I imagine it was to reach Rank 14 in PvP rather than to hit the level cap. Even at the very start of the game, it took only 11-15 days in-game time to reach level 60.

lectrick2• 11 years ago

This is simply not true. Vanilla WoW leveling was extremely slow. My nelf hunter took almost a year to get to 60, and I was an avid player. There's other commenters here saying similar things, so it's not just my possibly-faulty memory.

jlees• 11 years ago

I agree that it's likely the PvP rank. I could definitely see that taking a year or longer. Although plain old level 60 is still plausible - while it only took 11-15 days to level 60 if you knew what you were doing, a lot of us took longer than that because we took a roundabout route, whether out of fun or ignorance -- or leveled multiple characters before picking one, or maximized our tradeskills while leveling as seemed logical initially, etc.

outworlder• 11 years ago

Badly misquoted, probably.

Also, I find it doubtful that one would play WoW for a year with only one class. So it is likely he got max levels in many classes, then went raiding to get gear and stuff like that.

lectrick2• 11 years ago

http://i.imgur.com/rFDX0O9.jpg

Seriously though, at launch, leveling was 100x slower than it is now. Took me at least 6 months (I think... thereabouts) to get to 60, and I played avidly (although I also had a fulltime job).

Also, the author clearly didn't understand blizzard games, or how MMORPG gaming works in general... relevant quotes:

"In fact, Glassdoor wouldn't even be around if it weren't for StarCraft's older, sister game, World of Warcraft, he tells us." (seriously?)

"achieving the highest score in WoW"

arkem• 11 years ago

My first level 60 (in classic) took me about 20 days played (call it 500 hours). Other people were reporting that 16-17 days was typical and 12 days was about how long a concerted leveling effort would take.

If he really took a year off to play WoW I'd expect that he'd hit max level in the first 3 months (at 6 hours/day). So I assume that they're talking about raid progression or perhaps the original PVP battleground ranks.

My inclination is to believe that the story got somewhat mangled by the journalist who wasn't very familiar with gaming or at least not Blizzard's games.

Retric• 11 years ago

In vanilla wow some people hit the level cap (60) within 2 weeks and ~200 hours played. However, for a normal player it was generally 1-2 months on a single character assuming they focused on leveling and significantly longer if they worked on trade skills etc.

paulornothing• 11 years ago

I think you are coming from the perspective of someone who knows the game pretty well. To the uninitiated I could see it taking a year. I remember when I first started (when the cap was 60) and it seemed to take forever for me to get there. Mostly because I went to different areas and explored, didn't level the most efficient way etc.

lorenzfx2• 11 years ago

StarCraft's older, sister game, World of Warcraft

That's not the way I remember it (unless you make that StarCraft II).

Small errors like this always make me wonder how thorough the writer was with the rest of the article.

TorKlingberg• 11 years ago

Of course it meant StarCraft II. Just the sentence before he says he is currently playing StarCraft with his sons, so it's unlikely to be the original.

DanielBMarkham• 11 years ago

This is a nice PR piece for a company that looks like its innovating in a business space where a lot of dollars change hands. I'm not going to pile on with the worrying over WoW details. I thought the reporter did a good job. Well done.

Having said that, from a startup business analysis point of view, is it just me or is everybody and their brother trying to get into the technology jobs sector? Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of room for innovation and somebody is going to make a killing here. Godspeed, guys. But geesh. With so many players and so many moving pieces, sure looks like a tough row to hoe.

How World of Warcraft led to Glassdoor

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