How World of Warcraft led to Glassdoor | Hacker News Reader

How World of Warcraft led to Glassdoor

businessinsider.com

72 pointsbmahmood57 comments

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.

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.

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.

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...

Keep in mind this was in 2006, before the first expansion pack, when it was a more balanced game from level 1 to level 60. I started playing in 2005, and it took me the better part of a year to hit 60 with my main.

There are other factors to consider as well; as someone else said, it could be about server ranking. It could also be about "completing" the end game by defeating all of the instances and dominating the arenas on his server. Considering there is no way to truly "beat" WoW, as the end game changes with every new expansion, I'd say he set a goal for himself and accomplished that goal, and was ready to move on to the next (real world) challenge. I certainly grew bored with the game after spending my second year playing the same instances over and over.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The article references 2006 - that was Vanilla time.

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.

> 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.

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.

Well the Warcraft Franchise is older IIRC

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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...

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.

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.

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

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)

    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?

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.

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.

I think Amazon and Microsoft are also known as being bureaucratic-heavy companies, another big factor against being a good place to work as a software engineer (at least this is the impression we have been given).

You're right, it's about more abstract prestige. I'm also a current CS student, and among my peers working for Google is "cooler" than working for Twitter, even though the latter is much younger.

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.

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.

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..

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

It took him a whole year to hit max level?

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

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.

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.

>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.

Thanks, I will use this description in the future. It definitely describes how I feel about most of MMORPGs I checked out lately.

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.

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.

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.

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

This is absolutely true

It depends on what you do, and what you want from the game.

For me, I like levelling, so, once I have levelled, and got geared up (which is incredibly fast these days), it is onto the next alt.

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.

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