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*shake fist* Time to go get myself into video game journalism I suppose. The WoW monitor is cool. I'd love to get something like that up in my room as a piece of decoration and just watch it quietly brighten and dim. | |
OH MY GOD THEY HAVE ARCANUM! I've looked everywhere for that game! I was gonna try getting a job at Rebellion, but I might have to send my portfolio off to Blizzard... | |
Extremely cool (looking at least) place | |
I remember a while back a guy I work with sent some of us pictures of the Google offices. They have fire poles and slides into the cafeteria. My life is not complete until I work somewhere that doesn't make work fun, they make days off boring. | |
GIEEFFFF. that is the most awesome HQ ever. | |
Next time you go can I tag along....please? | |
A single tear streams down my face. They're not playing Diablo. : ( | |
I cried tears of effulgent awesome. | |
I jsut came, had a heartattacked, and fainted with sheer fan boy joy.............all at the same time! : D | |
Hmmmm...here I was thinking Blizzard was a soulless company comprised of very tall men in black buisness suits with their arms constantly crossed and their heads hidden by shadows, and they rarely throw a bone at their fans. Seriously, I was thinking that. But now, I have a new found respect for this company. They have souls! That shinobi drawing on the second white board was AWESOME But if I had any doubts of going into the games industry, I think they've just been taken out back and pummeled to death. | |
I want to go there.. now... | |
I'm mildly disappointed that they don't have an in office gym (at least not apparent from pictures). Anyone know if they do have one? :P | |
They sure do. | |
This HQ is made of awesomeness... | |
I love Blizzard. | |
Win. On so many levels. Lifting weights is like the best stress relief ever. | |
So. Fucking. Cool. STAY IN SCHOOL! | |
You know what, a thought just occurred to me; Blizzard is all fine and dandy, but where's the guided tour of the escapist offices? I'm talking like guided tour and door to door walk through. Cemmon guys! :P | |
Their campus looks awesome, but I'm still looking at mini-bioware (obsidian). | |
I love how a shot from that South Park episode managed to make it into this list, and... ... ...chesssss....I wonder if the employees of Blizzard are any good? | |
FUCK YEAH THEY HAVE TACHYON THE FRINGE! (and so much...so much games I thought no one bought, like Anarchy Online...) I mean, uh, that art's pretty sweet. (Really though, everything about all of this was awesome, the SC2 lan, the WoW monitor is something I'm glad they keep track of, and yeah.) But thank god they have Puerto Rico and Nexus Ops while designing the starcraft board game! (Granted I've noticed EXTREME SIMILARITIES in it and Nexus Ops, but whatever.. ;P) | |
I... I want work there! | |
Must...become...Blizzard...employee...NOW!!!!!!!! | |
Sigh. I'm old enough to remember when all GameStops looked just like the "libraries" at Blizzard. | |
Eh, thats like 10 minutes from here. Google has offices down the street here too...theres are better. Plus they have that cafe/bar thing where you can go drinking with google execs. | |
Sounds like a definate haven for my fellow nerds. Truthfully though it doesn't impress me that much price wise, with the amount of money they make I was expecting something that would get them kicked off MTV's "Cribs" for being too ridiculously opulant. Of course this is the office, not the personal homes. Generally speaking given the amount of money they make, I am not going to be convinced that they don't have private jets with swimming pools, mink toilet seat covers, and solid gold Murloc idols with ruby eyes, full of expensive vintage- German style clockworks that make them perform their trademark murgling noise when people walk by.... The toilet seat covers and murloc idols might be in the executive washroom. - Oh and one last thing, are we SURE those are Blizzard's offices? Despite poking fun, I am a fan, and like all fans I know they en-masse suffer one paticular sexual dysfunction: Fecophillia. As ANYONE who plays WoW can tell you, the game is full of things to get characters to dig around in, play with, and otherwise handle poop. There is even one quest where you eat some nuts, and then have to go and find a way to get yourself to poop them back out, only to learn that this happens routinely and someone apparently pooped them out before YOU did. Creating a cycle that could ultimatly involve all the characters in the game and thus getting us to indulge in their ultimate fecophille fantasy. So really, I'd expect plastic (or is it?) poo on the desks, and scat referances all over the place. Not to mention detailed, loving, planning on the next time they plan to squeeze some more "fun with #2" into their game. Okay, okay, I'm still poking fun, but come on people.... everyone who plays WoW knows this. It's discussed periodically in mass chat channels. Does this really seem like the offices of the company that makes millions and millions of dollars and gave everyone a pet bunny that poops out eggs? :P >>>----Therumancer---> | |
Well, sort of. Back when I started gaming and such it was mostly companies like "Software Etc." (run by the now defunct B.Dalton) that had that kind of a motif. So did many Electronic Boutique stores. It alwasy seemed to me (locally) that Gamestop always favored their current display method, whenever they entered the scene (they were latecomers locally). It seemed the spine displays and such began to die out when 5 1/4" discs were truely dying to be replaced by the 3.5" format. It's also noteworthy that it was about this time that they also began to pack games with far less in the way of materials. I remember a time when you'd buy a game like "Ultima 4" which would absolutly bulge with components. When that kind of thing started to die I noticed the way games were displayed also changed. [shrugs] Nothing important I guess. Strangely, as much as I like their work, Blizzard to a great extent represents a lot of what I think is wrong with the current gaming industry compared to the one of yesterday. They aren't the worst of the bunch by a long shot, but well.... I don't know, I think an industry loses something when people start to build offices like that. | |
Oh my God. I'm sure most of you who've seen me post often know that I want to work in Level Design - I have now decided that I want to work specifically at Blizzard, in California. This surprises me too because I was adamant on staying with one of the major UK companies in London or perhaps Leeds, where I'm now studying, but if this is the sort of thing Blizzard have got over in CA then I'm sure as hell going to try and emigrate (not that there isn't already reason to leave the UK, take a look at our government). It's enough to make me want to start playing WoW and Starcraft, things I swore I'd never do (mainly since aside from FF XI, MMOs have never interested me much). Blizzard, make damn sure you have a job opening for Level Designers in your CA office within the next three years, as soon as I graduate I'm coming for you! :D | |
actually a better reason for why europe and america are bright glowing masses while china, korea, and japan are basically unlit is because of what time that photo was taken, about 2:00PM EST, that mass of glow creaps its way across the map once every 24 hours. | |
would you rather they have to buy the local landfill for the cash? or pay people to build things for them, thus returning the money to the economy. Blizzard may need front end loaders for the money, but they at least spend it, unlike NCsoft, those greedy bastards who cant even spend enough money for an honest PR department | |
....so awsome.... i'm struck speechless..... new... dream... job.... *falls over drooling* | |
Y'know what's awesome? On the WoW status board, I know at least two people in Australia that play the game, and considering the general LACK of lights, they're two of the very few playing. | |
Well, consider the statement above - that was taken during the afternoon in US time. Which means it was late, late night / early morning in Australia. | |
There are people that play WoW that long. | |
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Extra Punctuation
Experienced Points
MovieBob: Intermission
First Person
Loading Time
Miracle of Sound: Encore
Hexproof
Ask Dr Mark
Backchat
Drinking Games
Escape to the Movies
Escapecraft
Escapist Podcast
Feed Dump
GinxTV
Jimquisition
LoadingReadyRun
Meatbag and Co
Media Sandwich
Miracle of Sound
No Right Answer
Pro-Gamer Gauntlet
Reviews
Tales from the Table
The Big Picture
The Escapist Presents
Trailers
Unskippable
Zero Punctuation
King Arthur II Review
The Darkness II Review
Reckoning Review
Exodus Review
Final Fantasy XIII-2 Review
Scarygirl Review
Critical Miss
Name Game
A 100+ Photo Look at Blizzard's Awesome Offices
The Irvine, CA campus where the various Blizzard teams work on Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo is pretty much Nerd Heaven - and here are more than a hundred photos from behind its gates.
Now I'm actually pretty lucky, myself. I've been to Blizzard - twice, no less! - but let's be honest with ourselves: The company is pretty darn secretive. It's a shame, too, because both times I've been behind those big white gates, I've found myself thinking, "Geez, this place is freaking awesome."
From the doodles on the whiteboards (with nerd references aplenty) and the massive library of books and games, to the museum filled with memorabilia of its various games and the statues of the characters within ... Blizzard's HQ is nerd heaven. Entertainment Web has a compilation of over 100 photographs from around the Internet of what the Blizzard offices look like, and they're a fun little peek at what goes on behind the doors of a giant PC developer. (So that's what's taking them so long to make Diablo III)
Some of the more notable things: the art gallery, the game library, anything written on the whiteboards, and of course the WoW Status Monitor, which shows where people are connecting to the game from all over the world (this was obviously taken during its hiatus in China).
I don't want to think about what this sort of place costs, but it's not like there isn't a healthy revenue stream there. Not that the The Escapist's offices aren't awesome or anything, but if I worked in a place like this, I might never get anything done. And then I would get fired. And I would be sad.
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