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Imagine it’s the night before patch day. You’ve parked your level-70 character, decked out in epic gear, outside what will soon be the forest ruins of Zul’Aman. Right now, it’s just rocky pavilion with huge, wooden gates you can’t open. But tomorrow, it will become the entrance to a dungeon full of trolls. You and nine of your friends hope to be the first players on your server to go inside.

©2006 Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. The Burning Crusade is a trademark, and World of Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. The gate to Zul’Aman, before the instance existed in World of Warcraft.

It’s a risky proposition — and not just because Zul’Aman is full of enemies that are far more powerful than you are. Zul’Aman is an addition to the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) “World of Warcraft,” or WoW. As anyone who plays the game can tell you, making additions or changes to such an immense, dynamic world can cause some problems. On patch day, players often experience everything from server instability to problems with their user interface (UI) and addons. Players did get into Zul’Aman the day its patch went live, but only after the servers were down for hours of extended maintenance.

Patch-day technical difficulties and the joy of exploring a new dungeon both come from the same basic source — the enormous collision of people and data. The game worlds of Azeroth and Outland include 50 regions spread out across three continents. Each region has its own landscape and inhabitants — both friendly and unfriendly — and sometimes its own weather. Then there are representations of players’ characters and everything they wear, carry and use. You can boil all of this down to ones and zeros stored on computer hard drives.

Players interact with all this data using their computers and an Internet connection. The players’ computers store some of the data, and a remote server provides the rest. As one player interacts with the world, the world changes for other players — the movement of data back and forth between the computer and the server allows this to happen.

Multiply this information by the thousands of players who can log on to a particular server at the same time, and the amount of traveling data becomes staggering. All the people playing the game also have the potential to make unpredictable decisions, making the exact interactions between players and the game hard to predict. When you think about the game in terms of so much traveling data, it’s not surprising that patches and updates can have far-reaching effects.

In this article, we’ll look at what it takes for data to become an interactive, persistent game world. We’ll also explore the game’s architecture and the people it takes to keep the game running. We’ll begin with the human factor — the people who play “World of Warcraft” and why they play it.

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I’d love to work for one of the companies that thinks up ads for TV. I imagine them all sitting at a big round table deciding what kind of campaign to go with. They talk about the brand, and brainstorm a bit, trying to think of something clever but direct, debating the merits of each approach. But somewhere at the back of their minds, everyone at that table is thinking “Or… we could just use Shatner!”

And so Blizzard have played the Shatner card as part of their latest advertising campaign for World of Warcraft.

Following in Shatner’s footsteps on the slippery slope of embarrassing self-parody is Mr. “Snickers: Get some Nuts!” T.

Blizzard missed out on the grand slam, because they were unable to land Chuck Norris for this campaign, allegedly because he already beat the game. Either that or he’s too busy endorsing Mike Huckabee and making ads for Mountain Dew:

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A week jam-packed with Nintendo news was overshadowed today by an announcement that sent shockwaves through the North American game industry. Thursday afternoon, top publisher Electronic Arts announced that it will acquire VG Holding Corp., owner of BioWare/Pandemic.

VG Holding Corp. was formed in late 2005 when esteemed Canadian role-playing game studio BioWare formed the aforementioned “superdeveloper” with Californian shop Pandemic Studios. The union was funded by Elevation Partners, a venture capital firm with rock star Bono on its board, and brokered by then-Elevation board member John Riccitiello, who became BioWare/Pandemic’s CEO.

At the time, the deal was seen as a break from the traditional developer-publisher relationship, which sees the former beholden to the latter for funding. However, when Riccitiello returned to his old job as EA CEO, many wondered if the move might presage a takeover bid of BioWare/Pandemic. These suspicions were further raised when EA agreed to distribute the Pandemic shooter Mercenaries 2: World in Flames under its EA Partners program.

When the BioWare/Pandemic deal was announced, Elevation made much of the fact the union represented a “combined investment” of more than $300 million, including future funding. Today, the company got a massive return on said investment, with EA paying $620 million in cash to the stockholders of VG Holding Corp. In addition, the publisher will issue an additional $155 million in equity to unidentified VG Holding employees, as well as assume $50 million in outstanding VG stock options, and will lend VG $35 million to fund the transition.

In return for paying a princely sum, EA becomes the owner of both BioWare’s and Pandemic’s original properties. Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age are among BioWare’s original IP, which does not include such licensed hits as the Dungeons and Dragons-based Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, or the DS Sonic RPG. BioWare is also working on an unnamed massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Pandemic is best known for the Full Spectrum Warrior and Mercenaries series, as well as the THQ-owned Destroy All Humans! and LucasArts-owned Star Wars: Battlefront franchises.

However, EA was relatively cagey about which BioWare/Pandemic games will become EA properties. The announcement only mentioned one BioWare (Mass Effect) and two Pandemic games (Saboteur, Mercenaries) by name. However, it did say the two studios have “10 franchises under development, including six wholly owned games.”

Pending regulatory approval, EA’s takeover of BioWare/Pandemic will be final on January 2008. Both studios will become part of the EA Games division, run by Frank Gibeau, with Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka continuing to run BioWare, and Andrew Goldman, Josh Resnick, and Greg Borrud staying in charge of Pandemic. The two studios employ 800 people in Los Angeles; Austin; Edmonton; and Brisbane, Australia.

[UPDATE] In a conference call with analysts after the announcement, EA executives shed some light on the motivation behind the deal. Besides the impeccable pedigree of both studios, Riccitiello said that the “acquisition fills out a gap in [EA’s] genre lineup,” specifically the role-playing and action adventure markets. The executive also cited BioWare’s forthcoming MMORPG as a huge opportunity for “further expansion into the MMO space.”

Although the implication is that the BioWare MMORPG is an original IP, Riccitiello and his associates steered clear of saying so specifically. He did say that the deal will make EA the owner of the Mass Effect, Jade Empire, Mercenaries, Full Spectrum Warrior, and Saboteur properties. The executive also said that EA “expect[s] to bring 10 franchises to market in the next few years; six of which are wholly owned.” [UPDATE 2] No mention was made of Dragon Age but BioWare reps confirmed with GameSpot that the little-seen title is moving forward in development, and is already in playable form.

Later, Gibeau said that number includes “many titles that have not yet been announced that we will be announcing in the near future.” These include “several unannounced titles that are targeted both at the Wii and DS.” The two studios’ combined operations are expected to yield around four or five games each year for the next three fiscal years.

On the financial side, EA CFO Warren Jenson said that that he expects games from the two studios to generate over $300 million in annual income during EA’s 2009 and 2010 fiscal years. (EA’s 2009 fiscal year begins on April 1, 2008.) He later said that number would increase once the BioWare MMORPG launches “in the back half” of that period.

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While Virtua Fighter was one of the very first 3D fighting games when it debuted in 1993, it has been one of the last big brawling series to take the plunge into online gaming. The long wait for Virtua fans is almost over, as today Sega announced that the game has gone gold, and is on track to meet its October 30 launch date.

Originally released earlier this year on the PlayStation 3, Virtua Fighter 5 features 17 fighters–two of them new to the series–as well as the ability to customize characters with new items purchased with in-game prize money. In addition to online play, the Xbox 360 version of the game features leaderboards and the ability to download matches from the top fighters so would-be contenders can study their fighting styles. Players will also be able to purchase downloadable Virtua Fighter 5 content through the Xbox Live Marketplace.

For more on Virtua Fighter 5, check out GameSpot’s previous coverage.

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