Case Study: WoW Warlords of Draenor Launch - Risk Management

Warlords of Draenor Launch

ALISON RIITH

IS 520

12-2-14

Agenda Background – Blizzard, World of Warcraft Warlords of Draenor Expansion Launch

◦ Server Problems & DDoS Attack

Blizzard’s Response & Impact Project Management Knowledge Area

◦ Risk Management

Background

ActivisionBlizzard, Inc.:◦ Activision – Call of Duty, Skylanders, Crash Bandicoot, Guitar Hero◦ Blizzard Entertainment Inc. - Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo◦ Sierra Entertainment

World of Warcraft MMORPG – Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game 10 million subscribers (November 2014) 100 million accounts have been created over the game’s lifetime (January 2014)

Gross revenue over $10B as of July 2012 Launched in 2004; 5 expansion sets to date

Warlords of Draenor

“They’ve left their mark on New York City. Azeroth is next… #Warlords”

Highly anticipated:◦ 3.3 million copies sold within first

24 hours◦ Subscriber base jumped from 7.4M to

10M◦ Free level 90 character boost◦ Garrisons◦ New zone, content, quests, raids,

gear, etc.◦ Character remodels10th anniversary celebration:

Looking for Group Documentary

Official Launch Day DDoS Attack – Distributed Denial of Service

◦ Hit European Servers first then North America, problems lasted for 3 days

◦ Attackers flood the target with so many external communication requests that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic

◦ Results in the service being unavailable◦ Used to “silence websites” or disrupt online operations

RESULT:Players unable to log in; unusually high queues (4+ hours),

connectivity problems, disconnections , lag, poor performance

Source

Recent DDoS Attacks & Threats

Average of 28 DDoS attacks per hour August 2014 – DDoS attack targeted gaming services; bomb threat against Sony President◦ Battle.net – Hearthstone, Diablo III, World of Warcraft◦ Sony Online Entertainment◦ XBOX Live◦ League of Legends◦ Path of Exile◦ “Lizard Squad” group claimed credit

Communication with Customers

Blizzard immediately acknowledged the problem Communicated this to customers through Twitter, Official Forums through designated community manager, Bashiok

Continued to provide status updates as engineers took servers offline, applied fixes, restarted servers, etc.

Blizzard’s Response Official Apology from J. Allen Brack, Executive Producer & Vice President:

"we've expanded the new instancing tech we used to improve queues on Saturday and we're continuing the process of applying that to raise the capacity of all realms again. This will result in approximately double the prelaunch capacity on each realm, which should greatly reduce queue

times for most realms if not eliminate queues altogether.“

Added 5 days of extra play time to every subscription active in the Americas, Oceania, and Europe (as of November 14, 2014).

This alone is may cost as much as $24.6M

Project ManagementKnowledge Area

Risk Management “Project risk is an uncertain event or condition, that if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on one or more project objectives such as scope, schedule, cost and quality.” –PMBOK Guide, 5th Ed.

Avoid ◦ Eliminate the threat or protect the project from its impact

Transfer◦ Transfer impact to a 3rd party (insurance, warranty, guarantee, etc.)

Mitigate◦ Reduce the probability or occurrence of a risk◦ Take early action to reduce impact of risk

Accept◦ Team acknowledges the risk but does not take any action unless the risk occurs. ◦ Used when it is not possible or cost-effective to address the risk in any other way

Strategies for Negative Risks

Sources http://www.activisionblizzard.com/about-us http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=883961 http://wow.joystiq.com/2014/11/13/blizzard-confirms-world-of-warcraft-target-of-ddos-attack/?cps=gravity

https://twitter.com/Warcraft/status/532164490293293056/photo/1 http://wow.joystiq.com/2014/08/25/world-of-warcraft-suffers-ddos-attack-bomb-threat-issued-to-soe/

http://www.pcgamer.com/battle-net-stabilizes-after-ddos-attack-but-lizard-squad-hackers-remain-active/

http://www.gamezone.com/originals/top-10-reasons-to-play-world-of-warcraft-warlords-of-draenor-jr9g

http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2014/07/03/activision-confident-with-skylanders-franchise-despite-tough-competition/

http://www.eweek.com/security/slideshows/ddos-attack-volume-escalates-as-new-methods-emerge.html

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/15269759060?utm_source=External-Twitter&utm_medium=Posting&utm_campaign=BlizzardCS&utm_content=solution

http://www.cnet.com/news/playstation-network-battle-net-go-down-under-ddos/

PMBOK Guide, 5th Edition

Sources: Images Warlords of Draenor logo

ActivisionBlizzard logo

Guitar Hero logo

Starcraft 2 logo

World of Warcraft logo

Call of Duty logo

Diablo III logo

Blizzard logo

World of Warcraft Logo & Map

Burning Crusade Box Image

Wrath of the Lich King Box Image

Cataclysm Box Image

Mists of Pandaria Box Image

Warlords of Draenor Box Image

Warcraft Taxi Image Times Square

Norse DDoS Attack Map Image (Original: http://map.ipviking.com/)

Warlords of Draenor Launch Update (Original: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/15271097043?page=166#3310)

Blizzard Entertainment (Original: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/15271097043#1 )