"Massively multiplayer online worlds (e.g., EverQuest or SecondLife) constitute a new form of social life that is ripe for social scientific study. Inhabitants of persistent virtual environments spend on average more than twenty hours per week logged on."

"I've spent much of the last year collecting and helping to analyze data scraped from World of Warcraft as part of the largest quantitative study of virtual worlds to date."

"It's not going to be news to anyone who follows this page, but World of Warcraft has of course already spawned an active external market. What's different is that Blizzard, the developer, has announced [text below] that it will attempt to shut the thing down."

"During the past year, nearly 16,000 people have downloaded a 40-page economic analysis of EverQuest, Sony's popular online fantasy world of Norrath. "Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier," by California State Fullerton economics professor Edward Castronova, is the No. 1 article in the history of the Economics Research Network, an Internet library of tens of thousands of professional journals and research papers in economics."

"No one at Blizzard ever expected World of Warcraft to become the phenomenon it has, according to Bill Roper.\n\nI remember a meeting at Blizzard where we were hoping we'd be able to sell a million copies of the game", Roper, former Blizzard North employee and now Flagship Studios CEO, has told CVG in an interview."

"On Tuesday, Blizzard Entertainment, a leading game developer, hopes to reverse that trend as it plans to announces a deal with Legendary Pictures, a major Warner Brothers affiliate, to make a big-budget "Lord of the Rings"-style live-action film based on Blizzard's wildly popular Warcraft series."

"Last week, during the midnight launch of the "World of Warcraft" expansion "Wrath of the Lich King," I spoke with Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime. We talked about the business model of Blizzard and "World of Warcraft," and what we can expect next."

"When interviewing and talking with Production Director J. Allen Brack about the upcoming additions to World of Warcraft there were a lot of ideas that look great for the game. The MMO market is changing and WoW is set to change with it."

"We quiz Producer Mark Kern to learn the very latest on Blizzard's persistent state title, its biggest project ever."

"World of Warcraft Lead Designer Jeffrey Kaplan talks to us today about the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion in this new WarCry Q&A. Jason Rice finds out about raids, story, reputation and more."

"Blizzard can also be publicity shy at times - which is why Gamasutra was fortunate to catch up with Senior Vice President Frank Pearce, one of the three founders of the original Blizzard (then called Silicon & Synapse) in 1991."

"Executive vice-president of product development Frank Pearce talks WoW 2, StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3."

"Austin GDC 2009: Frank Pearce explains what it takes to craft 7,650 quests, 70,000 spells, 40,000 NPCs, 1.5 million assets, and 5.5 million lines of code; some 4,000 employees, 13,250 server blades, and 75,000 CPU cores keep MMORPG running."

"we spoke to producer Shane Dabiri about the reaction to the game in the USA and Blizzard's plans for keeping up momentum"

"During this year's Games Convention GamesIndustry.biz was fortunate enough to be able to spend some time with Frank Pearce, now senior VP at Blizzard, to talk about the progress of Starcraft II, working with online communities, the lessons learned from World of Warcraft's success, and how to keep secrets."

"Interview session with Blizzard's Frank Pearce, co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, about WoW, Starcraft, Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2."

"Jeffrey Kaplan: I think World of Warcraft has captured much of our original vision for the game. Like all Blizzard games, we wanted something that was easy to learn, yet hard to master. The demographics of our player base are proof that we succeeded in accomplishing this goal. We have some very dedicated, skilled, hardcore MMO veterans logging in nightly. Yet at the same time, there are thousands of players who have never played an MMO who are playing right there alongside of the vets."

"We would like to invite those with inspirational personal stories to share them for consideration in our new series. We want to hear about the positive impact World of Warcraft has had on you and your life."

"The quality and the popularity of World of Warcraft has propelled MMORPGs from a subculture into the mainstream; some call it the new golf. But it's more than that: World of Warcraft is millions of people with diverse backgrounds collaborating, socializing, and learning while having fun."