If you haven't heard of Blizzard Games then the chances are that you've not had much to do with online gaming over the last decade. The name Blizzard games has become a thing of legend in the world of the MMORPG with their release of World of Warcraft back in 2004 and it has managed to take the world of online gaming to an unprecedented level. MMORPG or massive multiplayer online role playing games is what Blizzard Games have become most widely known for but they have many other titles that have huge fan basis.

Blizzard Games

As well as World of Warcraft, Blizzard also maintains Starcraft and Diablo III but their pipeline product is Diablo III is an update that is being worked on at the same time as yet another World of Warcraft expansion pack. To keep their army of fans happy  they have to continually expand their most popular titles which mean of course that they are in a perpetual test cycle.

To make sure they keep their players happy they have a massive team of quality assurance employees based in their office in Irvine, California. These are basically game players with a very analytical mind that are also good at communicating their thoughts. Often their thoughts are communicated through the written word which means they must be quite articulate.

Starcraft Blizzard Games

Beta testing for their latest expansion Cataclysm started at the end of June 2010 and is expected to go on for some time before final sign off and the game hits the shelves in early December. That's when they are expected to announce their next project and of course that will mean a new drive for developers and testers. So much goes in to each development stage that they never stop advertising for testers. At least that was the case for Cataclysm and with over 12 million subscribers to World of Warcraft it's not hard to imagine why staff must be continually recruited.

Blizzard Game Testing

Many other game developers have had to outsource to freelancers when deadlines have got tight. While they prefer to have their testers in house there is always the possibility that they will have to go down the road of remote testing. Their recent two day gaming festival, BlizzCon was a huge success for both the fans of the games and people that were looking for careers with Blizzard Games and they had their global staffing team on hand to accept resumes and discuss possible positions including positions as game testers.

With the demand for Blizzard games growing at an incredible rate the need for testers will also grow. So the trend is definitely going to be towards remote beta testing and freelance testers will find they have an increasing role to play within Blizzard.