Hazzikostas stated that WoTLK Classic Gold it's hard to quantify, but anecdotally speaking, he's pleased to see such positive feedback and a heightened sense of community in WoW gamers during the lockdowns.

Regarding the specifics of moving from office to remote, Hazzikostas admitted that the move has been an "challenging change" for the team. He explained that Blizzard was watching the COVID-19 issue early and this helped the team's shift to remote work go more efficiently.

"We were greatly helped by how Blizzard began preparing for this eventuality a few weeks before. In March of this year, as we began to hear stories from western coasts of the US and we began to double check as a ready-for-the-event plan of what would it look like if we were forced to leave for a long period of time," Hazzikostas said. "None of us were aware of how long a period of time it would take but it did mean that we weren't starting completely from the ground up. We'd already tried the capability to connect to our applications remotely. In addition, we had some people piloting work-from-home applications to get it up and running."

The biggest issue for the WoW team of developers, other being physically moving equipment out of the office, is finding a way of retaining an atmosphere of collaboration within offices, Hazzikostas said.

"The problem we've missed was a great deal of impromptu discussions which is where the creative brainstorming happens. The literal hallways conversations--bouncing an cheap WOW WoTLK Classic Gold idea off someone. And then swiping something on a whiteboard in order to get some quick feedback from whoever happened to be at their desk," Hazzikostas said. "Those aren't things that you could be able to schedule or record on a Slack chat or anything else. So it's taken extra effort. However, we believe we've got processes starting to take shape and some of that involves creating jam spaces that people can socialize and chat with whoever else is there."