Speaking candidly to business site GI.biz, vice-president Frank Pearce has admitted that the epic all-encompassing success of does have its draw-backs, even if these problems are clearly nice to have.

The developer co-founder said: "I don’t know if I’d describe it (the game's dominance) as ‘interesting’ as much as exhausting."

He added: "We’ve got almost 3,000 employees worldwide now, and the majority of that growth is due to the success of World of Warcraft."

No grumbling here, however. "So it’s great, it’s a great problem to have," he explained, "but it is a lot of work. We’ve learned a lot, made a lot of mistakes along the way. It’s been good experience for us, I wouldn’t say that we’ve regretted it… but ‘interesting’ isn’t how we’d describe it necessarily."

More WoWing shortly.

By Luke Guttridge