Raid Design

Former WoW designer says Blizzard had no way to measure maximum player DPS while building early raids—so the studio enlisted its strongest sickos to grind target dummies

Former World of Warcraft designer Wyatt Cheng revealed that Blizzard Entertainment lacked robust player data for measuring maximum DPS during early raid development. To determine boss tuning, the studio had employees test classes against target dummies and manually calculated damage output. This led to the implementation of mechanics like Enrage timers to ensure players met DPS requirements, a practice that has become a staple in WoW raid design.