--- title: The 2006 TIME 100 - TIME description: There's a country of 6 million people that's not on any map. It's called World of Warcraft, and it's a virtual country, a computer-generated fantasy environment that you can access, for a monthly... canonical: https://time.com/collections/the-2006-time-100/7376424/rob-pardo/ article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2006-05-08T04:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-02T22:50:40.042Z og:title: The 2006 TIME 100 - TIME og:description: There's a country of 6 million people that's not on any map. It's called World of Warcraft, and it's a virtual country, a computer-generated fantasy environment that you can access, for a monthly... og:url: https://time.com/collections/the-2006-time-100/7376424/rob-pardo/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5b3a47e92ff8d458/6998cee783ec3715c1c7b7e5/pardo0508.jpg?branch=production&width=640&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: The 2006 TIME 100 - TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The 2006 TIME 100 - TIME twitter:description: There's a country of 6 million people that's not on any map. It's called World of Warcraft, and it's a virtual country, a computer-generated fantasy environment that you can access, for a monthly... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5b3a47e92ff8d458/6998cee783ec3715c1c7b7e5/pardo0508.jpg?branch=production&width=640&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- May 08, 2006 # Rob Pardo by [Lev Grossman](/author/lev-grossman/) ## Lev Grossman  David Strick / Redux for TIME There's a country of 6 million people that's not on any map. It's called _World of Warcraft_, and it's a virtual country, a computer-generated fantasy environment that you can access, for a monthly subscription fee, via the Internet. It's also one of the most immersive and successful video games ever created, and it could be the future of electronic entertainment. Rob Pardo, 35, vice president of game design for Blizzard Entertainment (although minor deity would also be an applicable title), led the team that designed _World of Warcraft_, which involved generating from scratch history, geography, anthropology and ecology of a fully realized fantasy world spread over two continents. The game's 6 million fee-paying players can slay monsters, go on quests and even perform everyday tasks like fishing, cooking and tailoring. If _World of Warcraft_ — aficionados call it just _WoW_ EM\] gets any more popular, it may be up for a seat in the U.N. Pardo didn't invent this kind of game (which enthusiasts refer to as "massively multiplayer"); he merely perfected it. It takes an obsessive mind to make sure there's something interesting going on everywhere in an entire world, all the time, for both newbies and veteran players. If anything, he's almost too good: some players have a tendency to confuse their virtual lives with their real ones. _WoW_ is so addictive that among gamers, it's known by the nickname Warcrack. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/the-2006-time-100/7376424/rob-pardo/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/the-2006-time-100/7376424/rob-pardo/"},"headline":"The 2006 TIME 100 - TIME","datePublished":"2006-05-08T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-02T22:50:40.042Z","description":"There's a country of 6 million people that's not on any map. It's called World of Warcraft, and it's a virtual country, a computer-generated fantasy environment that you can access, for a monthly...","url":"https://time.com/collections/the-2006-time-100/7376424/rob-pardo/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5b3a47e92ff8d458/6998cee783ec3715c1c7b7e5/pardo0508.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lev Grossman","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/lev-grossman/"}],"creator":"Lev Grossman","articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5b3a47e92ff8d458/6998cee783ec3715c1c7b7e5/pardo0508.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/the-2006-time-100/7376424/rob-pardo/","name":"The 2006 TIME 100 - TIME"}}]}] ```