Gen Con Reveals New World Of Warcraft Details

Thanks to RPGDot for pointing to a Battle.net forum post revealing a wealth of new detail regarding Blizzard's upcoming PC MMO title World Of Warcraft. WoW Stratics also has screenshots and brief comments on Blizzard's showing at Gen Con in Los Angeles, including comments that "Blizzard has one thing completely, undeniably wrong: they simply don't know the definition of 'alpha'. Both Anarchy Online and WWII Online were less polished and complete three months after release than WoW is right now." WoW is due out later in 2004, with a closed Beta early next year, and PlanetWarcraft also has some hands-on impressions.

Game stability clear after a convention?

[DeadScreenSky]

I don't understand how someone could determine MMORPG stability during a brief convention. How many players were involved? Surely not the tens of thousands that would be on a real server. And how often do you only find bugs in something (especially slow progression games like MMORPGs) after several hours of play? Making claims about the game's lack of bugginess after such limited experience seems crazy.

Alpha

[Cosmik]

I think Blizzard do know the meaning of alpha, and are using that time to get rid of many bugs.

On the other hand it's the majority of other MMORPG developers that don't know the meaning of alpha, or beta, or 'stable' for that matter.

Final Fantasy XI was such a breath of fresh air - I know it's been released in Japan for over a year now, but to have it released in the rest of the world with a stable launch was excellent. I'm now spoiled by it, and look forward to a smooth Blizzard launch. Lineage 2 is also looking promising, considering it's been released in Korea for a year now.

If only other developers (and publishers - they are the true criminals here) would take some time out and stop chasing the almight buck, thinking if they don't release soon they won't meet their monetary target. Here's a clue: releasing too early won't get you there either.

That's an easy one

[Maserati]

C'mon, I'm sure WoW is more polished than WW2OL three months ago. And I'm playing WW2OL so I should know. That, of course, is just banking^w betting on Blizzard's usual standards. Given the usual state of MMO's at launch Blizzard isn't aiming all that high.

Re:Game stability clear after a convention?

[Aoreias]

Obviously you can't get a good estimate on how stable the server is (that's what stress testing is for), you CAN get a decent estimate on how stable the client is. By the statements that only one of the two computers crashed once in a 10 hour period suggests that the client software is surprisingly stable. Games with lots of bugs (SWG, AO) become apparent pretty quickly. The guy spent a ton of time lingering around the WoW booth, so he probably saw whether a fair amount of bugs appeared.