Ask Questions of the World of Warcraft Team 1000
You may have already heard of Blizzard's most recent title. World of Warcraft was released in November of last year to high critical praise and a favourable player reaction. While technical issues were a problem for the first few months of retail service, prompt patching and additional world servers have left the game in excellent shape. World of Warcraft has since gone on to become not only the largest MMORPG in the United States, but also the world, with 3.5 million subscribers as of July 21st. Given all this, the likelihood that Slashdot readers would be interested in asking the development team some questions seemed pretty high. The team has kindly offered to take some time out of their extremely busy schedules to answer questions. So, feel free to ask whatever question is burning in your heart. Please stick to World of Warcraft related topics, and only ask one question per comment. We'll take the best of the lot and pass them on to the Team. Their answers will be posted when we've gotten them back.
Re:LEEROY JENKINS!! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Playable for normal people? (Score:2, Informative)
Lots of factors go into why people like or dislike a game. Asking a question like this isn't going to help the developers improve it.
Game of The Year Restored by Penny Arcade (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why innovate, if you're just going to stop late (Score:3, Informative)
Because at low levels you could solo, and in a 1 - 2 hour playing session you would always come out with a new item, or a new level and with it some new abilities (well new abilities every other level).
At the endgame you need to find raids of 5-40 people to be successful. You group up with them, and raid a dungeon for 2-6 hours. You will sometimes come out with nothing to show for it.
WoW was so successful because levels 1-40 appeal to the casual gamer, and even 1-60 can be done by a casual gamer. Now if only they could make the endgame the same way. One man instances, quests for good items that you don't need raid groups to get, etc.
All in my own opinion of course.
Re:Addiction (Score:3, Informative)
You may laugh, but it's a real problem. See Jeremy's latest video [purepwnage.com] for proof.
~Will
Re:Reduced priced restricted accounts (Score:3, Informative)
I should add that despite the trial period I very much share your concern about the high subscription fees. As it is I'm considering not even extending my trial since it just isn't worth it to either a) waste money on a service I don't use much, or b) ruin my life by playing enough to make it worth it.
...why do I feel like b) is my inevitable path
Re:Read the LGP interview (Score:3, Informative)
Anyways, if the linux user is more likely to play WoW than other users, it's not because they run linux. It would be because they were tech users and early adopters. Most people I know that fit this description and play games also run windows or can do emulation.
My guess is they developed a cross platform version to help keep the code clean and to keep their options open. At the beginning of a three (?) year development project with an estimated lifespan of 5-6 (?) years, you don't want to be elimating markets that are poised for massive growth if you can avoid it. Eg, at the start of development, linux could have a 0.3% (?) home user desktop market share, but at 9 years later at the product's end of life, it could have a 20% market share.
When they were approaching a release, they probably observed that after x years of development, linux home user desktop marketshare had grown from 0.3% to 0.4%. Next they probably assumed that all but 10% of them have windows or the ability to emulate. This would mean that they are missing out on 1/2500 of the market (0.004 * 0.10). Assuming they expected to get 2 million subscribers, then they could expect to get an extra 800 or so subscribers per month from linux. 800 * 15 = $12,000/month.
Proceeding along an expected 2 million users per month (they probably have a lot more now), that would be 30 million per month. IS that extra $12,000 per month in revenue really worth the effort of supporting and maintaining a linux fork? Obviously, I'm just pulling numbers out of my ass, but it's not hard to see why a mainstream gaming company might not want to support linux.
There's a difference between having something run on an OS and making sure it runs well enough and continues to run well enough for massive distribution. It wouldn't take much for that +$12,000/month to become -$12,000/month.
Going a step further... Blizzard is a dominant player in the PC (read windows) gaming market. If linux gains significant marketshare, the PC gaming market could get shaken up. At the very least, Blizzard may have to start supporting Linux. From this traditional conservative perspective, it would seem that Blizzard is better off with the existing OS monoculture. If Blizzard supports Linux now, this may improve the popularity of the OS, which could disrupt Blizzard's marketshare in the future.
Re:Secret Ironforge Area (Score:3, Informative)
Kinda surprised you didn't ask about the airport, "under Stormwind," Zul Gurub, Hijal, Caverns of Time... there's a bunch of them.