World of Warcraft Hits 9 Million Users 298
Wowzer writes "Blizzard today announced that their MMORPG World of Warcraft is now played by more than 9 million gamers around the world. From the article: 'That's half a million more than the number of monthly players WoW had back in March five months ago. — It's interesting to note that if the World of Warcraft were a nation, CIA's World Factbook says that out of 236 listed countries it would be the 90th most populated country on Earth above Haiti, but behind Sweden.'
Also revealed this week was that DC Comics are creating World of Warcraft Comic Books based on the MMORPG, with the first issue appearing on November 14th. The ongoing monthly series will be written by industry veteran Walter Simonson (Thor, Orion) and feature art by Ludo Lullabi and inker Sandra Hope."
Re:Yes... (Score:2, Insightful)
9 million users or accounts? (Score:3, Insightful)
MMORPG popularity (Score:4, Insightful)
You could own a house, put vendors there to sell stuff, you had trade skills that were fully independent of fighting, you had an economy of "rare" artifacts with no use at all people just wanted them to have them, you could kill other players and take their gear.
And it was so much friendlier to the casual player: you could teleport to where your real-life friends were, you could play with your friends even if they played 40 hours a week and you played 2, you could macro when you were away to keep up with your friends or do things like craft armor to support a guild.
PvP made you actually have REAL friends and REAL enemies, instead of "You're an orc and he's an elf so you hate each other". It also made guilds have value, as you needed protection and could benefit from a guildmate making your armor while you made him potions.
Basically, I just can't stand that WoW is worse than UO in almost every way but has about 8.8 million more subscribers. UO was ahead of its time.
Class warfare? (Score:5, Insightful)
That just proves the realism of the game.
But see you are wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want games like that, they are available. I'm made to understand EVE is such a game. Extremely hardcore, real loss, etc, etc. That's great if that's what you like, but don't pretend like it is "superior". One of the reasons WoW is so great is it treats things more like a single player game. When I die in a SP game I don't lose anything but time, I am set back to whatever my last save point was and must replay from there. The nearest MMORPG experience, since you can't reload, is to just have you have to wait a bit as you head back to your body. No loss of anything but time.
That's what has kept me interested in WoW. It is the 5th MMORPG I've tried (EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, EVE, Starwars Galaxies) and the only one that has lasted more than 6-9 months or so. All the rest got boring fast for various reasons. For example in EQ the problem was it felt like they hated you. The game was setup to punish you severely for failure, and to be very unhelpful.
WoW gets it right for me, and for many others because it is extremely easy to get in to (I've never seen a more friendly start than WoW's newbie quests), doesn't punish you, and has lots to do for whatever it is you like doing. I realise that's not for everyone, but you need to realise that if a more hardcore experience is your preference that is a different preference, not a superior one. There is nothing wrong with wanting an easier, more friendly experience. After all, the whole point of games is to be entertaining. They are not for proving or accomplishing something, they are there to make you happy and let you have fun. Whatever it is that does that, that's what you should play. For 9 million of us (and counting) WoW is that kind of game.
Re:But see you are wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes... (Score:5, Insightful)
You will not find me a real WoW addict who is not depressed, and you will not cure anyone of depression simply by removing WoW.
pffft (Score:3, Insightful)
One man's pastime is another's OCD.
Re:MMORPG popularity (Score:5, Insightful)
Many aspects of UO were ahead of its time. It could have been a fantastic MMORPG that would have reached millions of players, but too many factors prevented that from occurring.
- Garriott's vision of a dynamic online world never reached fruition. The ecology system never really worked (animals preying upon other animals to keep the spawn rate down). It does work in WoW, and it's fascinating to watch monsters fight each other.
- Garriott (and Raph's) vision was too dependent upon players "playing nice" and wanting to be a moral, socially upright group. What they didn't count on was how some people feel they have the right to be complete and total a-holes because they're hidden behind the anonymity of a game character.
- The economy was ruined... by players. Greed, immorality and the desire to simply ruin the experience for others drove exploiters to imbalance the money system. Granted WoW has its share of gold exploits and problems with people selling their gold farming "services," but it's not nearly as skewed as UO was after the first two years.
- The PvP system was ruined... by players. Instead of a fair playing field where everyone has an equal chance, it turned into a predator/prey system where crafters gathered resources and fighters took it away. I despise PvP, but WoW is so well balanced and has such few penalties I'm considering participating. If it's attractive to a pacifist like myself, I imagine it's remarkable to those that enjoy PvP. If someone kills another player for gear, they're playing and killing for the wrong reason, IMO.
- The classless system was unique and allowed some flexibility, but still you ended up in a niche of "warrior, caster or crafter." I knew of numerous players who started out going one direction only to discover they had wasted their time and needed to go a different direction. I lost count of how many times I "respecced" my main character. Having grown up playing D&D, I prefer the class style.
- EA prevented UO from reaching it's potential numerous times. 1)Pushed Garriott out. When you get rid of the person with the vision, how do you know where you're going? 2)Lost the "Ultima" in "Ultima Online." I'm sure you probably played the series, too. Didn't you want to see more correlation with the series stories? There were two major attempts to bring that content to UO, but EA killed them. Then they brought in Todd McFarlane to add his touch. Another major mistake there. 3)There were also multiple attempts to overhaul the game entirely, but EA wouldn't hear it because it might endanger their constant cash flow if some players decided to jump ship if they had to start over. I would have stayed because there was nothing better than UO for several years (tried DAoC, AC, AO. EQ sucked from the outset, so I never needed to try it.)
To your points:
- Crafting skills in WoW are just as separated from fighting as they were in UO. In order to gather resources, you must be able to face the wilds and at least fight enough to defend yourself from roving monsters. Otherwise a crafter can stay in town safe from harm.
- WoW also has a few rares, but they are not exchangeable which I prefer. My pets from my Collector's Editions make my account fairly valuable. Since I cannot foresee my future of not playing WoW, I have no intention of cashing in.
- I do hope WoW implements housing, but I hope they do it correctly. I despised how UO just allowed players to ruin the landscape and affect the monster and resource spawns. I had even sent the designers several suggestions of having housing servers with teleporters to keep the land pristine. If WoW does add housing, I'm sure it will be a separate server that would not affect the current world.
- I liked having my vendors sell my wares while I was away, but I did not like having to keep them stocked and paid whether they sold anything or not. I much prefer the Auction House in WoW.
- WoW has a very similar, and I think more robust, soc
Re:MMORPG popularity (Score:4, Insightful)
I showed her WoW during beta and she was curious. When I purchased it, she started a character and was hooked within a few hours. She went on a trip and came back home to find her own account waiting for her. We still play side by side to this day and show no signs of slowing.
Key point to WoW's popularity: it appeals to EVERY play style in some form or fashion.
Re:Highly Inflated (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Class warfare? (Score:3, Insightful)
Overly pedantic perhaps, but in this case you've inadvertently invented a word that would mean almost exactly the opposite of what you intended.
Re:MMORPG popularity (Score:2, Insightful)
I, personally, *like* not having to worry about losing something I spent hours in Karazhan to get, because I got ganked by a another player while I was at 25% health.
I, personally, would rather have Blizzard spending time on interesting content than on giving me a house to play interior decorator in.
Don't you think it's rather telling that all these "inferior" MMORPGs are more popular than UO? Maybe they aren't so "bad" after all.
My experience with WoW (Score:3, Insightful)
I also tried getting back to it, putting in a few hours a week. Unfortunately once you get past a certain point, a few hours a week won't get you anywhere and I think that's the biggest fallacy in WoW. Games shouldn't turn into full time jobs just to keep up, and if you're a fresh player you're gonna have to put in that kind of time. On the other hand, CounterStrike is a game that you can play 30 minutes a day and get your fix. Heck, I'd recommend Diablo II any day of the year over WoW. It only gets time consuming on Act 5 the third time around...