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Role Playing (Games)

2 Million Azeroth Citizens 155

Posted by Zonk from the zug-zug-zug-zug-zug-zug-zug-zug dept.
Gamasutra (and everyone else) has the news that World of Warcraft has hit 2 Million subscribers, making it the first U.S. based commercial MMOG to do so. From the article: "The most popular current MMORPGs in Asia are generally developed locally, but if World of WarCraft proves popular in China, as well as other soon to be launched territories such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, it could quickly become the most globally popular online game in history. "
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2 Million Azeroth Citizens

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  • Maybe they can spend some of that money (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Xenopax ( 238094 ) <xenopax.cesmail@net> on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @01:16PM (#12824791) Journal
    to add some horsepower to the Alterac Valley instance servers. Right now on the server I play on there is never more than 2 instances going at any one time, even though both sides have over 40 people standing around waiting to get in.
  • That's where a lot of the MMORPG players are at. Lineage has had a lot of popularity there and accounts for a lot of business.

    The numbers might be skewed because a lot of Asian MMO gamers play online in cyber-cafes or something similar. I guess you could still count the number of accounts that are created, but what about the people who create and account, play for an hour and then never come back. If the internet cafe is the one being billed per hour of play time, that account will stick around forever.

  • WoW = World of Waiting (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jack Comics ( 631233 ) * <jack_comics@nOSpAm.postxs.org> on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @01:28PM (#12824895) Homepage
    In addition to World of Warcraft, WoW also stands for World of Waiting.

    Waiting to log on... waiting for instances to open up... waiting for Battlegrounds... waiting for patches...
    • Or, in your case, World of Whining. On Stonespire (or spirestone, whatever it is) I have none of these issues. Low population pvp server. The longest wait I've ever had for the BG was 30 minutes on a saturday at 1pm.

      You're complaining about issues that were addressed already. If your server is so full you have to wait to log on, you can transfer your character to another server.

      • Re:WoW = World of Waiting (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        No, you can't. They haven't allowed that for months. Go ahead, try it [worldofwarcraft.com]. (You need a WoW account for that.) You'll get told:

        The Character Move feature is currently closed. We are continuing to monitor realm populations, and are keeping the option in mind to re-open Character Moves in the event any realms become overpopulated. In addition, we are looking into the possibility of allowing customers more freedom in transferring to realms of their choice in the future. No further details are currently availa
        • People seriously wait 8-15 hours just to play this?
    • If you think having a brand name is everything, there are _plenty_ of counter-examples to prove that wrong.

      E.g., "The Sims Online" was banking on the brand name of _the_ most sold PC game ever, by a wide margin. If you think Warcraft was a brand name to bank on, The Sims outsold that by a ludicrious margin. And Maxis itself is as big a brand name as Blizzard.

      Yet TSO flopped. EA didn't even bother releasing it in Europe after seeing the abysmal sales in the USA, and that an alarming majority of the people

  • Quick Opinion Wanted (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If WoW content remained basically the same, but did not have the Warcraft specific brand or Blizzard label, would it be as successful?
    • Questions like this are loaded, but I'll bite anyway.

      I speculate that the initial success wouldn't have been as large, since company and brand recognition go a long way in marketing. Past successes usually help out the initial reaction of a company's game, and if the company continues to put out quality games, this reaction will only continue to grow higher (id and Blizzard are the best examples of this).

      We also have the success of the actual game: those who choose to play it will naturally tell othe
      • Star Wars Galaxies was not a huge success. Why? The game was not fun - even though it had a huge franchise to build off of. Making games that people ENJOY playing will sell titles over name recognition, branding and marketing anyday.
        • Still, there's no denying that the Warcraft franchise was a large factor in WoW's success. My roommate who had never considered playing an MMORPG in his life bought WoW simply because he was a big Warcraft fan. I'm positive that many others did the same. Maybe it would have gained popularity by word of mouth as time went on, but a large percentage of the initial surge of subscribers was probably long-time Blizzard fans.
    • I personally tend to make judgements based on a few factors: graphics, UI, and fun factor. WoW graphics are OK, but there is a nice variety of locales and the graphics are bright in general. I personally wish it were more like FFXI.

      The UI is great I think from the start. Plus Blizzard has given us the ability to modify the UI pretty extensively and the company even supports it.

      I thought the game was pretty fun until I hit level 40 with my Paladin. I've been trying other classes though and I think t

    • Yes. The Warcraft/Blizzard brand means nothing to me, but i love WoW . . . when i'm not busy hating the bugs. But it's definitely more love than hate.
    • Short answer:

      In the long run, there would very little difference.

      Long answer:

      Sure, the Blizzard name almost certainly helped the initial takeoff. However, the fact remains that the WoW developers really have distilled the essence of what many people want in an MMORPG. It provides easy access for casual gamers (including a biggie, decent graphics without a $300 video card), good content, and enough high-level content that hardcore gamers stay happy.

      In short, WoW probably would have had many subscribers

      • First off I was one of thoses that had WoW preorderded months in advance, I later quit and have been happily playing EQ2, and only went with that because of the bad experiences I had from WoW and EQ2 was the other newest thing on the block, and from the public beta is was actually good.

        WoW initial sales and pumping was all fanboies and based on Blizzards reputation, even after warcraft III. You don't sell out like they did from the casual person who sees the new box in the store and decides to purchase i

  • WoW's success has been UNDERstated (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pezpunk ( 205653 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @01:33PM (#12824963) Homepage
    If anything, World of Warcraft's huge success has been understated. It is now four times the size of Everquest at its peak. That's monstrous, for a game that charges a monthly subscription.

  • Insightful article ? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @01:35PM (#12824981)
    > but if World of WarCraft proves popular in China, as well as other soon to be launched territories such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, it could quickly become the most globally popular online game in history.

    Let me rephrase this as:

    "but if World of WarCraft proves popular in [every country] it could be the most popular online game in history"

    We can build quite a lot of story here:

    "if $thing proves $property in $everywhere else, it could be the most $property $category in history"

    Like in:

    "If slashdot proves boring in europe and china and south america, it could be the most boring weblog in history".

    Cool.
    • Crazy Perl hackers. Who needs dollar signs -- what we need here is LaTex! If Sy(WoW) > Sy(x) (S = sales, y = country, for every x in the set of MMORPGs other than WoW), then for every x in that set Sigma(Sy(WoW) over all the y's) > Sigma (Sy(x) over all the y's). CS102: Proving WoW is the Best Game Ever* * #include : Proves the lemma which gets you from "sells most" to "best". Mostly by brainwashing you with the prospect of large amounts of cash money if you master the concepts presented in class

  • Capitalization of the mmo market... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fierYice ( 879281 ) * <debug AT vulcanlove DOT info> on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @01:40PM (#12825031) Homepage Journal
    As a former Blizzard employee I can attest that I did not see very much innovation in the hallways. Passion is spewing from the halls and dedication to the utmost fun experience is what holds that ship together; maybe one day they will try it with brand new ideas...

    I have no doubt that World of Warcraft will become the usurper of the throne and easily claim the #1 MMO spot globally but what I have not yet seen much of is "Who will dethrone the new king in years to come?"

    You know it is an inevitable. I ACTUALLY know it is inevtiable, hell I've worked on the code and tools. You can feel it in your soul and you can know it just by the fact that technology always expands to such a point that games are antiquated and no longer "Stunning."

    Gaming industry, when oh when are you braking out your next stunners?

    A true 'Killer Application' mmo has not been created, and world of warcraft is not it. Killer apps force consumers to go out and buy hardware just for the expience being so damn 'killer fun.' In other words, I can't wait for the mmo that breaks out and makes people go out and buy computers or consoles (ps3, xbox360 would be nice...)

    That's the game I am interested in playing.

    (and making, as a game developer. :D)
    -Daniel
    • nothing new here ... any outsider can tell you that Blizzard's magic comes from a ridiculous amount of polish on existing concepts. more specifically -- nice cinematics, charming characters, fluid and attractive UI, and the elimination of genre X's most annoying bits. none of that's in dispute.

      but hey, good luck on your current projects and i wish you all the luck in the world at unseating the king! =)
    • You think you will rule the market by making uber graphics and a game thats unplayable on standard machines? I'll give you one more guess who this "killer" app is going to kill. Its no wonder why you didn't feel the innovation while you were pushing your mail cart down the hallways. You saw regular old PC's playing this game and just couldn't understand.
      • Senior server engineer, not mail pusher to half-wit...
        and why does "killer" make you all immediately think dollar signs.
        Did not one of you ever think I meant next-generation in fun, on a mass-communication effort that has yet to be done in mmo's. As a server programmer I can tell you the player density issues alone on seamless mmo's haven't been exploited to thier full potential and anybody who thinks a fucking 'RPG' is going to be the kind needs to wake up and realize that other genre's have way bigge
      • When he says "killer app" that makes you buy new hardware, don't necessarily think "the game is too slow, gotta upgrade the PC".

        Think Gran Turismo or Final Fantasy 7 for which some of us went and bought a Playstation. It's not that the game was non-optimized or anything. In fact, it ran at a clean 60 FPS if I remember right. It was just that good that it worth buying a whole console just to play one game.
    • While I'm not arguing with you that Blizzard's games are more evolutionary than revolutionary, I don't understand how to be a killer app, it requires someone to go out and buy new hardware.

      You're saying that games that are a boatload of fun to play, addictive, revolutionary, and polished, can't scale to support older PCs?
      • Perhaps he was just using it as a scale for how great it should be. Trying out a copy of Thief on my dad's computer(yes, my dad is a warez d00d) is why I went out and bought the game along with my first 3d graphics card.
      • this has nothing to do with the hardware itself, but the emotional state that people just 'fucking have to fun out any buy the god damn game because thier soul is aching for it'. That killer app... pay attention hardware ($) monkeys.

        When is the last time you FELT you had to have a game or you would die? .killer.app
    • He's right, a "killer app" is a game that you want to play so badly, you purchase new hardware to do so. Maybe describing it in terms of consoles will provide a better picture. Take Halo 2, exclusive to xbox. The game is considered so good that people bought xboxs over other consoles just to play that game.
      For PCs, it's not that a killer app game can't be played on an old computer, but the masses would need to go out and buy new computers(or parts)to play it to make it one. It can be seen that a killer ap
      • To be slightly pedantic and trollish, Halo was the killer ap. Most people who bought Halo 2 already had the XBox. I don't know of many people who bought an XBox because of Halo 2 but I know a ton of people [myself included] who bought an xbox because of the original Halo.

        Halo 2 sucked balls in my opinion, something just feels off to me but that's not really the point of this post :)

  • Is that current paying subscribers? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Banner ( 17158 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @01:58PM (#12825226) Journal
    In WOW they never delete a character or an account. So is that current paying subscribers? Or all subscribers ever?

    I'm just curious

  • New subscribers != more players (Score:5, Informative)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @02:08PM (#12825315) Journal
    There might be more subscribers, but there are less people playing online now. People are getting burnt out of the same old instances, and waiting for poorly designed PvP.

    Your wait in queue in 3 hours, have a nice day.

  • Monstrously disapointed (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I cant even begin to express how diaspointed I've become with Blizzard. All due to this particualr game adn the rumors leaking out about Ghost. I've canceled two subscriptions in the last week, both mine and my fiance's.

    The customer service is, hands down, the worst I have ever personally experienced from a game developer. And I've experienced some pretty atrocious handling of the customer. At times it seems as if the disdain for the player base is so heavy as if to be almost tangible.

    I wonder then, how m
    • Have you ever played any of their games before? This "disdain" has always been there, but not in the way you seem to see it. Their stance has always been to produce challenging games. When people raise their skill levels, Bliz will patch it to make the game tougher. Diablo2 is a prime example. It was really hard until the expansion. Then when the playerbase got good they released 1.10, hit every class with a nerf and buffed up monsters tremendously. I'm curious what support issues you had... was it l
    • I always read posts like this with a smile on my face. Anyone who played EQ, and was repeatedly punched in the face by SOE probably feels the same way. Blizzard has had their share of problems, but they in no way show the kind of contempt for their customers that SOE had. I know it isn't the best arguement to say that "Hey, at least they are not the worst!" But, hey, at least they are not the worst!

  • Nice milestone, but... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Evro ( 18923 ) *
    With so many of its customers being non-US, so what if the game's "US-based"? If it had 2 million US-based customers it would be more impressive.
  • Est Sales Revenue Percentage: 50% Upfront Sales Revenue: $50,000,000 Monthly Sub Revenue: $30,000,000 Annual Sub Revenue: $360,000,000 Total Revenue over 5 year period for WoW 1,850,000,000. This does not take into account expansions, new subscribers gained or loss in subscribers.
    • Not really.

      If you really want an inside look at the finances of how MMOs work I'd suggest you read a thred commented on by the owner of Meridian 59 here at slashdot. Explore the parent thred and you will find several posts from him discussing this subject in detail.

      http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=140914&c id=11811417 [slashdot.org]

      He does talk about revenue calculations as you have but I found the expenses more interesting...

      Okay, now we come to bandwidth. Here's some numbers for you: Meridian

      • The snippet Morinaga quoted is interesting, but there's even more to the story than that. I really recommend that everyone follow the link and read the entire post.

      • What do you mean, 'not really' you tool? I was talking srictly about revenue.
      • Besides, WOW is probably getting a lot better rate on bandwidth than some chumpy Meridian 59 game. They are probably sitting right on one of Level3's fiber optic lines. I don't know their server IPs but I'm sure someone can tracert it who does know.
  • I have seen comments posted on slashdot several times saying that the graphics in WoW or mediocre at best. I personally think that they are excellent. Where are folks seeing better graphics than what is available in WoW? Just curious...
    • any first person shooter, first of all. also, Everquest 2. honestly, WoW uses some pretty low poly-count graphics, low rez textures (especially on scenery like trees) and pretty simple lighting technology.

      luckily, all the greatness in the game is in how this non-cutting edge tech has been leveraged to render things in a very charming and accessible way.

    • Re:Where can you find better graphics? (Score:4, Informative)

      by CaptMonkeyDLuffy ( 623905 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @02:51PM (#12825736)
      Eh... I think the graphics issue boils down like this:

      The actual technical feats of the graphics engine in the game are decent, but not amazing(however, in their defense they do a damn good job of running on lower end hardware...). There are people who's opinion of the graphics in a game are derived almost solely from the technical specs of the game's engine... Badly designed levels, clashing colors all over the place doesn't matter if the poly count is high with lots of sparkly effects. These sorts will not like WoW.

      Second, Blizzard has a very distinctive art style. Some people simply won't like WoW because the particular style to it isn't to their liking(there's definitely a vocal group these days who want their graphics as 'realistic' as possible, and Blizzard's style definitely won't appease that group).

      Attractiveness of graphics is a very subjective matter... personally, I agree with you that WoW does a really good job overall(they definitely have slipped up a little when it comes to some of the equipment for players, but everything else is really great). Different people will have different takes, and in my experience most of the complaints about WoW tend to follow the two lines I mentioned above...
      • "Some people simply won't like WoW because the particular style to it isn't to their liking"

        I for one would like a slider on the character creation thing so I could adjust the size of my elves freaking huge ears.
        My friend named his elf Dawnkey as a reflection on the state of elf ears in WoW.

    • Re:Where can you find better graphics? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by llevity ( 776014 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @06:22PM (#12827865)
      Technically, the graphics aren't all that great. There's no fancy reflections, and bump mapping, and vertex shading. But I agree that it's a fantistic looking game, without all those things. It's not the poly counts and resolution of textures that do it, it's the overall cohesive art design. Every area you go to looks significantly different. There is atmosphere. And while it does not look realistic, it looks believable in the sense that there is nothing to jarringly pull you out of your immersion.
    • They're probably referring to EQ2, which has graphics that are technologically more impressive than in WoW. (Whether they make for more compelling gameplay is another matter altogether that I won't get into, never having actually played EQ2.)

      TES: Oblivion will knock the socks off of both of them when it comes out within the next year (hopefully by the end of 2005), but it's a single-player RPG, not a MMOG.

      • I played EQII starting the day it came out for about three months till I lost my job and had to cut back on non-vital expenses. The graphics are absolutely amazing. I mean AMAZING. My computer is an Athlon XP at 1.94 GHZ with 512 MB DDR RAM and a Radeon 9600 XP card, and I had to run the game at the lowest detail setting to make it playable (say, 40 FPS it seemed to be, unless in a hugely populated zone, like a cityscape) and it still looked good.

        I can't wait till next year or the one after that when th

  • WoW is amazing (Score:1, Troll)

    by Xlipse ( 669697 )
    With 2 million accounts... for every unhappy customer, I'm sure there's 10,000 happy ones - myself included. Some people are simply unreasonable (while other DO have valid complaints).

    WoW is the best MMOG "experience" since UO/EQ and AC1, hands down.

    It has issues and waits in a queue (on busy servers or if you are playing Alliance), lag, yes.. but I'm still impressed - and I've played a dozen MMOG's in the past 8 years..

    Considering in games like EQ where you had to schedule end-game raid with "uber guil
    • That shows that you are a bit out of the loop, either because you are very low level or only play from time to time.

      For instance:

      Considering in games like EQ where you had to schedule end-game raid with "uber guilds" who basically controlled the high-end dungeons...

      There are two world bosses that spawn once a week and usualy are owned by the uberguilds on each server. Molten Core and Onyxia requires Uber Guild tactics and dedication to get to and beat. All of this is the current end game (which in
      • Man, can't believe someone would pay $15 a month to play a game they obviously hate so much. BTW, I have experienced none of the problems you mention above...with the exception of a small, 15 minute wait for the BG...
      • Okay, I play on Arthas. High-pop, but one of the more balanced in numbers.

        Every new patch the game becomes more and more laggy. I'm playing on a mid-high population server , and I just dont go to Ironforge to avoid the lag. The mail everywhere takes like 10 seconds to open, and like 10-20 seconds to detach an item. Trying to use the AH is almost pointless and require a lot of patience.

        Here, I don't know what you're talking about, honestly. I get mail in two or three seconds during primetime. I actually
        • Okay, I play on Arthas. High-pop, but one of the more balanced in numbers.

          Is it PvP? Because those tend to be the better balanced ones.

          Here, I don't know what you're talking about, honestly. I get mail in two or three seconds during primetime. I actually haven't seen AH lag for months.

          Lucky for you. I see it a lot in Proudmoore.

          Mid-high pop, you say? I don't think so. Last time I saw a queue was in November.

          Well, Proudmoore might be one of the higher population ones.
      • Believe me, if you can say with a straight face "Yeah, but this game gets laggy too" when comparing _any_ game with Anarchy Online, then you've never actually played Anarchy Online. Just the mention of the launch of AO made me cringe there.

        Go read the Anarchy Online review on Something Awful [somethingawful.com] and I can personally attest that that's 100% accurate, and that's what the game was like _after_ the devs had "fixed" it and claimed it was 110% stable and working as designed. Before that, it was far far worse.

        I can
    • ... for every unhappy customer, I'm sure there's 10,000 happy ones - myself included

      What exactly are you basing that statistic on?
      • Nothing, I pulled it out of my ass!

        Geez.. have you never posted on ./ before!?

        It's called an educated, logical, guess... based on what I know to be true from past years of experience and community involvment.

        • If you'd bothered to check, you'd find I've been on Slashdot for a long time now. But that's besides the point.

          You made your statement as a statement of fact, when in fact we know it's NOT fact, it's just a guess. Which is what most statistics are, but statistics are usually gained by going out and actually taking polls, or counting heads, whatever. You probably DID pull that number out of your ass. And it's not based on years of experience with a game that's only been out less than a year.

          Now bac

  • WoW (Score:4, Funny)

    by hugerobot ( 634548 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2005 @03:11PM (#12825924)
    WoW upside down is MoM, and MoM upside down is Dad's favorite thing!

    ducks...
  • I don't really get the macau reference. Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful place but it's population is less then half a milion, and of course most of them won't play Warcraft. I just can't see what difference it would/will make.

  • Two million dollars... er, players (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    50% are playing Night Elves
    80% are playing Alliance
    10% are playing on Bleeding Hollow
    100% of those hate something (or someone) about Bleeding Hollow
    80% of Horde are playing Forsaken .00001% of all players are playing Trolls

    100% or these statistics were made up on the spot because I am bitter. When are we going to have a PVPRP server?

    nnooiissee

  • The first thing that should concern people who play WoW is that Blizzard was surprised and caught off guard by it's success. I've never played the game, but would wonder if the design scales to this size player base. Also sounds like their infrastructure is shaky at best and I can't believe you are paying for a game that makes you wait (how long?) to play it. If anything, this feels like WoW lowered the standard on MMOs out there in terms of service.
    However, if you find the game fun, by all means play it.

    • I'm not denying the existence of problems, but I have characters on four servers and never have any problems. I never have queues or even enough lag that in annoys me.

      When you look at the massive number of players, and compare it to the number of people complaining, then it should become obvious that the issues are not as major (certainly not as universal!) as they make them out to be. The vast majority of players have been coasting along, infrastructure-related-problem-free, basically since launch -- thou
    • You're a few months late with this kind of post...players have already had to deal for some time with growing pains. When you typed "I've never played the game..." you should have caught onto the problem with your post and deleted it right then.

      Wait queues aren't standard in WoW and no one at Blizzard expected them to be crowd favorites or an innovation: at times they are a necessary evil because of the unexpected numbers. Yeah they suck when you get stuck in one and yeah I wish Blizzard had been ready for

    • Well, any MMO conceivable sorta scales by just adding more servers. MMOs are not really _one_ world, but several copies of one world. (In UO lingo, "shards".) Your character basically exists on such copy of the world.

      This doesn't just help with scaling issues for software (how many characters per second can the software handle), but also with the finite size of the world itself. By spreading the load between more servers you basically keep the world from becoming overcrowded.

      Additionally any server is usu

  • the sidebar (Score:2, Funny)

    by jlstyle ( 411191 )
    "In a related story, Sony Online Entertainment President, John Smedley, was found dead in his home due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the face."

  • Blizzard should stop being cheap with service. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JavaLord ( 680960 ) on Thursday June 16, 2005 @09:43AM (#12831805) Journal
    I've been playing WoW now for 6 months. I'm amazed at it's success, because 2 million subscribers is quite an accomplishment. It is the most fun mmorpg I've played.

    That said, they need to work on their customer support. If they have 2 million subscribers paying 15 dollars a month, they could at least hire one community manager for each class. As of now, on their forums feedback from developers funneled through their community managers (I believe there are 5) is extremely rare.

    With the recent addition of battlegrounds which gave a set place for PvP, the lack of balance between the factions is showing. There are two 'faction only' classes, the Paladin and Shaman. The Shaman is the most powerful character in the game, while the Paladin is the weakest. When you combine this with the fact that the Horde has the better racial traits, battlegrounds is lopsided. People have been bringing this to blizzards attention for months with minimal feedback. Maybe now that battlegrounds are around they will do something to balance out the classes and races.

    If they would hire a community manager for each class, then they could have the current ones moderate the other boards, such as PvP, RP, General, etc.

    Overall, they need to get their act together before people notice they were never ready for this kind of userbase. The latest thread of doom [worldofwarcraft.com]in their forums is about someone with cerbral palsy who was banned for using '3rd party programs' which allowed him to play world of warcraft even though he was disabled.

    They can't let PR disasters like this go on for too long. It is a game, but it's also a service. Blizzard needs to wake up and realize that.

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