2 Million Azeroth Citizens 155
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.
"
Maybe they can spend some of that money (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Maybe they can spend some of that money (Score:2)
Re:Maybe they can spend some of that money (Score:1)
Re:Maybe they can spend some of that money (Score:2)
Korea (Score:1)
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)
Waiting to log on... waiting for instances to open up... waiting for Battlegrounds... waiting for patches...
Re:WoW = World of Waiting (Score:1, Flamebait)
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)
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
Re:WoW = World of Waiting (Score:2)
Re:WoW = World of Waiting (Score:1)
Re:WoW = World of Waiting (Score:1)
Then there's Cleanse which frees up priests, mages, and druids from secondary duties, resist Aura
Re:WoW = World of Waiting (Score:2)
Re:WoW = World of Waiting (Score:1)
Obviously you haven't played both sides. The only part of the above that is even remotely close to being true is "stronger racial abilities", everything else is biased torwards Alliance, number of quests, quest rewards, number of zones to level in (10-40, post 40 both sides are in the same zones with a few exceptions). This is mostly because Alliance was "finished" (read: developed) first durr
Re:WoW = World of Waiting (Score:2)
And let's not forget that trolls get a 10% health regeneration bonus outside of combat, and 10%
Re:WoW = World of Waiting (Score:2)
With how many times I've died and had my enemy just a few hp away from death themselves, I think you over estimate how much better that 1% bonus to dodging is. If I was regenerating a few hp every tick, I'd have lived through at least some of those encounters.
I try and pelt my foe from afar with spells, especially trying to keep them entangled as much as possible... but you can't keep them away from you forever at all times (especially when they s
Re:WoW = World of Waiting (Score:1)
If the horde is so damn easy, why don't you reroll?
I totally disagree with you, having played both, Alliance is easier. I find that players are generally better on the Horde side, though.
Re:WoW = World of Waiting (Score:1)
No I'm saying they're paying for their previous free ride. And stop trying to make "the side that wound up being the most popular" sound like some kind of accident, it wasn't. It was pure self-interested easy mode seekers who were in beta or followed it that caused it. It was well known in beta that the easy way to 60 and defeating the available end-game conte
Re:WoW = World of Waiting (Score:2)
You really think there was some sort of conspiracy at work here?
I play a level 60 human mage on Thunderhorn, and I'm in an endgame guild. I did not participate in the beta, and didn't know anything about the game before I bought a copy at Best Buy and installed it. A number of my guildmates were in the beta, but a larger number were not.
The fact that Alliance outnumber Horde by such a large number is probably better attributed to psychological factors--people identify with humans more readily (go figure
Counter-Examples (Score:2)
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
Meh, answered to wrong message (Score:2)
Quick Opinion Wanted (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Quick Opinion Wanted (Score:1)
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
Re:Quick Opinion Wanted (Score:1)
Re:Quick Opinion Wanted (Score:1)
Re:Quick Opinion Wanted (Score:1)
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
Re:Quick Opinion Wanted (Score:2)
Re:Quick Opinion Wanted (Score:2)
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
Re:Quick Opinion Wanted (Score:2)
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)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:WoW's success has been UNDERstated (Score:1)
Re:WoW's success has been UNDERstated (Score:2)
Or are you referring to the old BBB report on Vivendi Universal, which discusses large numbers of account bans (130k of them),
Re:WoW's success has been UNDERstated (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, if this is 2MM subscibers total, over the history of WoW, then that's not as impressive.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Insightful article ? (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Re:Insightful article ? (Score:2)
Capitalization of the mmo market... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
-Daniel
Re:Capitalization of the mmo market... (Score:2)
but hey, good luck on your current projects and i wish you all the luck in the world at unseating the king! =)
Re:Capitalization of the mmo market... (Score:2)
Re:Capitalization of the mmo market... (Score:1)
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
You mis-understood him (Score:2)
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.
Re:Capitalization of the mmo market... (Score:2)
You're saying that games that are a boatload of fun to play, addictive, revolutionary, and polished, can't scale to support older PCs?
Re:Capitalization of the mmo market... (Score:2)
Re:Capitalization of the mmo market... (Score:1)
When is the last time you FELT you had to have a game or you would die?
Killer App (Score:1)
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
Re:Killer App (Score:2)
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)
I'm just curious
Re:Is that current paying subscribers? (Score:1)
Re:Is that current paying subscribers? (Score:1)
New subscribers != more players (Score:5, Informative)
Your wait in queue in 3 hours, have a nice day.
Re:New subscribers != more players (Score:1)
Monstrously disapointed (Score:1, Interesting)
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
Re:Monstrously disapointed (Score:1)
Re:Monstrously disapointed (Score:1)
Nice milestone, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Math (Score:2)
Re:Math (Score:1)
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
Re:Math (Score:2)
Re:Math (Score:2)
Re:Math (Score:2)
Where can you find better graphics? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Where can you find better graphics? (Score:2)
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)
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...
Re:Where can you find better graphics? (Score:2)
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)
Re:Where can you find better graphics? (Score:2)
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.
Re:Where can you find better graphics? (Score:2)
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)
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
Re:WoW is amazing (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:WoW is amazing (Score:1)
Re:WoW is amazing (Score:2)
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
Re:WoW is amazing (Score:2)
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.
You've never played AO, then? (Score:2)
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
Re:You've never played AO, then? (Score:2)
The fact that there are/have been crappier games out there is no excuse to make a crappy game
Re:WoW is amazing (Score:1)
Re:WoW is amazing (Score:2)
Re:WoW is amazing (Score:2)
Its blizzard's fault that there wasn't any on the server (Proudmoore).
And...1 hour queue??? WTF is that? 15 minutes is an eternity. If I load the game to play it, I dont want to wait 15 minutes, much less an hour, to be able to. And its worst when you are doing something, like an instance, and get dropped for some random reason (it happens). No comming back to the group.
Re:WoW is amazing (Score:1)
Well, he had his chance. He can always re-roll on a better server.. it's not like it takes a long time to level up. Switch sides too (Horde/Alliance).
Besides, reading the site, it's possibly they will re-enable the character moves (I had forgotten they turned it off weeks ago).
Re:WoW is amazing (Score:2)
Nope, I didn't.
He can always re-roll on a better server..
Well, I'm not a solo player, I have friends and a guild. I'm not interested in loosing that. The whole point of playing a MMORPG is the social part, otherwise I'd be playing another RPG solo.
Besides, reading the site, it's possibly they will re-enable the character moves (I had forgotten they turned it off weeks ago). Try months. And only for some specific servers (2 or 3).And only for a week or two.
My point is, the
Re:WoW is amazing (Score:2)
What exactly are you basing that statistic on?
Re:WoW is amazing (Score:1)
Geez.. have you never posted on
It's called an educated, logical, guess... based on what I know to be true from past years of experience and community involvment.
Re:WoW is amazing (Score:2)
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
Re:WoW is amazing (Score:2)
Those alone are usually enough to make the educated guess that official forums are the worst way to assess how well a game is actually doing. That being said, I find there's usually a certain percentage of
WoW (Score:4, Funny)
ducks...
Macau? (Score:1)
Two million dollars... er, players (Score:2, Funny)
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
100% or these statistics were made up on the spot because I am bitter. When are we going to have a PVPRP server?
nnooiissee
Good for Blizzard, but good for the player? (Score:1)
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.
Re:Good for Blizzard, but good for the player? (Score:2)
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
Re:Good for Blizzard, but good for the player? (Score:2)
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
Re:Good for Blizzard, but good for the player? (Score:2)
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)
Blizzard should stop being cheap with service. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Blizzard should stop being cheap with service. (Score:2)
But then we'd have to duel to the death over who gets Cay and who gets Fangtooth?
Beware - don't slashdot the Murloc
Re:China will ban it. (Score:1)
Re:China will ban it. (Score:2)
Re:China will ban it. (Score:1)
Re:Give WoW players a place to talk and they Bitch (Score:2)
And, since I'm a n00b at WoW, I don't go and do battlegrounds.