World of Warcraft For The Win 437
In a press release from their website, Blizzard has announced that World of Warcraft has won. Or, more specifically, that the game "has surpassed 1.5 million paying customers in China - just a month following the game's commercial launch on June 7, 2005. The critically acclaimed World of Warcraft has now achieved another significant milestone as the largest MMORPG in the world, with more than 3.5 million global customers." Relatedly, Gamespy's OnLife column this week centers around the WoW duping story that we touched on earlier. From the article: "Needless to say, many players are a bit incensed that Blizzard isn't taking this as seriously as they feel it should. Others, though, are convinced that there isn't any duping actually going on. It's an urban myth, they say, which gullible forumites are unwittingly perpetuating."
Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:4, Informative)
Screenshots [tokyo-web.org] show this as well.
I know WoW needs some good press to balance out the bad... but don't deny the problem exists.
The chinese connection is even odder... because most of them are FARMERS in WoW. Therefore, they are hurt the most by this dupe bug! These guys have been just working and working to farm-in cash... and others have been just getting the gold for free.
This may be enough to break my WoW addiction... if I don't get booted and banned first.
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:5, Insightful)
One would have to try the process themselves, and, in so doing, risk getting banned by Blizzard. I don't think this bug (if it does indeed exist) is going to have as big of an effect in the end as people think it will.
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't even need Photoshop. You can do that with macros. I had to split them into four macros due to the 255 char limit, but try these out:
The end result? CmdrTaco is up to something! [xenoveritas.org] (Remember all real account names can't have mixed case - they're always with an initial capital and then all lowercase.)
Ironically enough, because that screenshot wasn't "faked" per se, and is really what the ingame interface would look like, comparing it with the "dupe proof" screen shot shows that the dupe screenshot was faked in Photoshop!
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:3, Interesting)
What does that mean? The servers run 24 hours a day. They don't "first load up" early in the morning. The only time a server consistantly shuts down is the Tuesday maintenanc
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:5, Insightful)
But then again, that's not proof that it DOESN'T exist.
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:5, Informative)
This screenshot does in fact appear to be a hoax.
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:4)
Other than cropping and converting to PNG, the image has not been modified in any way.
Zoom in on the items and you can clearly see that the background texture does not get tiled by each item and is continuous from the top to the bottom of the auction frame.
Note that there is a tiling band that extends vertically above the Silver bidding text field, and that band appears in both this image and the hoax image, but the horizontal bands seen in the hoax image are missing.
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:2)
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:4, Insightful)
Also... if you don't trust the original picture, how you can trust these "new" pictures... which have obviously been photoshopped!
I don't know what to believe anymore...
Head spinning. (grin)
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:2)
One might assume that this isn't normal - since the background to the buttons on the left are dissimilar - but this is just an assumption...
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:2, Insightful)
For these occasions Imageshack [imageshack.com] is a quick and easy solution.
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:3, Informative)
Can you say SCAM? (Score:3, Funny)
"Hey man, I'll hold all of your money while you log off/on to dupe it!"
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:3, Funny)
Forums are great breeding grounds. (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing was, the instructions I gave were so convoluted that anyone attempting to follow them would have been blatantly obvious. Of course it actually did work. Back then the only way to get the UO team to jump was to light them up in the forums. Even UO's Green Acres got clamped down after hounding the team in the forusm
Yet at the same time many other postings were just bunk. You get copy cats who with just a slight variation manage to start wildfires that have no basis. This is best done on fan sites where certain words are known trigger fanatics into waves of frenzy. It is even easier today as many emulators exist which can be used to produce screenshots which are game engine generated and not photoshopped.
Still there are some game companies that ignore the problems, or worse acknowledge them and do nothing. The best example is Turbine games who allowed and still allow cheating/macroing/etc in their first game Asheron's Call. They allow things that make other MMORPG developers flinch. What this does for the industry is cause all such cheating/macroing/duping to be considered a norm. On the really bad side it gives some players reason to believe that if you can cheat in one game everyone should cheat, or if someone is really far ahead that they are just cheating.
Blizzard really has done a good job on being proactive. I think people need to realize that they cannot just swing the sword of banning without doing the research needed to ensure they get the right people. Collateral damage does not go over well in these games.
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:2)
I've did a
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Duping ? (Score:2)
1.5million subscribers in China? (Score:3, Funny)
Good work (Score:2)
Re:Good work (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Good work (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Good work (Score:3, Insightful)
But any game like this is what you make out of it. If you really want to play WoW and never ever ever talk to anyone else or even acknowledge anyone else and that would be ok. Or you could be totally social and go on PvP raids, join and guild etc etc. You can do what you want really.
But t
Re:Good work (Score:4, Insightful)
Die-hard WoW players see the instanced battle areas as Guild Wars' biggest weakness, but I see them as its biggest strength.
Re:Good work (Score:5, Interesting)
Eh? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, it's killing Rockstar. And are you aware of how many MMPORGs crash and burn, and how much more they cost to make compared to a regular game?
There's a large gaming market of people like me - people who want to game ~5-10 hrs/week, which isn't enough time to become expert at a game, and who want to have fun without treating a game like a job. I have a job - that's what I'm escaping with the game. I also don't want to subscribe to a damned game.
Put that together and single player games have a lot of life left in them.
Re:Eh? (Score:2)
The next GTA seems to be going the MMORPG-way though (from early reports) : Then again, if they keep churning out sequels to GTA as good as they did until now, I won't lose hope in them releasing another great, singleplayer-focused, GTA game.
Re:Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
And UbiSoft. Hell, just look at how many millions of copies of the Splinter Cell series were sold with their strengths as compelling, single-player games. And the most recent came out years ago - about
Same with the Thief series which has no multiplayer (although joint missions on that would be very cool if done like SC:CT coop multiplayer). Of course, Valve's Half-Life 2 was incredibly strong in its single-player method which killed it. {/sarcasm}
Obviously, single-player games are still very much in demand if they're made properly (unlike classic blunders like Ultima: Ascension).
Yeah, MMORPGs are just the only way to go. I've never understood that mentality. It's just as invalid now as it was over five years ago when the death of single-player was also held in strong opinion by many.
Re:Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing i notice on the internet is that there is only one answer and everything else is 100% wrong. Intel vs. AMD, Nvidia vs ATI, Xbox vs PS, MS vs Apple, Windows vs Linux, etc etc etc.
You have to pick one and everything else sucks. Why cant people just realize that you can have your cake and eat it too. I have an Xbox and a PS2 and i love them both. I play WoW all weekend and i love it but during the week while i have work i like to sit down and play GTA or Halo. My last card was an ATI and now I have an Nvidia and they both work great.
My point is that technology, just like the rest of the world, is not black and white. There are shades of grey and different opinions. Not all games are going to go online and games that are online are gonna stick around and consumers will love them both for their own reasons.
Re:Eh? (Score:4, Funny)
If we can get a few hundred million people in Chinese spending all day everyday addicted to grinds their economic productivity will crater and it will level the playing field with the West where everyone has been wasting all day everyday playing FPS's and dungeon crawls for a while now, which is a key, albeit relatively new, component in why Western economic productiviy and education is cratering. It was due to TV originally but TV is boring, and doesn't have the Pavlovian grip on people games do, so now everyone squanders their lives playing games to no productive end (unless you are eeking out a living farming and selling gold on Ebay).
Re:Eh? (Score:2)
World of warcraft has a system that rewards people who don't play for awhile, increasing the amount of benefit from experience. It is targetted specifically at the 5-10 hour players, like you. Sure yo
How much does it cost? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How much does it cost? (Score:5, Informative)
From blizzard:
"Only players who have purchased an authorized CD key will be able to activate their accounts and enter the game. Each CD key costs 30 Yuan/RMB and can be purchased with a World of Warcraft Points Card. Point Cards also cost 30 Yuan/RMB and can be used at a rate of 9 points per hour (0.45 Yuan/hour) to play World of Warcraft."
Re:How much does it cost? (Score:2)
On a more serious note, never, ever before has my sig been so truly on topic:
Poor reading (Score:3, Funny)
good for china (Score:2, Funny)
Re:good for china (Score:5, Informative)
In the average sweatshop you have 1 person manning 2 or 3 computers. The first 1 or 2 computers is a charecter being ran by simple macros(and looting programs) requiring minimal player interaction, farming scarlet monestary for example. The final one is usually a level 60 rogue farming difficult mobs, such as the elites in tyr's hand. ( If you go to tyr's hand on any server you will find about 5 to 10 rogues farming 24/7, all chinese)
The biggest issue with the chinese farmer sweatshops where players get payed 37 cents an hour to farm gold, is that there are always employees that speak english near by. These employees who have a degree in english have 3 main functions.
1.) Sell items to players in IF/ORG trade.
2.) Assist other employees with player interaction.
3.) Respond to GM tells.
Re:good for china (Score:3, Funny)
In China ?.. (Score:3, Informative)
Anwyay, you'll find me a the local tavern where all the chinese play talking about Democracy and Fair market prices. If you visit you'll get a free sword of omens - identical to what I use. I'd like to see WoW ban me or block these chinese yuppies from hearing capitalist propoganda (like Google did).
Face it people, they have the population, they have the money (thanks to US shipping manufacturing jobs there last decade) and they have the market.
Re: (Score:2)
This game is a drug... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've seen too many people waste hundreds and hundreds of hours on it....neglecting other, more important things. I'm not even going to touch it.
Re:This game is a drug... (Score:2, Insightful)
Plenty of people play this game without any repercussions. I don't think it's the game's fault that people are getting addicted.
Re:This game is a drug... (Score:2)
Granted, I played a mud for 9 years and dealt with its addiction and I think I'm just sorta over it.
Re:This game is a drug... (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, whos to say whats important? Life is after all about the journey, since we all end up at the same destination.
If you think about it (Score:3, Interesting)
They got caught flatfooted initially but I thought they did a pretty good job recovering from their early mistakes. Now with their massive global subscriber base they have turned into the real juggernaught in the MMO industry.
Now if only they would get off their asses and release Starcraft 2 already.
Re:If you think about it (Score:2, Informative)
I got into WoW during the CB1 era, and was playing on opening day. Yes, they got caught with their pants down, badly.
It still surprises me that this game is retaining so many customers, though. Yes, it is very engrossing for 59 levels. You hit 60, though, and there is not much to do, besides PvP and run through the same dungeons over and over again.
Bugs that are a detriment to gameplay take months to get fixed, if at all. A bug that caused players to disconnect if t
I wonder how many subscibers (Score:5, Funny)
Hey editors! (Score:3, Funny)
1.5 million paying customers? (Score:3, Interesting)
On some servers there isn't a single high level area that doesn't have a handful of suspiciously silent level 60's killing the same stuff over and over for hours. The macroing is advanced enough that if you follow them for a short while, you'll quickly notice them taking the exact same route time and time again, especially in areas that have chests to open.
I know it's not fair to generalize the entirety of China's playerbase as farmers, but it's well known that it is happening, and is also well known that much of the farming is done by people in Asian countries.
On one hand it's interesting to see such an industry spring up, channeling money into poorer hands, but on the other, it'd be real nice to play an online game without having to compete against people doing a job.
Re:1.5 million paying customers? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:1.5 million paying customers? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:1.5 million paying customers? (Score:3, Informative)
You can't attack players of your own faction, and my guess is that farmers choose to farm in areas dominated by their own faction so that the chance of any of the enemy happening by is slim. Also, it's a really big game world, and, except in major cities, players are spread out sparsely, so you're not likely to run into someone farming in an out-of-the-way place. Finally, you don't gain gold, items or experience from k
Re:1.5 million paying customers? (Score:2)
Clarification on Farmers (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Clarification on Farmers (Score:2)
I can't tell you how many times I hear about this chinese farming crap in guild chat, or how often I hear phrases like, "jew down", etc.
I played EQ for 4 years and there were racists in that too but nothing compared to what I've experiencd in WoW.
Re:Clarification on Farmers (Score:3, Insightful)
Lance Armstrong controversy again? (Score:2, Funny)
That's what happens when you launch in Europe - They start accusing the Americans of using high tech duping methods that get past the officials.
Look. If Blizzard says he's not duping, he's not.
Get over it.
Wow...I just love the rampant racism (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, I'm very close to quitting the game over this kind of crap. Every guild I join is litered with racists and the leaders don't do anything about it (some even join in).
I reported a guy for racism in barrens chat and I got flamed to high heaven for it. Pathetic.
Re:Wow...I just love the rampant racism (Score:2)
Re:Wow...I just love the rampant racism (Score:2)
Also, if you don't know what "playing the race card" means then DON'T FUCKING USE IT. It's just as bad to call someone for playing the race card when they aren't as it is to actually do it.
Re:Wow...I just love the rampant racism (Score:3)
Yes, they exist for the purpose of focusing negative attention. So I suppose for you all Mexicans are lazy and all blacks are dumb, right? After all, there's a reason stereotypes exist.
"Oh and you tossed down the race card so hard it shattered."
Really? Gee, you're so sensitive. I'll try to throw softer next time so I don't ruffle your gentle feathers. *huggles*
"Get over yourself. No one cares."
I am over myself. And YOU don't care. Some people obviously do.
"People w
Re:Wow...I just love the rampant racism (Score:3, Insightful)
People do refer to farmers in a derogatory way, and a lot of time, they refer to them as Chinese Gold Farmers. But in all fairness, a lot of the farming shops are Chinese shops. That's not to say that there aren't white, black, hispanic, German, French, Korean, Japanese and Inuit farmers as well. It's simply a numbers game.
When something happens one way 99% of the time, people get la
Re:Wow...I just love the rampant racism (Score:2)
Just because a lot of people that are in jail are black doesn't mean that all black people are criminals.
However, when you say something like that enough, you start to believe it.
Re:Wow...I just love the rampant racism (Score:4, Insightful)
Fortunately there isn't any racism in the actual game, you know like the alliance and horde constantly trying to kill each other and if PVP is off giving each other rude gestures, etc.
So why is racism OK in the fantasy setting and you are totally hyper about it in the fantasy setting when its applied to meatspace races. Try subsistiting Horde for Chinese and vice versa and tell me whats the difference.
The more interesting Chinese angle to me is what happens if you create a "Freedom and Democracy" guild and you spend all your time in chat talking about "Freedom and Democracty" in guild chat, and advocating the overthrow of communists governments. Are the Chinese monitoring it, or did Blizzard add "Freedom" and Democracy" to the in game censorship list for all Chinese logins.
WOW was fun for a few months but it eventually starts to feel like a time wasting, repetitive grind like all dungeon crawls. The instances are the cool thing about WOW but once you've done them all a few times they get old, like all weak AI driven NPC dungeon. PVP would be cool but unless you have balance on the server between the number of Horde and Alliance playing PVP, which almost never happens, it sucks. In this case the racial split sucks.
Re:Wow...I just love the rampant racism (Score:2)
The worse thing you can do with racism is ignore it.
Re:Wow...I just love the rampant racism (Score:2)
2) The U.S. server were online 6 months before the Chinese ones so anyone in China who didn't want to wait had to get on a U.S. server.
3) You are assuming that all chinese people want to play only with other chinese people. This is patently false. There are many chinese people who want to play on english speaking server just to learn english better. (Yes, I know it's sad that some people may be learning english from morons in WoW.).
filtering WoW content (Score:2)
Could we see pro-democracy people in China meeting in some strange dungeon or cave in the game to talk about things the Chinese gov does not want them to?
Re:filtering WoW content (Score:2)
It depends. Since money is involved, it is easier to trace people. Maybe the government introduces some characters in the game with pro-democoracy sounding names. Something inconspicuous and subtle. Enough for other simularly minded people to notice, but not the masses. This guy then leads you into a cavern, to talk pro-democoracy. The whole time, the g
Just goes to show you. (Score:2)
Everquest didn't peak near these numbers. Why? It's just not fun.
How Much Do They Pay (Score:2)
Why are they all on the US servers then? (Score:2)
Blizzard (Score:2)
Not the first time (Score:3, Informative)
These duped items, however, had some internal identifier in common. Blizzard deleted all the copied items, leaving a lot of people who had bought them quite sad. I would not be surprised if the same would be true in WoW.
I doubt gold has the same feature though - the stolen gold is probably here to stay. However, I bet there's records of people going in and out of instances - people are going to get busted if this really works.
I haven't seen any sign of this exploit happening on my server.
chinese wow (Score:3, Informative)
3.5 million subscribers. (Score:2, Informative)
$50 per game x 3.5 million = $175 million
$15 per month x 3.5 million = $52.5 million per month
$52.5 million x 12 months = $630 million per year in subscription fees.
I'm in the wrong damn business!
Guild Wars (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, and there is no monthly fee.
Seriously, you should try it out. You don't even have to go to the store, you can download the client [guildwars.com] and then use it to purchase your account online.
Re:Guild Wars (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Guild Wars (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting that they have a few ex Blizzard people [arena.net]!
Mike O'Brien, Founder and Programmer, was also a company director of Blizzard, where he worked for four and one-half years. He was most recently the team lead and lead programmer of Warcraft III, and personally developed the game's 3D rendering engine. Mike was the original creator and architect of Battle.net and was lead programmer on that project. He was also a senior programmer on StarCraft and Diablo, as well as the author of the network code for both games, and was a programmer on Warcraft II. Mike was featured as one of the 25 most influential people in the game industry in PC Gamer's September 1999 cover story, "Game Gods."
Patrick Wyatt, Founder and Programmer, was previously Blizzard Entertainment's Vice President of Research and Development. He was most recently the team lead and lead programmer of Battle.net. Previously, Pat was a senior programmer on both StarCraft and Diablo, and wrote the multiplayer code for both games. He was also a producer and senior programmer on Warcraft II, for which he wrote both the networking and multiplayer code, and producer and lead programmer for Warcraft I. Pat also worked on Lost Vikings, Battle Chess, Rock and Roll Racing, Death and Return of Superman, and Justice League Task Force. Pat was employed at Blizzard more than eight years.
Jeff Strain, Founder and Programmer, was the team lead and lead programmer of Blizzard's massively multiplayer role-playing game, World of Warcraft. He was also a senior programmer on both Warcraft III and StarCraft, and a programmer on Diablo. Jeff was the creator of the StarCraft Campaign Editor and was employed at Blizzard for four years.
Re:Guild Wars (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Guild Wars (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry Guild wars does not have "excellent" end game content, the only "end game" content is eaten up rather fast, the item and skill system is horribly redundant, do I neeed 4 blocking skills which mostly do the same thing in different tree's when I can only carry around 8 skills at a time?
"PVE advancement supports PVP"
Blah, many PVP'ers hate the fact that they have to go through the single player game to get the best items and skills. I wouldn't exactly call that a feature.
"No monthly fee"
Well gee GW is not an MMO, its more like a super Peer-2-peer hub, whenever you enter the gameworld you can only have a maximum of 8 human controlled characters (depending on town)
"Skill based rather than item/experience based"
What the hell are you talking about? The computer AUTOMATICALLY attacks for you you click icons and you can't really effectively run from certain battles if you're not playing with other human beings. If you want a "real" skill based RPG look at diablo, way more skill is involved because you have way more freedom over your characters movement and even that is stretching it, a true skill based game would take fighting game mechanics and wrap them inside an RPG, think Soulcalibur 2 gameplay mechanics inside a game like diablo.
"All your characters can share money and treasure amongst themselves."
Which doesn't matter because the treasure, skills and magic item system is so damn shallow it makes even the diablo series look like God compared to GW. Guild wars once you get high level becomes insanely boring because you run out of things to do, with low level caps and only being able to take 8 skills with you, on top of having little reason to fight monsters for better gear because most of the gear in GW is so undifferentiated from each other for the sake of pvp "balance" that it totally kills the PvE experience.
GW is only a good game, not a great game, Diablo and Diablo 2 were superior games. GW may be more fun then any MMO out there but as a game, gamers play games for fun. And GW simply isn't even remotely as good as games much older then it.
Cheating (Score:4, Insightful)
I think there will be a lawsuit. Gamers demand that the people running the games keep play within the rules.
Personally, I never liked the on-line games. I preffer to play single player games. Back in the day, Bards Tale, Wizardry, Might and Magic were all awesome games that did not need 20,000 on-line players to make it fun. There were puzzles, you built your team, and if you could, you beat the game.
What happens with on-line games? Somebody with more money than brains goes to ebay and buys a FireSword +25 fire damage, and DiamondHelm -15AC, he also buys 5 bottles of healing potions. He then sets out, and defeats monsters that should be a challange, he does quickly. He advances a few levels. Then he meets some other character owned by a real person. They are the same level, so it should be an even fight, the one who plans better should win. But it is not a fair fight when the ebay buying guy whips out his Scrolls of Instant Death, and kills your character that you spent a month developing. Gee, I did not see a level 3 character unleashing a scroll that does 150 points of damage.
What can a player do to get even, go to ebay and cheat too. Let the black market take over.
And what is even worse than the ebay people who buy stuff for their characters they should not have, are the ones who find exploits in the game, ways to manipulate it. I've read reports of people running scripts to advance their characters. The human owner does not even have to be at the computer. They just run the script, go to bed, and wake up with a character that gained 10 levels.
Games are only fun if everyone plays by the rules. It is like baseball, it stops being fun when you catch the pitcher rubbing the ball against sandpaper in his glove. Or when the batter corks his bat. Then it becomes a cheater who makes the game frustrating for everyone else.
There should be some way of keeping track of human players honor. If someone is caught cheating at one game, they are not allowed in another.
You should play them, before flaming (Score:5, Informative)
No matter how much money you spend on your character, you will never be uber. Period. There are monsters, lots of them, that you will not be able to kill by yourself. Doesn't matter how much of anything you bought, you can have the best equipmetn in the game, you still will die to them in less than 5 seconds. There are monsters that require 40 people to kill, not only that, they require those 40 people to be a cross section of different classes, and to be well coordinated. If you fail to properly execute your strategy, you die.
Now speaking of buying of items, you cannot buy the best items in the game, for any amount of money. Many items in the game, including all the most powerful, bind to your charater when picked up. That means you can never give them to someone else. So you actually have to go out and do the necessary steps to get the item.
And there are no scrool of instant death, or anything like that. No matter how powerful you get, other players will always be a challenge for you. Even low level ones. I've seen a mob of level 10-20 players whack a level 60 player. He killed quite a few of them, but they won in the end. No such thing as irresitable superiority.
Speaking of death, it's no big deal. They don't kill you and you're done, they kill you and you are able to come back after a bit, and keep playing. You don't lose your character or anything.
They are fun, a lot of fun, and though cheating happens some times, generally those that do get their asses banned.
24 hours into the future (Score:3, Funny)
[09:38] spyrral@mac.com: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/21
[09:55] ephardtthatcher: what's the big deal?
[09:55] spyrral@mac.com: it's an argument about chinese gold farming
[09:55] spyrral@mac.com: straight cyberpunk
[09:56] ephardtthatcher: hahaha
[09:56] ephardtthatcher: amazing
[09:57] spyrral@mac.com: the funny thing is, I read a short story about this basic subject that was set like 10 years in the future.
[09:57] spyrral@mac.com: you know what's next right?
[09:57] spyrral@mac.com: vigilante anti-farming groups
[09:57] spyrral@mac.com: then labor organisers
[09:58] spyrral@mac.com: the the farming companies start hiring mercs to protect the farmers
[09:58] spyrral@mac.com: oh god
[09:58] spyrral@mac.com: I'm rock hard.
[09:59] ephardtthatcher: Anda's Game?
[09:59] ephardtthatcher: I loved that story.
Re:Ah, 1.5 million bored customers (Score:2)
That being said, I'm glad the game has been successful for Blizzard. Maybe they can take some of the proceeds of the game and hire some people to start programming some content. Or just move on and make World of Starcraft.
Re:Ah, 1.5 million bored customers (Score:5, Insightful)
What really bugs me is this obsession that MMO designers have with creating content that can only be appropriately experienced by legions of obsessed players. This makes particularly little sense for me in the case of World of Warcraft where there's a rather abrupt transition from being able to make decent advancement with very casual play, to a game where in order to continue perceptible advancement you have to become rather hardcore, just to enjoy a relatively small amount of game content that allows you to continue to progress.
And what I really don't know, and often wonder is, does an MMO really need to be designed in such a way that once you reach a certain point, "raid" participation becomes virtually mandatory for any kind of appreciable character progression?
People often play "fantasy" games so they can be one of a handful of heroes (or villains) along with their other friends. Not to be just another cog in an (admittedly impressive) machine with 39 other people (or 71+ other people in the case of some games/raid encounters).
I mean, that might appeal to a small percentage of people who actually enjoy the challenge of dealing with the logistics of getting that many high level players (often paired with high level egos and low levels of maturity) together and getting them to do their jobs properly and sorting out who gets to attend what raid and will be rewarded what loot according to various "DKPoint" schemes and whatnot, but for the rest of us who would prefer to just muster up a group of around 4 to 14 friends, big time raid encounters, while perhaps being a somewhat enticing challenge, seems more like work that we should be getting paid for, not something fun that we should be paying to do.
I've played a few MMOs, and I know that as soon as I reach that point where it seems like my only option to improve my character involves retreading the same content over and over and over in hopes of one of a handful of rare items, or raiding, then my excitement about the game cools down, I stop playing very much for a couple months, then I just end up quitting, like I did in World of Warcraft months ago.
I've just recently thought about playing again, to have something entertaining to do with my girlfriend when we're not together (we live about 40 minutes from one another so it's not always worth it to go see each other, depending on the amount of free time we have and what we need to get accomplished at home) but I'm pretty sure that if her and I did start playing, we'd just play to level 60, maybe a bit beyond, and then move on to something else ... because at that point, while perhaps we haven't yet "won" World of Warcraft, we'd have done all the stuff that seems fun and worthwhile.
Oh, and also, Blizzard, like every other other company that tries this MMO thing, doesn't seem to have a clue about customer relationships. They've done the "stealth nerf" thing several times, they are slow to respond to what are often very legitimate/important player concerns, and it takes a pretty long time for inexplicable changes to be reversed (if they ever are). The dupe story, I suppose, is a good example of this. At least they're not as bad as Square-Enix though. I still can't fathom the mentality of an MMO company that thinks it's a good idea to design a game to crash if you try to alt+tab, and deletes characters if a customer decides to suspend their account for three months or more.
So I'm still waiting for someone to get it right. While World of Warcraft is a fun
Totally agree. (Score:2, Informative)
They said that the game starts at 60. That is such a crock. There are five instances at 60 that are dooable: Scholomance, Stratholme, Black Rock Spire, and Upper Blackrock Spire (which is really the same zone, different parts), and Dire Maul.
There is also Molten Core, and the new Blackwing Lair, both of which normal players like me will never see since they require 40 people and assloads of organization.
But look...
The point I'm trying to make is, someone did the paper-napkin math and came to the concl
Re:Article is wrong (Score:2)
Re:Article is wrong (Score:2)
I don't doubt that there are chinese servers, but I do know that not all chinese players are on chinese servers.
Chinese rate are different (Score:2, Informative)
Re:3.5 million users.. (Score:2)
For one thing, it's *extremely* unlikely that Blizzard's IT staff is unskilled (based on their other employees, which are extremely talented. Blizzard, like several other companies I've interacted with seems to believe very strongly in having talented individuals in all aspects of business).
Which actually is a problem for them in this situation. It's not that their staff is untalented, it's that they're short-handed and
Jeez, what character do you play? Is it a troll? (Score:5, Interesting)
2. I don't have any data to back this up, but I'd be very surprised if WOW China charges the same monthly fee as WOW US or WOW EU, so your figures are way off. Also, most players I know don't pay for their subscription on a monthly basis, most pay for a few months at a time which is cheaper, and your figures don't take that into account either.
3. Game performance isn't just down to Blizzard. I can run around Ironforge between the bank and the auction house (arguably the busiest area of the game) with no lag but friends I have who play on their laptops but similar speed connections find it very laggy. It's a common misconception that all lag is down to the poor performance of Blizzard's servers: the servers aren't always the weakest link in the chain, far from it.
"Stuffing their pockets"? Hardly. If one company can claim to treat gamers right then it's Blizzard. If they were just concerned about money then there wouldn't have been free servers for Blizzard's previous games, would there? Diablo, Diablo II, Starcraft, Warcraft II BNE and Warcraft III are all free to play online via Battle.net, using servers that Blizzard still provides for free, years after the games were launched. Hardly sounds like the actions of a company that's made up of people only interested in "stuffing their pockets".
And don't try to counter with the BnetD stuff: it's called protecting your investment. Blizzard has every right to do that, just like you or anyone else.
Re:Jeez, what character do you play? Is it a troll (Score:2)
Re:Jeez, what character do you play? Is it a troll (Score:3, Interesting)
How much does a 24/7 support contract from Oracle cost?
Re:Dupe me too! (Score:2)
Every character of the same gender and race is the same size and build.
Yes, there are limited and not particularly distinguishing "face" choices, "hair" choices, and "facial hair" choices -- but there are some, and certainly 90% of the people do not look the same. But put a helmet on, armor covering most of the exposed skin, and you cannot tell people apart other than their e
Wash Your Hands! (Score:3, Funny)
Well, being an MMORPG, the game allows you to pick your friends, therefore you shouldn't be able to pick your nose (or your friend's nose)
Sorry, couldn't resist the opening...