World of Warcraft Tops 5M Subscribers 59
jkdove writes "In a press release today, Blizzard announced that it 'has surpassed five million customers worldwide.' GamerGod had an opinion article on why exactly so many people are playing, back when the four Million player mark was reached." From that article: "Thus, if you want to produce the next smash hit MMORPG, is it enough to make the game easy to solo and to level? I don't think so, although I'm pretty certain that there will be some game developers trying this strategy. World of Warcraft has a secret weapon, which isn't that easy to clone..."
Re:fp (Score:1)
Re:fp (Score:1)
Now or Have had? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Now or Have had? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Now or Have had? (Score:2)
Although it does break one of the premises for a "happy" MMORPG - more cash in the real world should not make you any better at playing a MMORPG. People play those games to escape the real world, and don't enjoy people dragging it back in there with them.
Re:Now or Have had? (Score:2)
Re:Now or Have had? (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead, they chose the loosest term possible - 'customer' - that number probably means bought retail game box.
Re:Now or Have had? (Score:4, Informative)
"World of Warcraft's Customer Definition
World of Warcraft customers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or purchased a prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the installation box bundled with one free month access. Internet Game Room players that have accessed the game over the last seven days are also counted as customers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Customers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules."
So those 5 million customers are based on anyone who has a current paid-for account.
Re:Now or Have had? (Score:2)
Blizzard is just maintaining its high standard (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Blizzard is just maintaining its high standard (Score:2)
And every single damn one of them Zerg rushes.
Re:Blizzard is just maintaining its high standard (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:Blizzard is just maintaining its high standard (Score:2)
WoW is definately _NOT_ the best MMORPG. (I've been playing since the Beta.) What it is though, is better then 80% of the OTHER MMORPGs -- most of the annoying problems are addressed (fortunately mine-jacking isn't too common.)
To give a poor analogy:
If you have a few normal looking woman, and an better-then-average looking womans walks by, she looks beautiful in comparison. Wow is the better-then-average looking woman. It's all relative.
Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, which one is the best?
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
That question is ambiguous. Best at _what_? I would say, none, at the moment. They all have their strengths and weaknesses.
I'm tired of almost every MMORPG having XP = Monsters Killed. Games need to let go of the 1970's (classes, and a warped view of what eXperience Points are), and embrace the new millennium.
i.e.
I can't be a pure crafts{wo}man in WoW without being a fighter. Sadly, you don't get XP for crafting, only killing and exploring. UO had the right idea with tra
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
As for your thoughts on scalability, player property, etc. - I happen to agre
Re:Blizzard is just maintaining its high standard (Score:1)
http://www.gamespot.com/games.html?platform=&categ ory=Massively+Multiplayer&date_filter=all&type=top _rated [gamespot.com]
Another site that ranks games based on dozens of reviews(WoW has 60 reviews!)
http://www.gamerankings.com/itemrankings/simplerat ings.asp [gamerankings.com]
The critics seem to agree that World of Warcraft is the best MMORPG ever made, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
Re:Blizzard is just maintaining its high standard (Score:1)
Soloing (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously, I didn't solo the whole time. I joined a few groups here and there, but some of them were some real whiners who would abandon the group halfway through a dungeon or somesuch nonsense I'd say the people I met were nicer than not on average, but I don't have much fun playing with random strangers, regardless. I recently joined a guild along with a friend, but he hasn't been in the game since. I'm about ready to just start playing my main character with the guild and leave him behind just so I can actually have some fun with this game. Hopefully it'll be enjoyable. Otherwise I don't think I'll renew my subscription.
My point is, soloing is killing WoW for me. The entire game is designed around it. All the missions are about you, personally. No NPCs want to hire a group for a difficult quest. They all hire individual players who can then choose to do it together or not. I'd rather play a single-player version of the game, really.
Now that I've cut my teeth on WoW, I'm starting to look for an MMORPG that'll suit me better. I wonder how many of the subscribers are in a similar situation. I find the limited number of classes and silly armor sets result in most player characters being the same. I'd rather start with a mostly blank slate and grow into a class I enjoy as I develop skills, learning class-specific abilities as I advance, which further influence my development. I like the gameplay of WoW, but its fixed development paths and encouragement of solo play are boring me. It's a difficult spot to be in since as far as I can see no other current MMORPG has a similar quest system to WoW, or anything else I'd actually enjoy doing. I keep looking at other titles in development, but I have yet to spot something that really appeals to me.
Re:Soloing (Score:2)
I've read that people tend to be on average less selfish in FFXI then in WOW. It has a good selections of classes and the freedom to switch between them.
While not a smash hit like WOW, it has been quite successful and will be around for a long time.
Re:Soloing (Score:2)
Re:Soloing (Score:2)
I played both games (WoW since September and almost two years of FFXI+both expansions) and there is so much drama in either game that you just can't enjoy it if you're playing without your RL friends.
WoW is more rewarding for your time. There's no match for the party machine in FFXI, but then again, when you've made the 30th trip back t
Re:Soloing (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Soloing (Score:1)
Re:Soloing (Score:3, Interesting)
Or EQ2. Or DDO.
Seriously. A game where I don't have to group up with the tools spamming "ur gay" in the barrens is a game I can appreciate. Warcraft is the first game since AC that really had any strength at soloing. CoH had a little of it, but it was only a little and has since been nerfed into the ground. (though in a way that made the solo game stronger as the high-end there degenerated into herding madness which usually means a lot of players to get the instance to spawn that many mobs
Re:Soloing (Score:2)
Honestly, after taking multiple characters questing in that zone, the discussions are the only thing that make the zone bearable...
Re:Soloing (Score:2)
Re:Soloing --- GuildWars (Score:1)
Using NPC henchmen to form your party, while available, is simply not enough in most case; you will be forced to select real people to form your groups as the henchmen AI is pretty weak.
Also, since this is not a true MMORPG, every task you perform will be done in an instance with your party. My only major beef with this is that party sizes are limited to 2/4/6/8 depending on the level of the area you
It's simple, really (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a quick analysis of the people criticizing the game in blogs, in forums, and on the web....what do they all have in common? Surprise! They're on their computers and, to judge by the amount they write, they have AMPLE spare time.
No wonder these particular people (self-evidently overrepresented in forums, etc) are bored with the game. If you have 500 hours of spare time in as little as 2 months (I've heard of people levelling to 60 in less than a month, which is conceivable, I guess), then YES, THE GAME DOESN'T HAVE ENOUGH CONTENT FOR YOU.
But the secret is no secret. *Most* people don't have this sort of time. *Most* people work for a living, 50+ hours per week, and with home, family, and community commitments can spend something like 10 hours per week online. That means for most people, getting to 60 takes something under a year.
Plus WoW really excels at giving the player a huge variety of experiences - from the many different races and classes with totally different skills and tactics, to the zones. There are an AMPLE number of zones that really FEEL different - Tanaris, Winterspring, Burning Steppes all come to mind, but even very similar places 'feel' unique - Feralas, Ashenvale, Felwood...all deciduous forests but each somehow interesting in their own way. Levelling up a Tauren hunter in the Barrens is 1000% different from the experience of a Gnome Mage in Dun Morogh. So every time the player gets slightly bored, they can amuse themselves with a totally different 'alt' experience.
WoW keeps it very fresh for the bulk of the experience of the average player. Yes, the uberl33ts find it goes too fast, and I will admit that I personally am a little bored at 60 since there is absolutely no solo content for a topped out player. I came to WoW because WW2OL was fun, but required 3-4 hour blocks of time to accomplish anything. Now, at 60 in WoW, it's the same story. So I have a couple of alts I'm working on levelling, and despite having played the game almost exclusively for nearly a year, the adventures with these new alts are really quite fun.
Plus, the expansion pack will then once again open advancement for us 60s sick of bumping against the glass ceiling. I for one will certainly buy 2 of them - Blizz, just sign me up.
So if other companies want to mimic WoW's success, they should IMO take note of a few salient points:
- realize that your clientele are NOT the diehard gamers whinging in your forums.
- test, test, test. Because your most lucrative market is not those hardcore gamers, your game *MUST* *MUST* be stable as a rock. Force them to reboot a couple of times, or have a game that locks up, and the casual player will simply return it or give up. They won't struggle with complex patches and system settings. It must play smoothly and entertain right out of the box.
- test, test, test. Again, make sure that UI is dead-simple. Not simplistic, people do want to be engaged by what they are doing, but simple. Frankly, most people at this user level like clicking the mouse. Key commands are useful shortcuts, but let them do almost everything with their mouse, and they'll have fun.
- content. ironically, it's the casual gamers that will be the sharpest critics of your game and content. Hardcore players will put up with goofy graphics, etc while casual players, if it's ugly they simply will grow tired of it soon. Variety is the spice of life, even virtually. Killing rats forever is BORING. Running through the same endless forest is BORING. There are a wonderful variety of quests in WoW (admittedly, ony a fairly small % are really creative), enough to always keep you wondering what's next. THAT'S WHERE YOU MAKE YOUR $$$.
Re:It's simple, really (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. And, that goes for any game.
Many companies screw up by changing a game based on the rabid whingers on forums only to find out that most of them will never be happy and will just start crying about something else. They should let that less than 1% of their forum membership rant. They usually whinge everywhere for every game they play and trying to shut them up by changing the game will not work.
If the game is well made, and extremely bug free, those changes will often piss off the more silent majority and they'll bail out to another game. For games that cost $$$ per month, this is even more crucial. When a customer has to see a charge every month, they'll reflect on whether the cost is worth it every 30 days.
5 million subscribers ... (Score:3, Interesting)
My wife and I are both WoW addicts. Blizzard has done a great job of making MMOs approachable to "casual gamers", so much so that we're probably not considered "casual" anymore by most standards. Not only do they bring some innovation to the genre, they just know how to POLISH their games so well.
Congrats to Blizzard!
Cool! (Score:4, Funny)
Congrats! (Score:2, Funny)
I'd love to see a breakdown by country.
I stopped playing.... (Score:2)
I can't imagine this game has 5 million current subscribers. The game just gets too boring after awhile to hold a
Re:I stopped playing.... (Score:1)
The first billion dollar game? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The first billion dollar game? (Score:1)
Lineage has over 2,000,000 subscribers and peaked at 4,000,000 for the sake of argument Ill use 2,000,000. Ill take its subscription cost as $10. So thats 2,000,000 * 10 * 12 = 240,000,000 for one year. Considering its subscription cost is more than $10 and there are more than 2,000,000 players thats an underestimate.
The game was released in 1998 so even if you give it a couple of years warm up it will easily have hit the billion mark by now.
Course i
Re:The first billion dollar game? (Score:2)
Although, despite what the complainers on the WoW forums say, they're nowhere near that in profits. They took $37 million loss last year, and a $7 million profit this year, both largely due to WoW [slashdot.org].
At least now, the major server madness is past. It's unlikely they'll be doing anymore multi-millio
Re:The first billion dollar game? (Score:1)
WoW (Score:2, Insightful)
Which is exactly correct.
Blizzard managed to woo the 14-yr olds off of their X-Box's...which is worth noting, but most veteran fantasy gamers find WoW to be hollow and short-lived. The interface is brilliant, some of the gameplay mechanisms are awesome...but they drop the ball huge on the end-game.
Just like Diablo was the fast-food version of single player RPG
Re:WoW (Score:2)
I was able to get to lvl 60 in WoW without a lot of effort, nor a lot of time, and no need for a lot of patience. I played a non-Shadow Priest for the first 40 levels which is probably the single toughest class to play solo and switched over to Shadow to speed up my leveling. Now that I'm lvl 60, there
Re:WoW (Score:1)
Ultima Online has become increasingly "fast-food" in nature over the years, getting dumbed down more with each publish.
And then there's the recent Star Wars Galaxies re-vamp. Ugh.
I'm glad Blizzard is bringing fresh blood to the MMORPG market, but the fast-food attitude/expectation that comes with that is quickly killing the feel of some of the older MMOs.
The older offerings seem to feel that t
Re:WoW (Score:3, Insightful)
'Veteran fantasy gamers'...lol.
Blizzard = masterful GAME design (Score:1)
If it was easy, other people would have done it. How come this works and yet SWG doesn't, to the same extent? I name SWG specifically here because Star Wars is s
Re:Blizzard = masterful GAME design (Score:1)
Woot! (Score:1)