World of Warcraft Hits 10 Million Subscribers 450
technirvana writes "Blizzard Entertainment, owners of World of Warcraft, announced today that the game now has more than 10 million paying subscribers around the world. Online gameplay costs an average of $15 USD per month. Those 10 million paying subscribers include 5.5 million players in Asia, 2.5 million in the US and 2 million in Europe. The Warcraft brand was first introduced in 1994 and World of Warcraft was launched in 2001."
That explains EVERYTHING... (Score:5, Funny)
Less competition for me? Let them play, boys, let them play!
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Re:That explains EVERYTHING... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That explains EVERYTHING... (Score:5, Funny)
Subscribers? (Score:4, Funny)
Games: World of Warcraft Hits 10 Million Virgins
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Re:Subscribers? (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh yeah? Just wait until Duke Nukem Forever comes out! Then we all really will get laid!
2001? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:2001? (Score:5, Informative)
How about taking some of that subscription money.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Once I hit 70, my desire to grind for 20 hours to get that shiny new +1 Int cloak gets a little tedious.
Re:How about taking some of that subscription mone (Score:2)
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Well, you could probably only expect so much out of a single game. Probably time for them to start on WoW II.
WoW II was delivered in December of 2006. It was officially called World of Warcraft patch 2.0.1 and was tied to the release of The Burning Crusade expansion (though it came out a month before the release of the expansion itself). What MMO vendors are starting to realize is that, no matter how disruptive a change to the technology might be, introducing a new game is orders of magnitude more disruptive to their player base (and many will simply never play the new game). This was the case with EverQuest and
Re:How about taking some of that subscription mone (Score:5, Insightful)
Blizzard is constantly rolling out new content for free - new dungeons, new raid zones, new quests, new factions... All sorts of new stuff. Compare this to something like old-school EverQuest where your money just kind of vanished and every single new addition was through a paid expansion pack.
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Re:How about taking some of that subscription mone (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm so tired of people making such statements. You get ZERO new content for FREE. You pay a monthly subscription which funds new development, among other things. You PAID for the new content. It is not free!
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They could make you pay again for what you already paid for or just not give you anything. It's been done before. At least the players get an evolving game.
(Never played any MMRPG though since the few glimpses I got always made they seem horribly tedious to me, but to each his own)
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Re:How about taking some of that subscription mone (Score:5, Insightful)
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New stuff that is exactly like the old stuff, and does nothing but kill time while they work on the next expansion, which is the only part that actually advances the plot.
The thing is that that's not true. There are ten million active accounts, certainly not all of the last three or four million are advanced Black Temple raiders who have completed all their epic sets.
What has impressed me over the time I've been playing, since December 2006 (about a month before BC was released) is how much attention to detail Blizzard pays to every facet of the game.
To name one recent example, they changed the rules for leveling recently to make experience gain higher from completed quest
Re:How about taking some of that subscription mone (Score:2)
Re:How about taking some of that subscription mone (Score:5, Informative)
For the casual players, there are the five-man instances - first the regular versions and then, when you've got your gear from those, the heroics. Heroics are an interesting twist; they aren't, as I was expecting, just tuned-up versions of the regular instances. In many cases, despite the superficial similarities, they need very different tactics. There's also a nice progression here; a group in all blues wouldn't have too many problems with Botanica or Black Morass, while even full-epic groups can find Durnholde Keep or Arcatraz tricky.
Battlegrounds are a popular way of killing time for the casual PvPers. Even if you have awful gear and suck at them, you will still get your rewards - it'll just take a bit longer. The relative ease with which you can get your PvP rewards, combined with the low time input required, has led to them being branded "welfare epics". Of course, they don't really stand up against the high-end raiding or arena epics, but I know plenty of casuals who are content with this. Over time, the lower end arena drops get pushed down into Battleground rewards anyway.
The hardcore PvPers have Arena, which really is a cut-throat environment (and is the only form of PvP in the game where getting killed is any more than a momentary annoyance). Ironically, it doesn't actually take particularly long each week - the main challenge here is putting in the time to get the gear so you can participate effectively. The top end season 3 arena gear is almost on a par with the top-end raiding epics, although with the new personal rating requirements for some pieces, it isn't necessarily easy to get.
Finally, you have raiding, which is the favorite hardcore PvE end-game activity. This is where, to my mind, Blizzard have really made strides since the Burning Crusade hit. Rather than having a 40 man raid as the entry-level point, a la Molten Core, Karazhan was a nice, relatively easy 10 man raid, which many non-hardcore guilds were able to switch to quite quickly at level 70. With the addition of Zul'Aman in the 2.3 patch, you can more or less work your way through about 2/3rds of the end-game gear progression without ever setting foot in a 25-man raid. For the genuinely hardcore who do push into the 25 man raiding scene, there's a definite progression tree with 6 different instances to work through. The difference from most of the pre-expansion end-game is dramatic and impressive.
In short, Blizzard have delivered as reasonable an end-game experience as could reasonably be expected and continue to add new content at a decent pace. At the same time, they've refined the experience for lower level players and those levelling up alts, with the new Dustwallow Marsh quests and the dramatic reduction of the amount of xp needed to level up (you can level 1-60 in WoW now faster than you can in the fully-offline Final Fantasy XII). Of course, things are far from perfect, and I can see a few dark clouds on the horizon.
The most significant of these is that, as a former Final Fantasy XI player (where the level cap never went above 75), I must confess to being a bit worried by Blizzard's intention to slam the level cap up with 10 with every new expansion. What this essentially means is that any end-game gear you acquired before the expansion hit is immediately obsolete. Green is suddenly the new Purple. Effectively, this amounts to a complete end-game reboot every 12-18 months. While beneficial in some respects (shaking up the scene, letting newcomers get a foot on the ladder), in the long term it is just going to drive people away and kill the end-game scene for a few months before an expansion hits.
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Seriously... I've run heroic Durn with a complete mish-mash of jobs (Feral and Boomkin druids, pally (me), a rogue and I forget what
the 5th dude was), and we basically demolished the place.
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I was planning to subscribe again to WoW when I heard that they increased the rate at witch you gain XP. Does it really make a difference? Or is it so minor that I wouldn't really notice?
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I understand that you need to spend some time 'learning' a new character, but I'm certain that at this point, none of us even need to read the quest dialog anymore. I've seriously cut back the time I invest into WoW, I can't handle the timesinks. I'm just lucky that I'm one of the 0.01% that is lucky enough to have a raiding guild that puts up with a casual gamer.
Leveling a character is faster, but it certainly isn't anything that you will notice. I just level faster because I'm s
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Re:How about taking some of that subscription mone (Score:2)
One has to wonder what was driving your desire to "grind" in the first place.
munnies! (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:munnies! (Score:5, Funny)
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Bwahahaha (Score:3, Funny)
All the way to the bank. BFD.
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I think you're confused. Viva Piñata is for Xbox and PC, doesn't have anything to do with WOW.
All the way to the bank. BFD.
Black Fathom Deeps? That's like level 25, you can't bank much there. Try upping your level and doing Sunken Temple.
Wrong info in article (Score:5, Informative)
World of Warcraft was announced in 2001, but was launched on November 23, 2004.
see The wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org].
Actually (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder (Score:2, Interesting)
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Not an average of $15 USD in Asia (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not an average of $15 USD in Asia (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16519 [gamasutra.com]
This article speaks to that. Even is they aren't bringing in $15 per subscriber per month, they're still doing surprisingly well. WOW is just a phenomenon plain and simple.
So What? (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:So What? (Score:5, Interesting)
Asian players -do- typically have a preference towards grind games (or more specifically - games where the time/reward ratio is -heavily- in favor of time). FFXI, for example, has a very large Asian (Japanese, specifically) playerbase. There are a lot of EU/NA players, as well, but the majority (IIRC) are JP. NOONE is going to contradict the statement that FFXI is anything but a huge grindfest and time sink (it takes literally a year or more to 'earn' the Epic weapons for each job if you don't purchase currency in quantity from other players running Dynamis).
I played FFXI for 3 years. I still twitch.
Re:So What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Say what you want... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe (game x) is better by some specific subjective metric, but in terms of the overall 'package', I'd have to say that in this case Adam Smith's measurement is the best objective general measure of value.
I think WoW is particularly strong in terms of ease-of-play, progression speed, reward vs. time, variety of experience, replayability, and yes, even balance. Other games might have advantages such as a better crafting system, better pvp, and better graphics but each of these involves a tradeoff that Blizzard has perhaps deliberately accepted in favor of more mass-market acceptance (in the above examples, I'd say the tradeoffs are learning curve, playability, and system requirements, respectively).
There are LOTS of specific things to complain about WoW, but commercial success on this scale is hard to dispute. They had no particular advantage in the marketplace compared to other developers (aside from a well-earned reputation), but they have come to utterly dominate the MMOG market to the extent that their 'ownership' of that market space has leaked into popular culture.
Now that WoW is so dominant, it has become the benchmark in ways nobody could have anticipated 5 years ago. They not only pull in more subscribers, they've transformed the "computer gaming" activity almost singlehandedly from nerdville to nearly-mainstream, particularly with 20-somethings and under.
Unfortunately that means they are also able to exert an influence (large, although I'd hesitate to say disproportionate) on other games - I for one believe that WotLK (the next expansion) has been done or nearly done since before the end of the year, and that they are waiting to unleash it a month or so before the 'next big competitor' (I believe Age of Conan) is released.
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No, It hits the least common denominator in gaming. Much like television, which has a way larger captive fanbase (and they generally pay more a month, as well), people can sit in front of WoW and essentially zone out. IMO.
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Ah ha ha ha ! How come everyone who admits to playing it also seems to be a complete sadcase with no life at all but is willing to drone on in a boring monotone about how exciting it is sitting in their costume battling other wizards.
Re:Say what you want... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe (game x) is better by some specific subjective metric, but in terms of the overall 'package', I'd have to say that in this case Adam Smith's measurement is the best objective general measure of value.
maybe as a commercial model, but not as gaming experience. Using the same logic windows is the best operating system around Best music in late 90s and early 2000s was performed by Brittney Spears.
WoW has hit critical mass, and new players are not joining it because it's still the best game around, but because they want to know what's all the fuss about. If you never played an MMORPG, and you wanted to play one, which one would you pick? WoW, of course. But not because it IS the best game around but because it's the most played game around. You would use the 'well 10 million people can't be wrong' logic, in picking your first MMORPG.
That's classic example of herd mentality, not quality.
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Popularity != Quality
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ouch (Score:5, Funny)
That must hurt...
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Though from my POV, WOW is really more of a DOT on my bank account. To say nothing of a debuff on my social life.
So let me get this right (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow! And I thought I was odd for selling fish to a raccoon to pay off my virtual house in bells... I kind of don't feel so bad because I'm not paying for it in real money each month... And I can take my DS with
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Sean D.
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Accuracy? (Score:3, Insightful)
From what I have seen, the use of multiple accounts by single users is not all that uncommon. Blizzard doesn't seem to actually delete accounts after they've been deactivated. If someone cancels their subscription, their account name, their toons, everything remains (much like AOL's method of fudging their numbers). So of those 10m subscribers, I'd be curious to find out if those are individuals, or simply active subscribers, or in fact accounts created but not currently subscribed counted in that total.
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I'm not sure how common multi-account people actually are, aside from dual boxers. I've seen people do it far more in other games, but in WoW you get so many characters (and bank space, and bank alts) anyway that there isn't much reason to do it without dual boxing.
The numbers seem pretty accurate. There's been server queues agai
Re:Accuracy? (Score:5, Informative)
World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.
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World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition
World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.
Dunno if that helps...
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From what I have seen, the use of multiple accounts by single users is not all that uncommon.
I would be interested in knowing where you've seen that. It's very common in other MMO's such as EVE (they actually restrict training so you need to have two accounts to train two characters) but in WoW there's usually no point. The only exception maybe being the gold farmers, but then they also pay for all those accounts. I think they might be skewing the numbers a fair bit, as there are a lot of these operations out there and each one of them must employ quite a few people to keep up with the grind. They
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So.... (Score:2)
I'm happy for Blizzard.. (Score:3, Interesting)
The same can be said for Everquest (I did not really get into eq2). The problem as I see it, is that they develop a game, in the lifecycle plan for the game, I am almost positive they already have a project plan for the expansion before the game is even initially released. And they release the game, with the mechanics that are designed to hopefully satisfy people till the expansion comes out. But they under estimate the users every time, within the first few months, possibly even weeks, you have groups of users that have maxed out their character level, and sure it fun getting shiny new toys for the first year, but it then becomes a chore, and is tedious, and at that point is where the game developer has failed. This is of course my opinion, but having played both everquest, and then wow, for many years (same high end raiding guild for both games), I believe I have some insight into the problems that can occur over time.
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Of course, I DID by the original version off of a guy selling store returns on ebay for eight bucks. Fixed a minor glitch, and it worked fine.
I'm now currently enjoying a copy of Starcraft I got for $2 at a flea market. With Brood War.
Yeah, I may be cheap, but I ain't e
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Returning players (Score:4, Interesting)
This is quite possibly a good reason for the 10 million mark reached.
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Warcraft books (Score:2)
Cha-Ching! (Score:4, Interesting)
10 million * 15.00 * 12 = 1.8 billion a year
+ 10 million * 30 = 300 million a year for the box + expansions (I'm eyeballing this one, but Blizzard did say they wanted an expansion a year)
$2.1 billion. Not bad for a single game! Maybe someone more in-tune with the WoW world can tighten up my estimate of the price of the box + expansions. How much up front? How much for expansions? How frequently?
Frankly, WoW's success shows beyond
Also,I love that Shatner commercial.
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I fully admit that it probably under-estimates Blizzard's income from WoW by doing that, tho. (IMO, the most realistic number is probably around 10/mo or so).
Still - they're pulling down over a billion a year between box sales and monthly fees.
*drool*
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10 million * 15.00 * 12 = 1.8 billion a year
+ 10 million * 30 = 300 million a year for the box + expansions (I'm eyeballing this one, but Blizzard did say they wanted an expansion a year)
$2.1 billion. Not bad for a single game! Maybe someone more in-tune with the WoW world can tighten up my estimate of the price of the box + expansions. How much up front? How much for expansions? How frequently?
Good thing Blizzard doesn't have any payroll and gets servers and bandwidth for free from the Server Fa
Population Perspective.... (Score:3, Interesting)
So many haters on Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
WoW is a friggin' phenomenon that crosses so many demographics unlike any other game I've played over my 25 years as a consumer. My guilds have had husbands and wives playing together, parents and children, mothers playing with babies on their laps (hi Bitters!), and even grandparents. I'm a lifelong addict and I had to FORCE myself to cancel my account to focus on renovating my house.
Yet, there's still some confusingly high number of negative posts on Slashdot from people slamming the game. Yes, it has flaws, but nothing even close to other games I've played. My BF2142 installation crashes with BS memory and driver errors about 1/4 rounds. As a software engineer, I appreciate the design behind the game; efficient bandwidth usage, very few bugs which are addressed very quickly for a game, the well thought-out UI design and API, efficient code, a user-friendly interface. Blizzard has done a remarkable job on so many levels.
Maybe they're pissed that no one wants to play D&D anymore, who knows? But, please, at least concede that WoW is a GREAT game!
Re:What is a subscriber? (Score:5, Insightful)
What part of "excludes expired or cancelled subscriptions" don't you understand? Subscribers are people who are currently paid up to play the game, or just bought it and are in the free month.
People keep spewing off this nonsense about how the numbers are fake with absolutely no evidence to back it up. The game really is as popular as they say it is. Anybody hitting a queue while trying to login in the last month despite there being something like 200 servers in the US alone.
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"World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition
World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled s
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You mean according to you. According to Blizzard, which you actually quoted though clearly misread:
"The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid
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First of all, your post is idiotic. Blizzard *sells* PCs copies of Windows for Microsoft, and Windows is more profitable than WOW is anyway. (I would guess, if you consider all factors.) And Microsoft doesn't pay Blizzard a thin cent f
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Janitor 70 warlock on the Magtheridon EU server (among other 70s)