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World of Warcraft Launches
The last major MMOG launch of the year hits retail stores today. World of Warcraft finally goes live after years of debate, development, and a more than six month Beta test. The usual suspects have details on the game, with Gamespot already having details on upcoming content and Gamespy laying out personal experiences from the test and interviews with the developers.
1st!
and i'm really happy that WoW is mac playable at launch date. I don't own a mac, but it's something mac fans will appreciate
eve-online is also doing their huge expansion titled "exodus" today as well..
One of the most anticipated expansions in MM games for a while... large download (519M) but not as large as WoW which is 2.1GB
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Unfortunately I discovered that the WoW downloading client acts as a pseudo bittorrent client, which caused my school to shut down my internet connection for seven days. For anyone else out there who is going to a school with draconian downloading rules (such as University of Florida and their ICARUS client [previously featured on slashdot]), be warned.
I was playing a bit this morning on my lunch break. (wanted to snag my SN before someone else did) and I have to say I'm impressed. So far very little lag at all, including the n00b areas. That and they went with a distributed download for the initial patch, and it seems as if they might have done alright estimating bandwidth/demand on the first day.
Pirates , the classic Sid Mier game launches today as well. It's a remake of the classic game.
I love Blizzard, but WOW is nothing new.
Its swamped with quests where you seek out an object/NPC, or kill a sequence of monsters which lowers the tedium some.
The combat system involves clicking on some action keys, but isn't too complex.
Graphics are nice.
This game is one big level grind with Warcraft Lore in it. It may seem fun to some, but I was bored the whole time I betaed it. Maybe they'll introduce fun stuff down the road, but this game isn't what the market is thirsting for.
God spoke to me.
XBL only provides matchmaking services, friends lists, stats, messaging, etc. It does no actual game hosting unless publishers pay extra, and so far I don't think any have. Its bandwidth costs would probably be comparable to Gamespy's or AIM (though with far less users but in a more secure environment). You average MMOG provides continuous bandwidth during gameplay, patching, user interaction, and huge database services tracking monster, players, levels, etc. I doubt it costs that much to play, but the fact is that people are willing to pay the price, and they seem fine with the user base that the costs provide. If they don't get enough people they'll surely lower the costs, and if demand is high enough they'll probably raise them.
It's coming, albeit slowly...
Whenever I see something like this, I always think back to when I played multi-player MechWarrior (or whatever the equivalent name of it was) on the GEnie network. They charged several dollars PER HOUR. People that complain about $15/month crack me up.
Don't forget you can get these if you don't want to pay online especially for young people who don't have credit cards or parents won't let them. Ask your friends, family members, etc. for them as Christmas and birthday gifts.
EB = $29.99
Walmart = $29.82
Are there any more U.S. stores that sell these that I didn't list?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Why can MSFT pull off XBox Live for 50 bucks a year, but the MMOG guys can't do it for much less than 20 bucks a month?
Because Microsoft doesn't need to make a profit from it maybe? The whole Xbox business unit leaks money like a sieve, but they don't care because they're making headway into the industry. Game companies don't have such luxuries.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
A) You're paying $50, but that's retail. The company has to get the game in the hands of the players, and electronic distriubtion isn't (quite) here yet (the install for EQII came on 2 DVDs and was 6-7GB). So it has to go through the retail chain, and everybody along the way has to make money off of the transaction.
B) First-month attrition is fairly large. This makes it non-cost-effective to distribute boxed copies for free in anticipation of recouping the expense in subscription fees.
C) 'I shouldn't have to pay to buy it and then pay per month' is a specious argument against playing these games. Either you feel you get your money's worth in entertainment value, or not. How the expense is chunked is irrelevant. If you anticipate not liking the game enough to justify the initial expense, wait several months and most games have 7 or 14 day trials available for download.
D) From an accounting standpoint, you want the inital investment in development recovered as quickly as possible, and the monthly fees to cover overhead, future development, and profit.
I remember playing Neverwinter Nights (not the current one, but the original gold-box SSI game) on AOL and paying $5 an hour to play. That was back when you could buy a gold-box game for $20-25 - and I was only making something like $10.25 per hour at the time... I got over that real quick. Moved to Shadows of Yserbius on The Sierra Network and got something outrageous like 60 hours of game play for only $90 per month...
$15 a month doesn't even faze me anymore...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
I tested the game for around 8 months and logged more than 35 days and several hundred suggestions, alongside countless bugs.
The bottom line is that the game was released prematurely, to the detriment of the product.
In the week before release, Blizzard completely revamped two entire classes (warrior and paladin), and in the process made the previous months of testing these classes in high-level content completely meaningless. There is a new "queue" system, which controls access to actually getting onto a server and playing. Despite assurances that the queues would not be visible in retail, new players are finding that they have to wait for over an hour in a queue before entering the game.
Battlegrounds, PVP rewards, and the honor system were supposed to be in place months ago. None are actually implemented yet.
Raid content was added, but of such obscene difficulty that groups of 40 players with the best gear in the game got absolutely thrashed. Limited success was generally achieved only by spamming abilities that will probably be adjusted in subsequent patches (druids and moonfire stun).
Hero classes, once heralded as a different sort of end-game, distinct from the raid encounters, have not been mentioned officially in months and may never appear.
Why was the game released before it was ready, by a company that has earned a reputation of never doing that? I have it on fairly good authority that Vivendi offered Blizzard employees profit-sharing if the release happened before the end of the year.
Blizzard's post-release support has traditionally been extremely spotty, though they are no different in that regard from the rest of the industry. Before now, however, their saving grace has been that the game was actually reasonably close to finished before it hit store shelves.
EQ2 just went live two weeks ago. Easily as big a deal as WoW is by any standard I can put it to. Not saying either is better then the other just a bit hard to miss the lines I saw of people picking up eq2 at the local mall.
No, you don't remember correctly. Games are organized via XBL, but the actual in-game data is hosted "peer-to-peer" (i quote that because it's not strictly p2p. One xbox is in host mode and the others talk to it).
Have you ever noticed, playing on XBL, every once in a while you'll get a blue screen (i tend to die during these, so fitting) with a message that says "Connecting to Session", then "Setting Up Game"? This is when the host box drops out (or perhaps is voted to quit hosting because of lag) and all the boxes get together, decide on a new host, and sync up game data.
There's no reason XBL couldn't act like a firewall broker (ie. ultrapeer mode), but trust me, XBL does not host the Halo 2 games.
On Apple Input Peripherals: They're okay, I guess, but I was really hoping for a one-key keyboard and a 109-button mouse
Where does the money go?
* To pay off the pro-rated depreciation on the hundreds if not thousands of servers the company has had to buy to support the various game worlds, plus at least one test server and one development server.
* To pay for the monthly bandwidth bills
* To pay the salaries of the game developers, artists and 3D modelers who are developing new content
* To pay the salaries of the GMs (in game tech-support people) who have to be online for usually 16 hours per day (not usually the same GM for 16 hours straight).
* To pay the salary of the legal team that is ramping up to sue the first website to try and sell in-game items and money
* To pay the salary of the support operators who answer the phone when you call with billing issues
* To pay off the Ferrari that the lead guys are driving back and forth to work - in 2nd gear - with the parking brake on.
Having been a part of the in-game tech support crew for two different games, you would be surprised at how much backend work there is to support an ongoing game like this.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
there, are a few who are trying. Its just that the ridiculous up-front costs make it hard to attract the money.
If you are looking for information on World of Warcraft, we have pretty much everything about the game listed in great detail -- quests, items, mobs, spells, skills, talents, maps, etc.
http://wow.allakhazam.com
--Allakhazam
That's not a general XBL feature- Only Halo 2 can migrate hosting like that (AFAIK).
The store you buy from is taking about half of whatever you paid for that game (in this case, probably about $30-35).
Take the cost of stamping CDs and boxing and shipping them out... of the amount of that $60 you paid that the company will see, your first month's cost ends up being much closer to the normal monthly fee than it does to what you paid.
And honestly, it's sort of like a Tivo - which many people here seem to love. Pay for the device (in this case, the game), then for the service. You can't use your Tivo without paying the extra monthly fee. Sure, they offer a lifetime subscription, but it amounts to paying for 2 1/2 years up front on a device with a 90 day warranty.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
EQ didn't set the standard- UO did. UO was $9.95, and EQ didn't think they would pull enough people away if they were any more expensive, so they too were $9.95. That was the baseline price until a few years ago, and now they all mostly hover around $15.
The server wait is unreal. I logged in at 9pm and there is an 820 ppl long line waiting to get in to the game. It is now 9:30 pm and I still have a 430 position in the queue. I think they are having a pretty rough launch. The ppl on the official forms are pissed. I hope I can get on soon.
You're conveniently leaving the multiple years of development by a 30-100 man team out of the picture.
Unfinished, but in active development:
Planeshift