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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
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
there, are a few who are trying. Its just that the ridiculous up-front costs make it hard to attract the money.
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.