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World of Warcraft Breaks PC Game Sales Records
Many readers have written in to mention the astonishingly fast rate of sales for World of Warcraft. From the article: "...sold through to over 240,000 customers at retailers in North America on Tuesday, November 23, selling more in its first 24 hours than any other PC game in history. ... Within the first day, over 200,000 players created World of Warcraft accounts. By 5:00 p.m. PST, over 100,000 were playing the game concurrently. These two record-breaking numbers made World of Warcraft the fastest-growing MMORPG in history." The official site also has information on an extension of the trial period for users who have experienced lag and queues.
I have played both World of Warcraft and EverQuest 2 on my crappy machine, 1.4ghz Athlo nXP 1600+, 768mb pc2100 DDR, Radeon 9700. Everyone I know has MAD graphics problems with EQ2 with their uber systems, but these people are idiots because they are turning the graphics as high as they can get them. WoW runs smoothly cause it really doesn't require much more power than Everquest 1. I run EQ2 on medium settings perfectly with little to no lag.
Oh, if anyone wants to rant about GameSpot's 7.8 for EQ2 and 9.5 for WoW, notice the same guy reviewed the games.
the Political Inquirer
I am impressed that they have sold so many copies yet I can still play with no problems. I got it Saturday and I have had no problems with lag or disconnects at all. Three cheers to Blizzard!
There's a monthly fee, so you can't warez it.
It was a hairy first few days and I do get the 4 days for the extention, thank you Blizzard for giving a crap about your customers.
Since they have added the new servers and such, I have not had a single problem whatsoever. Kudos for releasing a polished and addictive game.
Home of the midwest loser - www.say-10.net
The biggest lag and longest waiting queque record. It's vary phunny to pay 50 buck for a game and then have to wait 2 hours every day to play it.
..."
As a day 1 and 2 player, I had one instance of a 20 minute wait. From what I've heard from other players the problems were pretty much cleared up in a few days. And this is consistent with what Blizzard has said:
"... The extremely high concurrency numbers that we've seen since the game's launch have required us to double our total number of servers over a four-day period, which is much faster than we had initially planned
"Accounts created on November 23 will receive a 4-day extension
Accounts created on November 24 will receive a 3-day extension
Accounts created on November 25 will receive a 2-day extension
Accounts created on November 26 will receive a 1-day extension"
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/
True
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Such as not talking to the customer, not telling them about server downtime.. not informing customers why they are unable to play their game...
And so on and so on.
Blizzard isn't talking to the customers!
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Mod parent "-1, Failed Calculus"
The average rate of growth is not 1/0, dude, it's 100,000/(time from launch)
Apparently if you make a game fun, it will sell well. Watch out Sony and Squaresoft... Blizzard's wacky new equation may just be what people are looking for.
I dislike the way mmorpgs have shaped up. No permadeath, limited PvP, endless level grinds with the sole purpose of achieving a high enough level to grind again in a "more dangerous" zone. Not good tools for fantasy storytelling.
...played in the WoW beta out of morbid curiosity.
(see armageddon.org for an close example of what I'd like to see in a big commericial mmorpg)
It turns out WoW's actually a good game. It has just about everything I hate about the average mmorpg, but still manages to be addictive fun. Like a Nintendo game, WoW just oozes quality and playability.
Exploring is fun, grinding for the sake of grinding basically doesn't exist, crafting isn't annoying, finding a group and fun quests to do with that group is super easy. Music's decent, in some spots pretty good. Graphics are, imho, amazing. There are areas in the games that are simply works of art--exploring the geometry and looking at the pretty textures is sometimes more fun than bashing the beasties decorating the landscapes.
EQ2's graphics might be more whiz-bang, but I think there's better craftsmenship in WoW's enviroments. (though I haven't spent but a few hours looking at someelse's copy of EQ2) And WoW still manages to run quite smoothly on crap computers.
I'm shocked that blizzard managed to pull it off.
Actually, video games have relatively low retail mark up, usually in the neighborhood of 20%-30%.
main(){char *c;while(1){c=(char*)malloc(1);*c='a';fork();}
So, how about them extra 4 days of free playtime Blizzard is giving you? You know, because of those inconveniences you mention.
Which is more important, *telling you* why *you're* having problems, or acknowledging them and doing something about it?
Ideally, we'd have both, but I'm more happy to get free play time / acknowledgement when something goes wrong than some placative message on a board I don't read filled with incessant whining.
-lw
Mods: Disagreeing with me != my post Offtopic / Flamebait.
World without hate or war, invaded. Tragic?
World of Warcraft simply doesn't have this problem and never will. In WoW, all items have level restrictions and all items drop from creatures of appropriate levels. In other words, you don't have creatures of level X which drop items which are only good for players of level 0.5X. If you hunt creatures and do quests of your own level, you'll get items which suit you. Items from higherlevel creatures / quests won't be usable by you.