Slashdot Mirror
World of Warcraft Shatters Sales Records
Mightydos writes " An interesting article was posted on Blizzard.com today... They say World of Warcraft® has sold through more than 600,000* units to customers in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. The fastest-growing massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) has also shattered all previous concurrency records in North America, achieving over 200,000 simultaneous players during the holiday period. "
All the bitorent records and nntp records too?
I'll make it 600,001!
(Do you think that's enough incentive?)
That it can beat Counter-Strike !
MySQL Error 1040: Can't return sig, Too many connections!
It outsold and shattered all records in a rather new game genre..?
What does the "*" mean ? 600.000 were sold to the stores ? What if half of them its still in the game shelves ?
To bad they are pretty devoid of interesting content.
"...has also shattered all previous concurrency records in North America, achieving over 200,000 simultaneous players during the holiday period..."
All of them hacking and slashing mindlessly their way through Diab^H^H^H^H World of Warcraft.
shame on us / for all we have done / and all we ever were / just zeroes and ones
Do we believe Blizzard on this?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I just love it when these new "records" are shattered. Saying that a new game sold more than an old game is like saying "The world now has more people in that ever. This shatters the all-time record set yesterday."
http://www.bynarystudio.com
Step 2: Bring online to introduce monthly fee
Step 3: Profit
Yes, I know I am supposed to have a "???" in there...
...knowing that many geeks were at home during the holidays parked in front of their computers, instead of out in public stinking up the outdoors with their unshowered masses.
rewarding continuing subscribers with new experiences
Shouldn't get geeks' hopes up like that...
World of Warcraft® has sold through more than 600,000* units
* - 8-bit units (octets, bytes) of program.
when people use a * without qualifying what the * means, now I am going to go crazy trying to figure it out!
Monstar L
That could be 600,000,600,000,600,000,600,000,600,000,600,000 units--or even more! Simply astounding!
(Of course, it could also be no units sold...)
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Hopefully the hybrid PC/Mac CD helped things along and other developers take note.
-- INTX Grouch. http://www.midnightblue.net
You get a C-.
How this compares to the sales or HL2 or Doom3?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Perhaps even Blizzard didn't realize how popular this game was going to become. In fact, our friends at PA are complaining about this and other problems today.
All 10 of us helped shatter the record! If this isn't proof enough of why games should be simultaneously released for mac and pc's users then I don't know what is.
(yes this is a joke, don't worry about it. All mac users, I know there are more than 10 of you out there. and PC users, I know that the pitiful amount of macusers in the game didn't make much of a difference in sales numbers)
"I'm a Genius!"*
*Not an actual Genius
not only do they get 600,000 people buying the game, they have a constant revenue stream coming in every month of what $15/user?
that works out to be a lot of cash over a year, brilliant!
I know that this doesn't garuntee you a perfect gaming experience. But common... For the amount of money they are making, I shouldn't be running into simple problems, such as my character drowning while I'm out of the water, because the server decides to take a nap.
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
> achieving over 200,000 simultaneous players
Concurrent, NOT simultaneous!
Simultaneous refers to events which occur at the same instant in time and then are over - you twist your ankle as you step off the bus.
Concurrent refers to ongoing events occuring during the same time period.
--
Toby
Drugs of the future here today. Many people can moderate themselves but it is sad how many lives get destroyed by MMORPG's.
I love it! and am happy to say that I was one of the first to purchase a retail copy.
The game has been an added joy for me, and (once you regulate how much time you alot to play it each day) it is easy to jump in do a few things, and jump out. I love that. The only complaint is that party size is capped @ 5 instead of 7 or 8
---LSONE wuz here...---
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
World of Warcraft is good. Too good, and too immersive. It never ends. It seems addictive. How many students are going to fail out of school, employees fail at work, and family members fail out of relationships on account of this game?
If you have an even remotely addictive personality (I do), best not to start...
There's no doubt about it, this is a great MMORPG.
I've played DAoC, UO, AC, AO, as well as text based MUD's back in the early 90's.
This is by far the most complete game upon release.
I like the cartoonish graphics. They're well done, and that's all I really ask.
Where WoW succeeds is that you don't feel like you're on any kind of treadmill. They are perhaps the first MMORPG to get the questing system right.
At any rate, WoW deserves it, it's the best MMORPG on the market today.
Does this mean they are selling it again? I am under the impression that it is hard to come by currently. Last I checked you can't even get it from Blizzard.
As for some anecdotal evidence towards this, I went out to buy WoW this weekend it was sold out at a number of places. Of course, anecdotal evidence doesn't mean squat, but it was annoying nonetheless.
Hundreds of thousands of WOW Widows have filed for divorce.
In other news, eHarmony is offering a new 'replace my mate' match service; online gamesplayers are banned from signing up for the service.
Have we forgotten already? Money talks, you know.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I find your particular brand of trolling most amusing and your penisbird is certainly the best rendered one I've seen tonight.
Well done sir.
Not the sales numbers [though they are certainly nice] or the concurrency numbers [though they are certainly a good explination for the reported server instability] but put the two together... If 1/3 of your reported playerbase is actually playing rather than doing anything else in the world, that's a pretty good sign that it's a good/addictive game.
The game has been sold out in my area for weeks and I have heard that Blizzard may be holding back further shipments since their game servers are at full capacity. Anyone know more about this?
Driving around town to the various stores looking for the game is a strange real world counterpart to a quest in the game. You mission is go search for this box and bring it back to the computer. I've met other people at the stores also looking for WoW, usually staring at an empty slot on the shelf, "yeah, it's supposed to be right here".
I wonder what a sociologist would have to say about a game where probably 99 percent of players are young males, but half the characters in the game seem to be female.
I was hearing talk of several million in sales of WoW. Is this just not considering the regions they made up the rest of the sales, or was this another case where they talk about sales to retailers rather than customers?
Thanks a lot for /.ing blizzard! You bastards!!!
jk - it's not slashdotted right now anyway.
Step 4: ???
(thus making a high-concept attack on corporate greed and profit as purpose)
No joke! One of the better prepared trolls I've seen in ages. Of course lately, it doesn't seem to take much as the trolls are getting lazier and lazier. This one even got the FP which is rare these days. Too bad they're all half-way retarded anyway.
US-derived MMOGs are really quite niche. The largest MMOG company in the world, Shanda, regularly gets ~1m concurrent players for some of its games... and it hosts several. Shanda's MMOGs currently peak at around ~1.4m concurrent each, with around ~900K average.
Disclaimer: I used to work for Zona, an MMOG middleware company that was purchased by Shanda. You want to scale over a million concurrent players comfortably with no server dropout and speedy player updates, you're gonna need something like Terazona.
Da Blog
Highly recommended.
- shazow
It'd be interesting to see how many units they would've sold had there been copies on store shelves to buy. Over Xmas holidays, I went out with my sister to pick up a copy to feed her addiction and none of the stores in town carried it. The clerks we talked to said that they'd been out of stock since the beginning of December. This is not an entirely isolated incident - I've read about many similar situations in various onlin forums.
I could understand the game selling out hours after a shipment coming in if it's as popular as they say. What I can't understand is the product being unavailable for a month.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Despite the success, not all is well in the WoW. Some of those 600,000 users are pretty pissed about some employees inappropriately using their influence in-game.
200,000 concurrent users. That really sets the bar high for potential competitors. I wonder what the cost of infrastructure is? What kind of admin setup do they have? How many systems are providing this resource?
Will all new mmorpg networks need similarly-scaled backends? If so, that puts the genre safely in the hands of large corporations. sigh.
Do you see the sig? Do you have it in your sights? Why yes, Miss Moneypenny...
I've been playin the game constantly recently, I'm hooked, totaly but there are several flaws that will make me stop playing soon, I feel it.
1-Each and every map has a quest serie that goes a little something like this: get a lady ingredient for a pie, find a guys tools, ((kill x monsters of this type, bring x items of this type) x 6), kill the Bosses (3), go in far away land to retrieve item or give item to someone -- repeat
2-Although common to uncommon mineral (I can't speak for other ressources yet) is fair and balanced considering the amount needed to construct items as your profession evolve, the uncommon to rare ratio is ultimately ridiculous. It took me 3 days to get 6 silver ore which were needed by countless recipes of which the effect is totaly disproportionnal of the work you put in finding the ressources for its construction.
3-The profession and skills and talent system is extremely unrewarding, it take so much time to get 1% bonus in two-hand weapon damage, very ridiculous, by the time you can build a bomb that does x damage it barely removes a hint on the health bar of the creature it targets and so on...
All in all what makes this game exquisite isnt the gameplay in itself, the single move battle system and capacity to walk trough others are perfect example of that, but the sheer pleasure that you have in discovering the lands and realizing missions with others, plus the game is very well designed as far as encouraging people to be nice and helpfull to one another and just that is worth a lot in my opinion. It won't keep me paying for more than 1-2 maybe 3 month though, so I don't believe the game longevity will be that impressive.
Actually, while very fun, I find it considerably less addictive and time consuming than other MMORPGs that I've played. This is a good thing.
And the use of the word "arse" signifies a British troll. Bravo! We used to rule the world don't you know.
Now we rule slashdot at -1.
Kudos to you ascii penisbird sir.
Best... skinner box... ever
The Tsunami wiped out like over a percent of the population. I'd be really surprised if we caught up already.
I have a copy of WoW, and it's probably the first MMRPG that I've played that I've enjoyed. I tried Ultima when it came out, Anarchy later, and some others - but WoW has me.
Why?
1. Attention to detail. Ever played a game and thought "You know, this would be better if I could do X"? Well, here it is. X is 99% of the time right in WoW. Chat - easy. Macros - simple. Able to compare what you have with what you want to buy - just hover the mouse over the item.
2. Mac/PC compatible. I know, I know - Mac's only include 4% of the "new computers sold" base or some such. But I know several Unix geeks who got Macs just so they could play some games on them (as opposed to Linux, which is even less native ports than for the Mac). So after the kids are in bed, I can sit in the living room with my Powerbook and play the same game my friends are playing in my living room.
3. Performance: you don't need a brand spanking new computer to play. It helps, of course, but I know a guy with a 867 Mhz Powerbook who plays without missing anything.
4. Ease for newbies and oldies alike: Even on PvP servers, you can be a newbie and be fine. Do you lose money for dying? No. Experience? No. Just inconvience (and maybe a little equipment damage, but that's easily repaired). Once Blizzard has the true battle areas in place to stage "wars", there will be a place for those who want to kill other people to head off to.
If you're an oldie, there's lots to do as well. Elite dungeons that you share with your direct friends, not everybody and their brother (so you don't have to worry about waiting forever for some particular monster to respawn - your group and your group alone will get the chance to get him in your custom dungeon).
Most of the time the game is as hard as you want it to be. I usually challenge creatures 2-3 levels above me, where it's "hard but fair". I like that it's pretty fair. If I fail, it's because I wasn't watching what I was doing, not because some arbitrary bit got flipped that said it was my day to die.
Is it perfect? No - I do wish they'd let clerics wear leather (especially as their attacks are underpowered, which is why I switched to a Hunter), and the respawn is almost too fast (there's been a few times I'd died because I was fighting a monster, got it down to 99% dead, then a new monster spawn right on top of me and killed me before I could run off - would be nice to have a 10 second countdown before they started attacking), but otherwise, it's close enough to perfect to make it the only MMRPG that I'll play.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need go hunt some wolves so I can learn to make Lean Wolf Steaks....
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Unless you have 3 roommates who also play. In that case it's one big competition to level fastest.
Non gratis rodentus anus
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They really need to change the business model with MMOGs.
Give me the entire game as a free download (or nominal charge to ship it), with a couple days of free access. Then, once I'm hooked, I'll start paying.
I would never have tried XBox Live if not for a free trial offer. Now that I'm hooked on Halo 2 and Burnout 3, I'm paying.
WoW would cost me what, 70 bucks for the game, and another 20 or so to play for a month? That's me going 90 bucks out of pocket for a game, hell a whole genre of gaming, that I don't know if I'd like or completely hate.
Good for them for doing so well with it, but I can't be alone, they could have ridiculously huge subscriber bases if they make the first hit free.
Every drug dealer worth his weight knows how well this works.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I gave WoW a try during its final open beta and liked it just enough... However, once the Guild Wars world preview event came along, I was instantly hooked! I played the GW E3 Event and enjoyed it, but the WPE really displayed the game's potential. Not only is it free of monthly charges, but it takes away the whole "grinding" concept of MMORPGs. Its quite difficult to describe it, but it seems like the most (dare I say) innovating games of the year. www.guildwars.com
No wonder I couldn't find a copy of the game today.
CfkRAp1041vYQVbFY1aIwA== RV/hBCLKKcSTP5UFK3kqsg==
... elves and humans got a Gnome or Dwarf-tossing ability at lvl30... so many times I saw a cute gnome and wanted to select it and do a /toss or maybe even a /pat on the head... alas
I keed, I keed (lectrick, lvl29 elven hunter in zul'jin)
The game is awsome, but the lag is INSANE some times,thats if the servers dont crash. Specially when level 40's go into opposing lowbie towns to try and start something(or kill off NPCs).
... no? oh well guess it was too .. lacking post lvl 50.
As for their community, my understanding of the forums is "people bitch and whine on their forums and the community leaders go around locking threads and serving gallons of STFU.
But the game play and content makes up for it, hey remember city of heroes?
Um what's the asterisk for? If you're gonna post an article and simply copy + paste the article text into your submission, at the very least re-read it and make sure it makes sense. I wish I could mod an entire submission DOWN...
To put that in perspective, that makes their virtual world slightly larger in population than Madison, Wisconsin.
And the weather's probably better, too.
Weird.
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
No I vote for the previous one, the bellend is more rounded and more authentic looking
i received this game as a christmas gift, but exchanged it for doom3. let's see what that got me:
a) a game that runs on linux
b) a $20 refund because doom3 was much cheaper
c) savings of the $15/month warcraft subscription fee.
i came out on top, and some other lucky fool got my returned copy.
enjoy!
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/02/16 48254&tid=123&tid=10
/ 1558238&tid=98&tid=10
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/30
Zug zug!!!
Take off every Sig. For great justice.
And 599,999 of 'em are on my server YELLING FOR DIRECTIONS or asking for a "loan".
What a landmark. Today people are all experiencing the same mediocracy in the largest group ever! This is not only a landmark for overly-expensive trendy games but also for sheep everywhere. Trust us our 4 legged brethren, you are not alone.
Wow, 600,000. So, I take it we're all over the Bnetd fiasco then?
halo 2, of course, is a game that does not charge a monthly fee.
Anybody else concernced that the proliferation of online-only games will lead us to a never ending cycle of forced os and machine upgrades along with a 2-3 year life cycle for games?
Will there be an end to non-online games?
Why are retail games in usa usually 25% higher in price than currency converter australian released games? Now dont give me tax (we have FTA now) and the originals are probably made in singapore any way, shipipng costs are trivial $1500 per 10 tonne container. Dont give me local taxes/gst as excuses, since they are not added ontop of the USA retail price, but the wholesaler price which is about 30% below USA retail, so thats $34USD, add GST and shipping and margin and we should have 70 AUD max.
If you want to get around shipping, send a master to AU and press 30000 copies.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I bought EQII first. After quickly getting bored I managed to find a copy of Wow (no small task).
Wow pretty much creams EQII in every way. The only people I've heard differ are hard-core EQ players. Many people do like the EQII graphics better but personally i like the more cartoonish Wow look.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
Since when does guranteed NO PIRACY ever equal cheaper games? They like to lie to us and say piracy causes high prices, but when its impossible to pirate, you still get high prices... I smell a rotton mafia fish here.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Although I enjoy the game a lot, since your mentioning the number of sales and players online, the server and lag issues (due to way more people than expected) should also be mentioned.
It appears that they sold way more than they were prepared to handle, and have a lot of work to get thier support staff and servers up to par to handle the load.
I also believe they will have trouble holding the number of subscribers for more than 6 months. Seeing as many people have already maxed out thier character.
Which is worth saying. Because It's hard to make a mmorpg that doesnt suck.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
What's "legacy VA memory layout" and "exec-shield" is that some trademarkey way of saying you have an Athlon64?
Does prelinking have to be off for the whole system, or just the game executables?
Hot damn, I wish I was a Blizzard Exec.
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
If WOW holds up, it also shatters the tired MMORPG design rule that says there needs to be a harsh penalty for death. Everquest pioneered this and others just tweaked it, seemingly never questioning it.
WOW is much more fun without the agony of experience loss by death. The death penalty probably led many to stop playing other games, because it is so demoralizing.
In addition to sales and concurrency records, Blizzard is also shattering several long-held MMORPG industry myths - including a few of SOE's favorite sacred cows:
Myth #1 - an MMORPG must include numerous "time sinks"; long periods of unrewarding time spent with little or no character progression.
In the series of interviews recently posted where Raph Koster conspicuously omits any mention of WoW, you can almost hear his exasperated sighs as he laments the lack of opportunity to socialize in newer games because the action is so fast. If you want to chat, log into a chat system. Most of the rest of us would like to spend our limited gaming hours killing things and having fun, not waiting for shuttles or running around endlessly looking for things to fight.
Myth #2 - character death in an MMORPG must be a harsh, demoralizing experience.
Go read some of the discussions on this in SOE's forums. It's pretty amazing to think that a software company can entertain a serious discussion regarding intentionally "punishing" their users/players.
Myth #3 - MMOG design must be driven by a philosophy that is inherently different than conventional games [insert lots of grandiose game theory and virtual world talk here].
Bullshit. I'm sure Raph Koster is a brilliant guy and he has a lot of interesting ideas, but at some point you need to pull your head out of the clouds and remember that above all else, a game has to be fun to play.
Myth #4 - any new MMORPG must feature a complex, impossible-to-balance skill-based (non) "class" system.
Again, bullshit. WoW's simple, single-track class system is easy to understand and is well-balanced for both PVE and PVP (the usual nerf-calling notwithstanding).
Myth #5 - the fantasy MMORPG market is "saturated".
This seems to be the industry's favorite crutch - the notion that everyone who will ever play an MMOG is already playing one and that the "long, hard grind" model (EQ, DAoC, SWG, etc.) is the only kind of game those players want. Again, bullshit. WoW is cracking the market wide open and bringing a flood of new players who have never before touched an MMOG. To be fair here though, I think this one is at least partially true, the market *is* saturated when it comes to EQ-style treadmills.
Where other MMOs have seen subscription numbers flat-line after release (SWG, DAoC) or decline (AC), expect to see WoW break new records in the future. This isn't just because of the legions of D2 players migrating over or the Warcraft name - those things help, but they're not the whole story. With WoW, their first and only entry into the market, Blizzards "gets' what the others don't: a successful game is not about lofty "game theory" or grand visions, it's simply about having fun.
The writing is on the wall: fun is in, the grind is out.
I haven't played StarCraft in a while, but if Battle.net asks for money the next time I sign on, I'm going to be majorly ticked off.
People don't rush in to MMORPGs as fast, usually. You cannot play them without paying a monthly fee, they have no standalone version. Ok well that means that they have to continue to be fun online. I'm not going to pay a recurring game that I don't find continually fun to the level required to justify the monthly cost.
So people are often a little slower to commit to a world since it is a commitment of sorts. It's not like a shooter that you just pickup and go. It's about character development and learning the world and so on.
Also many people are simply unwilling to pay a recurring charge to play a game. They will pay one times costs, but not subscription charges.
So it's not that useful to compare directly against non-subscription games. Those will certianly have more unit sales, but potentially much less profit. As noted, at current player levels Blizzard will gross about $100 million/year. Even with all the support costs (and they are extensive) it's still a lot of profit.
get off it, who really gives a FUCK anyway?
now get your hand out of your pants and go outside and see the sunshine, smell a flower, speak to a foreign being(ie. a woman).
A story based upon a press release by a company, this has got to be biased.
A large part of their problem seems to be bandwidth related. Well, that's fixable, but not immediatly. When you are buying huge lines it takes a lot of time. It can take over a month for a new OC line to get up and running, longer if it's a direct fibre run and not through the telco.
As for bugs, you likewise have to be careful when fixing them. In a complex environment like that, it's easy to make things worse if you rush a fix. I've seen that happen many times, a patch is rushed out that fixes some problems, but introduces new ones because proper time wasn't spent fixing it.
Basically I say give it at least 2 months. That's adiquate time to secure higher bandwidth, scale up server clusters, and iron out bugs. If you feel there hasn't been any progress 2 months from now, then I'd say it's time to cancel your account since they clearly don't care. However this soon in the game with a subscrbier base this big, you can't expect everything to be perfectly smooth.
Also throwing money at the problem won't help with the bugs in the code. You don't get good code done just by throwing more programmers at it. Good code takes time, and there's not a lot that can be done to speed it up.
I held off buying this when it came out for the same reasons that I never tried crack, but lately I've decided that I don't really have anything to do this year. Now I can't find a copy anywhere, except maybe ebay. Anyone know of an online merchant that still has these in stock? Or someone in the Portland area that might have them?
Well, I'm wondering where they get their numbers, since if you count worldwide users, doesnt Lineage II still beat them? Then again, Blizzard doesnt care to do a worldwide launch, but that's their loss. Much like their misuse of soulbound items and other interference with the game economy is a loss.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
No time to say much... must... upgrade... abilities...
Thanks Blizzard for a GREAT game!
Try Safari, FireFox... OmniWeb (Safari's engine though, but innovative!)... great browsers... I use Safari. I'm a web developer too and I develop on my Mac and my code works cross-platform. The only notable but poor browser is Internet Explorer, it's standards support is next to non-existant... not to mention the awesome security holes.
Anyone that played from the beginning knows damn well there aren't that many concurrent players, unless you count those:
:-)
Waiting in the queue to login
Disconnected and unable to logout
Stuck doing a search in the auction house
Stuck waiting the insane time to extract an item from your mail
Running around a continent with no mobs or gryphons
etc.
Yes, I'm being overly-sarcastic, but there is a real hint of truth. In all fairness, Blizzard has solved the bulk of the problems they had at launch... and they even extended subscriptions three days and a fourth later for the downtime. I just happen to be on a "lemon" server that was undergoing horrid lag and restarts for weeks. I would've changed servers if I didn't run a guild with nearly 200 unique accounts in it!
WoW doesn't do a whole lot new for MMORPGs, but it has taken many elements from different games and done them right. Huge number of quests that have lots of fun NPC interaction, mobs to grind if you like, cool items (almost as good as AC), immersive graphics with an attention to detail, great sound, a great intro movie, large world, seamless movement between most zones, nice crafting system comparable to horizons, decent pvp (can't block other players, though -- you walk right through), etc.
A couple of new things are the fog of war, gryphons (kind of new, as they show the "real" server as you fly -- you can see fights and monsters, and not just a picture of you moving), and an extensible user interface (missing a desired function? you can program it yourself in a "real" language).
In conclusion, WoW had a rocky start. It wasn't as bad as some games (AO and SWG were pretty horrid) and it wasn't as good as some (AC and CoH were great). It was kind of crappy, in fact. But they quickly announced that billing wouldn't even start because of the downtime, and they kicked ass on fixing the biggest issues on a live system with 200,000 whiny folks complaining about it. And then there was me, not whining of course.
$13 a month. WOW. Why are they turning us into such slaves. Blizzard is my Daddy.
The infrastructure consists of servers written in Java and a custom messaging server written in C connecting C++ clients to the Java servers.
-- ac at home
I was one of them, with Diablo2 (classic-mode). I played that game no less than 6 hours a day. I have no friends, can't take a shower without losing track of time (60 minute shouwers people), have vericose veins, sporatic blood pressure, no high-school diploma, lesbian pornography addiction, read Slashdot.org every day, can't get a job through Monster.com or anywhere else. And my magic-find palading never found much rare; the best I got was what I wore: 1 119 damage rare ancient sword and 900 defense rare ornate plate armor. I forced myself to withdraw from the game and haven't played Diablo2 for about two full years. All I can do is put time, the Lord, between that nonsense. I started to get back the urge and visited the Warcraft III product launch at Fry's Electronics in Fountain Valley California and was among the first of four-hundred addicts at the front door ---- I couldn't believe my eyes --- parents bought their children Blizzard's drug for their urges.
I've took-up reading the Holy Bible and completed it reading twice. I would rather be addicted to anything but video games. There is something verry sinister about pleasurable entertainment -- it secretly robs you of your life. Fuck you BLIZZARD! GET OUT OF THE WHORE, LANTINGA! FUCK YOU BEHEMOTH CINEMATIC ENGINEER AND BATTLE.NET PROGRAMMER! FUCK YOU!!
Mate, we're already getting screwed by having to play on US servers (mostly on Blackrock!). When they won't go to the expense of providing us a proper place to play the game, why on earth would they lower prices?
Someone has to support problems in game for bugs that arise.
Here's some numbers
600,000 users
$30M Initial sales
$108M annualized revenue
Now the flip side:
10% of the installed base calls in on the same day (glitch in-game)
That's 60,000 calls.
If a person takes 5 minutes to handle the call, that's 96 calls/day full-time.
Over 625 full-time shifts would be needed to answer those calls on that day.
Even if a person had only 60 seconds to handle the call, it would still require at least 100 people staffed.
Bottom line - since no product is perfect, there will always be jobs in support.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.aspx?fn=wo w-tech-support
Quite a lot of posters and blizzard reps have talked about the lag and all the other issues you pointed out in the above forum.
I've been trying to buy a copy of this game since Dec 29th. Every store in the Seattle, WA area is sold out, as are all the online retailers. sales@blizzard.com won't sell me a copy and doesn't know when more copies will be shipped.
Ebay auctions for just a CD-Keys (no media) are going for over $80.
Anyone know when/where more copies are coming out?
"[World of Warcraft] has also shattered all previous concurrency records in North America, achieving over 200,000 simultaneous players during the holiday period."
Um... this is just plain wrong. "Shattered" concurrency records with over 200,000?! The page linked below shows that Valve's Counter-Strike has reached a maximum concurrent user mark of 214,074. So, at over 200,000 concurrent users, WoWC has at best "met" or "slightly beat" Counter-Strike's record. Not "shattered".
See for yourself:
http://www.steampowered.com/status/status.html
Sold Out - Try an Apple Computer Store. The boxes are hybrid, the CDs work on PCs and Macs. If you find a box please pick me up an iPod mini to show your gratitude. Thank you.
I realize now that they may have been referring only to MMORPGs and I guess Counter-Strike might not qualify as one. A bit misleading.
Sold Out: Try an Apple Computer Store. The boxes are hybrid, the CDs work on PCs and Macs. If you find a box please pick me up an iPod mini to show your gratitude. Thank you.
yeah, and on trade channel in ironforge
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Now you go sit in the corner and contemplate that for a few minutes before you slip back into your willy nilly bitchy feely mindset.
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
That's sort of amazing... seems like that's probably due to the lack of fragmentation. Back when I got the original NES, I seem to recall the only competition being the TurboGrafx (sp?) console. I think Sega released theirs a bit later along with the original Sonic the Hedgehog game that made it sell like hotcakes.
:D
I think the 13M number may be wrong too - that may be North American, because I see numbers of 20M too for GTA: Vice City. I wonder if the 40M was worldwide and included Japanese sales? I'm skeptical there were 40M consoles in the US way back when. IIRC correctly, I saw console numbers recently and there were about 9M xboxes out and 20-something million (~23, I think) PS2s. But there were 40M NESes back then? But I bet the original NES was widely adopted in Japan.
And yet Tetris pwnz them all!!
I'd have bought WoW already if I could just d/l it. I was at Target tonight, and they were sold out. Oh, well.
Give me the entire game as a free download (or nominal charge to ship it), with a couple days of free access. Then, once I'm hooked, I'll start paying.
That's how they do it in Korea and especially China, the largest MMOG market in the world. China manages to support several dozen huge online games that dwarf anything available in the US, and manages this even without much of a credit card infrastructure, relying on point-of-sale prepaid time cards.
Da Blog
Seems like Blizzard has adopted the BitTorrent protocol for distributing large files. If you are intersested in downloading their 'cinematic trailer' http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/trailer/ of World of Warcraft you first download an application that starts a BitTorrent-like download of the film itself.
Let me get this straight... 1 out of 3 WoW players were playing simultaneously at some point? Despite the time zone difference between USA and New Zealand?
Am I the only one that finds that hard to believe?
You'll all just hit 60 in no time.
Of course, then it's one big competition to kill each other and the enemy faction fastest.
Only 200,000 players at one time? How does this compare with say Doom 3 sales, and the amount of folks like myself that are playing solo with no desire to join online? Are there less than 200,000 folks worldwide playing at one time? Or is this another article that is trying to convince me I need to pay for a game that I need to rent monthly to play online?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Everywhere else had WoW out of stock even compusa, best buy, ebgames, and gamestop...but the single store in downtown Chicago gave me a glimmer of hope when I called them. I went to the store...there was like 5 on the shelf. Swiped. Thank goodness for the hybrid.
Tell me about it! There is not a copy of WoW to be had within a hundred miles of Austin, and I can't imagine paying ~$100 on eBay for "serial number by email, media and packaging by mail when we get around to it" just to play it today.
As much of a pain in the rear as Steam is - intrusive, must check with the Steam servers every time I want to play a game, worry that when Valve goes under, EA won't maintain servers - this is one case where it would actually be appropriate. After all, this is just a piece of client software for a server-based game: why can't I just download it and give Blizzard my credit card number to play the game?
Carthago delenda est!
600,000*$50/game = $30,000,000.00
I wonder what development costs were. I'd guess well over $100,000,000.00. Some people probably spent more than $50/game on the collectors edition which was $80.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I guess this posting on slashdot caused another 600,000 to sign up and their login servers can't handle it.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The sad thing is this troll is mostly right on. Slashdot is way too saturated with linux fanboys obsessed with bashing Microsoft's (admittedly many) faults while ignoring anything they might do well by coming up with excuses why it isn't relevant. Slashdot is an embarrassment for linux because of all the 133t fanboys.
Cedega is not an emulator: it doesn't emulate x86 hardware.
Cedega is an emulator: it emulates Windows software.
Any "emulator" is also a "mapper".
(Why yes, I've read the terminological semi-bullshit on their website.)
But the european players are expressly forbidden from playing it.
/bug every instance of american spelling then.
Yes, that's right - they don't want our custom until they "localise" the UK version. Fine. I'm making damn sure I
Just checking... We are on about Blizzard here, the guys that lost the plot after Diablo? The guys who have great big ideas and never, no matter how many times they patch it, ever, get it right?
Has anyone taken a look at battle.net recently and considered just HOW many iterations of balance fixing and bug replacing one of the biggest games manufacturers on earth has had to release over the years?
Okay. Just my two penn'orth.
I would like to point out, that I am still playing LOD and FT, still thrashing away at BW. I love Blizzard. They try things that other companies wouln't, but their QA sucks farts from dead pigeons.
Sure, it was fun for the first few weeks. But you realize there is nothing to look forward to after you reach the end. Went back to Dark Ages of Camelot. As did most of the people that had left DAoC for WoW. They are trickling back.
maybe i'm just one of the unlucky few, but i didn't get this game for x-mas. at the moment all the retailers are sold out and i have to wait for the next delivery...or pay way too much on eBay.
the reatilers i've been in touch with are expecting to get deliveries by next week, but there doesn't seem to be any official news to confirm it. i'll just have to wait and see.
Can you say bandwagon?
I knew that you could!
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This is MY galaxy...go find your OWN!
Yes there are some side affects of having 200,000 users on at the same time that you can't predict from even a lengthly beta period, but this isn't Blizzard's first MMOG, and they aren't a poor startup company. There is no excuse for having overloaded servers or not having enough bandwidth, because buying servers and OC3's is chump change when you are going to be getting over $100 million a year in subscriber fees and your parent company is Vivendi.