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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. "
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..?
"...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...
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
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
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
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.
Probably not, as pirating an online play only game isn't exactly going to be that popular (I assume Blizzard uses a white-list of keys, like Mythic do with DAoC).
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
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.
Except the news last week that people were rather pissed over the fact that Blizzard wouldn't be sending copies to retailers to re-stock until they fixed the issue with their servers (some servers are overloaded). Apparently, on various forums around the net, peole are complaining about not even receiving their copy yet, even when they pre-ordered the game.
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.
WoW is completely sold out across the country. That means ~599000 have been sold to customers. That makes WoW the most successful MMORPG in North American history. When the European launch happens WoW will shatter the subscriber records held by Lineage The Bloodpledge. Expect over 2 million active subscribers by the end of the year.
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.
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.
Best... skinner box... ever
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
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)
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.
Zug zug!!!
Take off every Sig. For great justice.
apprx. 6,000,000,000 * .01 = 60,000,000
Tsunami toll -- will maybe reach 150,000?
You must have failed math. That's about 2.5e-05, so while it was a huge tragedy, it hardly even made a dent.
And 599,999 of 'em are on my server YELLING FOR DIRECTIONS or asking for a "loan".
I think he's referring to Blizzard's official updater using BitTorrent, not pirating the game. More info
Wow, 600,000. So, I take it we're all over the Bnetd fiasco then?
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.
Well he mentioned newsgroups (nntp) so I assumed he meant pirating.
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
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.
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.
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.
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.
The beta was available via NNTP as well, he could have been refering to that. I don't know if you can still use that version and just by a CD key yet or not.
$13 a month. WOW. Why are they turning us into such slaves. Blizzard is my Daddy.
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?
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.
"[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
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.
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.
If they used anything close to a decent bittorrent client implementation it might have. As it is they want you to allow 120 incoming ports through your firewall when a decent client only needs one.
You'd think that with all of the time and effort they spent on the game they could have designed the update system a little better.
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?
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!
Don't forget Freecraft. Yes, they are bastards.
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
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
Dude where ya been, forced upgrades for PC games in general have been driving the gaming &hardware industry for the last 7 years or so. Don't think there will be an end to non-online games any time soon. But where the console has 2 joysticks the PC has mainly focussed around a single user experience... so online play is the option for multiplayer.
So do you for not reading the article....
*Based on internal company records and reports from key distribution partners in North America.
I have no sig yet I must scream.
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.